About SearchFundMarket

Our Mission

Acquisition entrepreneurship has long been concentrated in the United States, with a well-established ecosystem of MBA programs, investors, and advisors supporting the model. In Europe, the opportunity is just as large — arguably larger — but the infrastructure to connect searchers, sellers, and investors has been missing.

Our mission is to democratize access to acquisition entrepreneurship across Europe. We want to make it as easy for a searcher in Madrid to find a business in Lyon as it is for a searcher in Boston to find one in Dallas. We are building the connective tissue that the European search fund ecosystem needs to scale.

The ETA Model

Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) is a path to business ownership where an entrepreneur — often an MBA graduate — raises a small fund from investors to finance a search for a company to acquire and operate. Unlike traditional private equity, the searcher becomes the CEO, running the business day-to-day and building long-term value.

The typical search fund targets profitable small and medium-sized businesses with strong cash flows, loyal customers, and defensible market positions. These are companies with revenues between €1M and €10M and EBITDA margins that support acquisition financing. Sectors like B2B services, healthcare, education, and niche manufacturing are particularly attractive.

The model has produced exceptional returns for investors — historically averaging over 30% IRR in the US — while giving entrepreneurs a fast track to CEO-level responsibility and meaningful equity ownership.

Why Europe

Europe is home to millions of small and medium-sized businesses, many of which are family-owned and facing a generational succession challenge. Over the next decade, an estimated 2.4 million SMEs across the EU will need to transition ownership. Many of these businesses have no succession plan.

This creates a unique opportunity for search fund entrepreneurs. The supply of quality businesses is enormous, competition from private equity is lower than in the US for sub-€5M EBITDA deals, and valuations are generally more attractive. Markets like France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK each present distinct opportunities for searchers with the right language skills and cultural understanding.

What has been missing is a centralized platform where these opportunities can be discovered, evaluated, and acted upon. That is what we are building.