The Search Fund Model

Search Funds are a misunderstood, and little known asset class that gives young, entrepreneurial, and hungry people the ability to accelerate their careers, ditch working for large corporations, and potentially shape an industry.  I have some experience helping out one of these such investment vehicles, and thought it would be interesting to the masses to shed some light on this relatively unknown asset class.

Definition of a Search Fund

The clinical definition of a search fund is a small group of individuals who have secured a pool of capital in order to buy a company, and then become the senior management team of that company.  For example, two guys out of Harvard Business School decide to forgo their offers at McKinsey, raise $10 million, and go find a services business in New Jersey that they acquire, and then run.  This is the 10 second spiel on search funds, but there is so much more to it than that.

Essence of a Search Fund

To understand a search fund, it’s important to understand the type of people who get caught up in this type of venture.  The typical searcher, if there is one, has a few years of investing experience (PE/VC), and most likely some sort of operational experience either as a consultant or as an actual manager in a corporation.  They probably went to either Harvard of Stanford to get their MBA, and have made the decision to go out on their own instead of joining most of their classmates at Goldman/McKinsey/etc.

They have found a group of investors, typically 10-30 high net worth individuals who were former entrepreneurs, private equity investors, or searchers themselves, to give them a commitment.  The investors commit to investing in a deal, if they like it, and also provide some operating capital for office space, internet, etc while the two entrepreneurs search for a suitable target.

Searchers usually work in groups of 2 as the job takes a lot of resilience and discipline – and going it alone can be, well, lonely.  Between the two searchers, you’re looking at a few hundred thousand dollars in forfeited yearly income while they try to find a company that they could grow into an enterprise that would return considerably more than that.

In exchange for giving up the relatively cushy life at a larger firm, the searchers typically rent out a small room in a shared workspace in New York, Boston, or San Francisco.

Most of the time their day to day consists of hustling to find interesting investment opportunities.  They cold call family businesses in Iowa, talk to business brokers, and try to find industry experts through LinkedIn that will give them free advice on tackling a “niche.”

The Niche Philosophy

Searches are industry driven.  The goal is to find a nascent, but growing industry “niche” that is also target rich.  If your radiologist tells you that he just started outsourcing his billing to a company with a call center in Florida, you might want to look into outsourced billing for radiologists.  Say the industry is growing at 30% and is populated by unprofessionalized, small and sleepy companies.  Well, you just found a great niche.

In practice, searchers go through niches quite quickly.  Time is their most scarce resource and so if something isn’t growing fast, is dominated by a large player, or there just don’t seem to be any companies looking to sell, it’s killed.  Sometimes niches are killed after a few days, sometimes after a few weeks.  The typical searcher is looking at ~3 niches at any given time, while also evaluating more opportunistic targets as they come in through brokers, lawyers, and other networks.

Why Give Up My Job At McKinsey?

Earlier in the post I mentioned that searchers give up a lot of income they could have gotten at another job.  Why would any rational human do such a thing?

For starters, most searchers are entrepreneurial at heart and like working for themselves, so that comes at a premium.  Another key component is that searchers get a decent equity stake in the business that they buy, with their investor base getting the rest (unless current owners are rolling equity, but that is a more advanced topic and a discussion for another day).  The portion of the equity can also be stepped up considerably if IRR targets are hit – these targets are typically around 30%.

Acquisition Profile

Searchers look for many things traditional investors look for in a company: recurring revenue streams, high margins, large markets, etc.  But, there are a few things that are MOST relevant.

• Growth: Searchers get paid on the growth of the company they buy.  Industry tailwinds are a huge plus.
• A platform: Search fund investors don’t want their searchers to start companies.  They want them to find “platforms” – defined as firms with all of the infrastructure necessary to scale a business – and then grow said platform.
• Services/Operationally focused businesses: Most searchers do not have any sort of technology/biotech/other special skill set.  Searchers are hard core operations guys who think about efficiency/hiring/sales/marketing/IT all day long and who can take a family owned, unprofessionalized business, and squeeze out margins while growing the company like crazy.
• Buying right: Searchers need to find a company they can buy at a rational multiple, and maybe even with the help of some debt and/or seller financing (again, a topic for another day).  They are putting all of their eggs in one investment, and need to make sure they are protected!
• Management: This is the most important and most misunderstood of the criteria.  Searchers are going to become the CEO/COO/CFO/Whatever and so the current owner either needs to be a manager looking to step down and work on a specific part of the business (sales and marketing, research, etc), or retire/move on altogether.  Of course, finding a high growth company where management wants to walk away at a conservative price is a huge challenge!

The Outcomes

Several very successful companies have sprung out of searchers.  Service Source, Asurion, and other, lesser known companies were all searches to begin with.  Of course, there are also many search funds that don’t make it due to the challenges of finding the right company, at the right price, at the right time.

Please be on the lookout for a follow up post with some of the more advanced and specific details around search funds!  Also, below there is a link to a nice research paper on search funds written by folks at Stanford University.  Enjoy!

Search Funds-2009 Selected Observations FINAL – revised 7.21.10(2)