Which city has the hottest search fund scene right now?

searcher profile

October 23, 2025

by a searcher from Palm Beach State College in Boca Raton, FL, USA

Where’s the real #ETA energy these days?
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Reply by an member
from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Hey Luke domestically I believe the strongest ecosystems remain around major MBA programs being Boston/Chicago and there schools (HBS, Kellogg, Booth). and Internationally, the hottest scene is the European region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), where search funds are becoming the go-to solution for succession planning for retiring business owners.
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Reply by an investor
from McGill University in San Diego, CA, USA
You can answer that Q by using Searchfunder's data. Go to the directory on the left hand side of the page. Select Search Funds. You will see the city where each searchfund is domiciled, and can also look at where prior searchers have transacted/searched from. That's a pretty good starting point. Traditional search funds are, of course, a subset of all searchers out there. So, if you want to understand where the self funded crowd is hunting, that's a lot harder to do, but one proxy is to look at SBA originations (https://data.sba.gov/dataset/7-a-504-foia). In a nutshell, searchers are largely hunting in major metropolitan city centers, with the biggest hubs being near the most popular ETA schools. Fewer searching in the middle of the country, smaller population centers, or in rural areas.
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