IE Business School: A Decade of ETA Education in Madrid

When Eisuke Kobayashi and Mitsuharu Suzaki graduated from IE Business School's MBA program in 2023, they did not follow the well-trodden path to consulting or finance in London or New York. Instead, they flew home to Japan and launched Japan Bullseye Capital GK, the first traditional duo search fund in the country. It was a move that no IE alumnus had attempted before, and it worked.

The two co-founders raised capital from 17 investors, eventually expanding their investor base to 22. In April 2025, they closed their acquisition of Gateway Arch Co. Ltd, a jigsaw puzzle company, with Kobayashi stepping in as CEO. Their story traces a direct line from a classroom in Madrid's IE Tower to a signed deal in Tokyo, illustrating how IE's ETA program is producing searchers who operate well beyond the traditional European and North American corridors.

IE Business School may not carry the legacy of Stanford or the research infrastructure of IESE, but it has been teaching entrepreneurial acquisition for over a decade, making it one of the longest-running ETA electives in Europe. For anyone getting started in ETA and considering a European MBA, IE deserves serious attention.

IE has offered its Entrepreneurial Acquisition course for more than 11 consecutive years, making it one of the earliest European business schools to embed search fund education into its MBA curriculum. While IESE is widely recognized for its International Search Fund Center and research output, and London Business School has grown its ETA activity in recent years, IE was among the first European schools to offer a dedicated course taught by a practitioner with deep search fund investing experience.

The school's approach to ETA reflects its broader entrepreneurial identity. IE has long positioned itself as a school for founders and operators, and the search fund model fits naturally within that ethos. The Entrepreneurial Acquisition elective is not an afterthought bolted onto a finance curriculum. It sits within IE's Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, which provides institutional support, mentorship programs, and a dedicated Search Funds Lab that helps students move from classroom learning to live search execution.

The Spanish ETA ecosystem has grown significantly over the past decade, and IE has contributed to that growth by producing searchers who launch funds in Spain and across international markets. The Kobayashi and Suzaki story in Japan is one example, but IE alumni have also pursued acquisitions across Latin America, Southern Europe, and beyond.

IE's ETA instruction is led by two adjunct professors who bring decades of real-world investing and operating experience to the classroom.

Blake Winchell

Winchell is an Adjunct Professor at IE and the primary instructor for the Entrepreneurial Acquisition course. He holds an MBA from Stanford GSB (class of 1979) and a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth (1975). His career spans 44 years in private equity, including roles at Bain & Company, Fremont Ventures, and Partner Ventures, and he has been a serial search fund investor throughout that period. At IE, he has earned 15 or more consecutive teaching excellence awards, a distinction that reflects both the rigor of his instruction and the value students place on learning from someone who has spent decades on the investor side of the table. Students who want to understand how finding investors works in practice benefit directly from Winchell's perspective as someone who has evaluated and backed searchers for over four decades.

Newton M. Campos

Campos is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at IE and the founder of Newton Equity Partners. He has invested in 18 search funds with a 73% success rate, a track record that gives him practical credibility when teaching students about deal sourcing, due diligence, and investor relations. His dual role as academic and active investor means students receive instruction grounded in current market conditions rather than historical case studies alone. Campos brings particular expertise in international search fund investing, which aligns with IE's globally diverse student body.

IE's primary ETA course is Entrepreneurial Acquisition, a 15-session elective taught by Blake Winchell. The course covers the full search fund lifecycle, from understanding the economics of the model and raising search capital through deal sourcing, valuation, due diligence, and closing an acquisition. For a broader overview of how MBA programs prepare students for ETA, IE's approach offers a condensed but practitioner-led alternative to the multi-course sequences available at larger programs.

The 15-session format is more intensive than some comparable European electives, giving Winchell enough time to move beyond introductory material and into the operational realities of running a search. The course draws on his own investment experience, real deal case studies, and guest appearances from active searchers and operators.

Students considering the difference between self-funded and traditional search funds will find that the course covers both models, though the traditional search fund structure receives the deeper treatment given Winchell's background as an institutional investor.

Eisuke Kobayashi (MBA '23, Finance)

Kobayashi co-founded Japan Bullseye Capital GK alongside his classmate Mitsuharu Suzaki, creating the first traditional duo search fund in Japan. Before their search, Kobayashi served as the founding President of the IE Search Fund Club, helping build the institutional infrastructure that would support future IE searchers. The duo raised capital from 17 investors, later expanding to 22, and in April 2025 acquired Gateway Arch Co. Ltd, a jigsaw puzzle company. Kobayashi now serves as CEO.

The Japan Bullseye Capital story is significant for several reasons. It demonstrates that IE's ETA education can produce searchers who operate in markets with no prior search fund tradition. Japan has a well-documented small business succession crisis, with hundreds of thousands of profitable companies at risk of closing because their aging owners have no successors. The search fund model is a natural fit for this market, and Kobayashi and Suzaki were among the first to apply it there.

Mitsuharu Suzaki (MBA '23)

Suzaki co-founded Japan Bullseye Capital alongside Kobayashi. The duo's partnership, formed during their time at IE, exemplifies the value of the school's international cohort. Both searchers brought complementary skills and a shared conviction that the ETA model could work in a market that had never seen a traditional search fund. Their successful acquisition validated that thesis.

The IE Search Fund Club, founded by Eisuke Kobayashi during his MBA, has grown to over 275 LinkedIn followers and serves as the primary student-led community for ETA-interested students at IE. The club organizes speaker events, investor panels, and networking sessions that connect current students with alumni searchers and active investors.

In November 2023, the club organized the inaugural IE Search Fund Forum, held on November 16-17 at IE Tower in Madrid. The event attracted significant interest, with over 200 tickets sold and the event overbooked with a waitlist. For a school that was still building its ETA reputation, the forum demonstrated genuine demand among students, alumni, and the broader European search fund community. The event featured panels on search fund economics, international expansion, and the growing role of ETA in European entrepreneurship.

The forum's success is a useful signal for prospective applicants. A student-led event that sells out and generates a waitlist indicates an active and growing community, not one that exists only on paper. For context on how European search fund research is evolving, the IE Forum represents one of several new institutions contributing to the ecosystem's maturation.

The Search Funds Lab operates within IE's Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center and offers biannual intakes in January and September. Unlike the Entrepreneurial Acquisition course, which provides classroom instruction, the Lab is designed to support students and recent alumni who are actively preparing to launch a search fund.

The Lab provides mentorship, access to IE's investor network, and structured guidance on the practical steps required to move from the decision to search through fundraising and into active deal sourcing. The biannual intake model means students can enter the Lab at a point in their MBA that aligns with their personal timeline, whether they intend to launch immediately after graduation or need additional preparation.

This kind of institutional support is not common at European business schools. While IESE's International Search Fund Center focuses primarily on research and data collection, IE's Search Funds Lab is more operationally oriented. It functions as an accelerator-style program within the school, bridging the gap between education and execution.

IE's MBA tuition for the 2026 intake is EUR 89,900, plus a EUR 1,200 program fee, bringing the total to EUR 91,100. This positions IE below the cost of many US programs but in line with other top-tier European schools.

For prospective searchers, the financial calculation involves weighing the tuition cost against the expected timeline to acquisition and the equity upside of a successful search fund. The search phase typically lasts 18 to 24 months after graduation, during which the searcher receives modest compensation funded by search capital. The real financial return comes through equity earned upon acquisition and subsequent value creation.

IE's location in Madrid also offers a cost-of-living advantage relative to London, Paris, or any major US city. Housing, food, and daily expenses are materially lower, which can reduce the total financial burden of the MBA. For students considering the full financial picture, our analysis of the best MBA programs for search fund careers provides a comparative framework.

IE occupies a distinctive position in the European ETA landscape. It does not have the research output of IESE, which tracks over 320 international search funds through its International Search Fund Center. It does not have the brand recognition in ETA circles that London Business School or INSEAD carry. What IE does have is longevity, practitioner-led instruction, and an operational support infrastructure that few European peers can match.

The comparison is not about which school is objectively better. It is about fit. IE's strengths are most relevant for students who value direct practitioner mentorship, want operational launch support through the Search Funds Lab, and are drawn to Madrid as a base for a European or international search.

IE is a strong fit for candidates who are already leaning toward ETA and want a program that provides both the education and the operational infrastructure to launch a search. The school's globally diverse student body is an asset for anyone planning to search in a non-US market, as the network spans Latin America, Southern Europe, the Middle East, and increasingly East Asia.

Candidates who are drawn to the practitioner-led teaching model will find IE compelling. Winchell's 44 years of private equity and search fund investing experience, combined with Campos's active portfolio of 18 search fund investments, means students learn from people who are still making investment decisions, not recounting decisions from a prior career.

The Search Funds Lab adds a layer of support that is particularly valuable for first-generation searchers who do not have family connections to the world of business acquisition. The structured biannual intakes and mentorship program lower the barrier to entry, making the transition from MBA student to active searcher less daunting.

IE may be less suitable for candidates who prioritize research depth and data access. IESE's International Search Fund Center produces the most comprehensive dataset on international search funds, and Stanford's biennial study remains the gold standard for North American data. If your decision-making process depends heavily on longitudinal research, those programs may be a better fit.

• Getting started with search funds
• ETA in Spain: market overview
• MBA and ETA: how business school prepares you
• Best MBA programs for search fund careers
• Finding investors for your search fund
• European search fund research
• Self-funded vs. traditional search funds
• IESE Business School profile
• London Business School profile
• INSEAD profile