How many ETA case studies has Yale produced?

Professor A.J. Wasserstein has authored over 100 case studies on entrepreneurship through acquisition, the largest collection by any single academic in the field.

What ETA courses does Yale SOM offer?

Yale SOM offers three dedicated courses: MGT 671 (Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition), MGT 674 (Leading Small and Medium Enterprises), and MGT 677 (Rollups, Consolidations and Programmatic Acquisitions).

What is the tuition at Yale SOM?

Yale SOM tuition is $90,900 per year plus a $500 fee ($91,400 total) for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Who is A.J. Wasserstein?

A.J. Wasserstein is a Senior Lecturer at Yale SOM, former CEO of ArchivesOne (sold to Iron Mountain), and the most prolific academic in ETA. He has authored 100+ case studies and won the Teaching Excellence Award in 2022 and 2024.

Has Yale SOM produced successful searchers?

Yes. Notable alumni include Matt Dittrich (Blue Wood Capital), Ross Butler (acquired BPI Information Systems while still a student), Jose Moreno (Pivot Capital, Colombia), and Georgyi Vekhov (Russia's first search fund).

Yale SOM: The Deepest Academic ETA Program

14 min read

In 2020, Georgyi Vekhov graduated from the Yale School of Management and returned to Russia to do something no one there had done before: launch a traditional search fund. Operating under the name Milestone Capital, Vekhov spent two years sourcing deals before acquiring UDP Auto, a Moscow-based automotive services company. It was Russia's first search fund acquisition, and the playbook that got him there was written almost entirely inside Yale SOM classrooms.

Vekhov's story is unusual by geography, but the mechanism behind it is not. Yale SOM has quietly built the deepest academic ETA program at any business school, anchored by a single faculty member who has spent over two decades turning entrepreneurship through acquisition into a rigorous academic discipline. The result is a curriculum, a case library, and an alumni network that punch well above what most applicants expect from a program outside the traditional top three.

Why Yale SOM matters: the Wasserstein factor

Every great ETA program is built around a practitioner who decided to teach. At Stanford GSB, that role is shared across six faculty. At Harvard Business School, the Ruback-Yudkoff partnership carries the load. At Yale, the entire ETA ecosystem revolves around one person: A.J. Wasserstein.

Wasserstein is the Eugene F. Williams, Jr., Senior Lecturer in the Practice of Management at Yale SOM. Before joining the faculty, he served as CEO of ArchivesOne, a records management company he grew and ultimately sold to Iron Mountain. That operating experience is the foundation of everything he teaches, and it shows in the scale of his academic output. Over the course of his career at Yale, Wasserstein has authored more than 100 case studies on entrepreneurship through acquisition, making him the most prolific single author on the subject in any business school.

Wasserstein has described the ETA model in direct terms. As he told Yale SOM News:

“It’s a model that catapults you from classroom to CEO within a few years of completing an MBA.”

He has also noted the accessibility of the approach compared to venture-backed startups:

“Since you’re buying a business, rather than starting one, you don’t have to have a brilliant idea.”

Both quotes come from a 2021 Yale SOM News article profiling the program's growing impact. That practical framing captures why Yale SOM appeals to a specific kind of MBA candidate: someone who wants to run a real business, not pitch a startup, and who values depth of preparation over breadth of options.

Faculty

Yale SOM's ETA program is unusual in that it is built around a single dedicated faculty member rather than a team. This concentration has advantages. Wasserstein teaches all three ETA courses, ensures continuity across the curriculum, and personally mentors students from their first exposure to ETA through their post-graduation searches.

A.J. Wasserstein

Title: Eugene F. Williams, Jr., Senior Lecturer in the Practice of Management
Background: Former CEO of ArchivesOne, sold to Iron Mountain
Academic output: 100+ ETA case studies, the largest collection by any individual academic
Recognition: Teaching Excellence Award 2022 and 2024

Wasserstein's dual Teaching Excellence Awards underscore a point that matters for prospective students: academic depth does not come at the expense of teaching quality. His courses are consistently among the highest-rated at Yale SOM.

Course offerings

Yale SOM offers three dedicated ETA courses, all taught by Wasserstein. This is a higher count than most Tier 2 programs and matches the three-course offerings at Stanford GSB and HBS. The courses form a logical sequence, from foundational ETA concepts through post-acquisition operations and advanced deal structures.

Code	Course name	Focus
MGT 671	Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition	Core ETA course: search process, deal sourcing, due diligence, acquisition financing, and transition planning
MGT 674	Leading Small and Medium Enterprises	Post-acquisition leadership: managing operations, people, and growth in acquired businesses
MGT 677	Rollups, Consolidations and Programmatic Acquisitions	Advanced deal structures: multi-unit acquisition strategies, platform and add-on models, industry consolidation

The third course, MGT 677, is particularly distinctive. Most ETA programs focus on the single-acquisition search fund model. By covering rollups and programmatic acquisitions, Yale SOM prepares students for a broader range of acquisition strategies, including those used by investors backing multi-deal platforms.

Academic depth: the case study library

The centerpiece of Yale SOM's ETA program is not any single course but the case library underpinning all three. With over 100 case studies authored by Wasserstein, Yale SOM has built the largest single-author collection of ETA teaching material at any business school.

These cases cover the full lifecycle of an acquisition-based entrepreneurial journey: sourcing and evaluating targets, structuring deals, negotiating with sellers, managing lender relationships, navigating the first 100 days as CEO, and executing growth plans post-acquisition. The breadth is important because it means students encounter dozens of real scenarios before they ever write a letter of intent.

For students comparing Yale SOM to other programs, the case library is the key differentiator. Stanford GSB has the definitive dataset (681 tracked funds) and HBS has the most widely assigned textbook. Yale SOM has the most granular teaching material, drawn from Wasserstein's own operating experience and his decades of engagement with ETA practitioners.

Alumni spotlight

Yale SOM has produced a growing cohort of verified searchers and acquirers. Four alumni profiles illustrate the range of outcomes.

Matt Dittrich (SOM '18) — Blue Wood Capital LLC

Dittrich founded the Yale ETA Club during his time at SOM, establishing the student-led community that continues to support aspiring searchers. After graduating, he launched Blue Wood Capital LLC as his search fund vehicle. His decision to build institutional ETA infrastructure at Yale before graduating reflects the kind of initiative that strengthens a program from the inside.

Ross Butler (SOM '21) — BPI Information Systems

Butler stands out for the speed of his path from MBA to CEO. He acquired BPI Information Systems while still enrolled as a student at Yale SOM, completing the deal before graduation. That timeline is rare in ETA and speaks to the intensity of Wasserstein's curriculum: students who engage fully can be acquisition-ready before they receive their diplomas.

Jose P. Moreno (SOM '17), Pivot Capital Fund

Moreno took the ETA model international. After graduating from Yale SOM, he founded Pivot Capital Fund and acquired a Colombian food services company generating $13M in annual revenue. His trajectory demonstrates that Yale's ETA training translates to markets far beyond the northeastern United States, a theme that connects directly to the broader data on search fund returns across different geographies.

Georgyi Vekhov (SOM '20), Milestone Capital / UDP Auto

Vekhov's story opened this profile, and it remains the most striking illustration of Yale SOM's international reach. After graduating in 2020, he returned to Russia, launched Milestone Capital, and acquired UDP Auto in Moscow. It was the first traditional search fund acquisition in Russia, extending the ETA model into a market with no prior infrastructure for it. The fact that Vekhov built his entire framework inside Yale SOM's three-course sequence shows how much can be accomplished with deep academic preparation and a clear geographic thesis.

Student community: the Yale ETA Club

The Yale ETA Club, founded by Matt Dittrich during his MBA, serves as the hub for student-led ETA activity at SOM. The club organizes speaker events, connects current students with alumni searchers, and provides a peer network for students working through the ETA curriculum.

Student-led ETA clubs matter because they create informal knowledge transfer that courses alone cannot provide. A student considering whether to raise a traditional search fund or pursue a self-funded search benefits from conversations with second-years who have already taken all three Wasserstein courses and are actively evaluating deals.

Compared to the ETA clubs at programs like Chicago Booth (which has a Polsky Center-backed Fellows program) or HBS (which hosts an annual 1,000-attendee conference), Yale's club operates on a smaller scale. That intimacy can be an advantage: students get more direct access to Wasserstein and to each other, and the community stays focused on serious practitioners rather than casual observers.

Tuition and financial considerations

Yale SOM tuition for the 2026-2027 academic year is $91,400 per year ($90,900 in tuition plus a $500 fee). Over a two-year MBA, the tuition component alone totals approximately $182,800 before living expenses.

This places Yale SOM at the higher end of US MBA pricing. For comparison, Stanford GSB charges approximately $85,755 per year and HBS charges $84,760. However, the total cost of an MBA for ETA must be weighed against the opportunity it creates. Students considering the financial equation should read the full analysis in MBA ROI for a search fund career, which breaks down break-even scenarios and expected outcomes.

Prospective students should also evaluate Yale SOM's broader financial aid offerings. While Yale SOM does not currently offer an ETA-specific fellowship comparable to the HBS Search Fund Fellowship ($130K) or the Wharton Perlman Fellowship ($50K), the school does provide need-based and merit-based aid that can meaningfully reduce total cost.

How Yale SOM compares

Yale SOM occupies a distinctive position in the ETA landscape. It is not the birthplace of the search fund model (that is Stanford), nor does it have the largest ETA conference (HBS) or the most generous fellowship funding (Wharton). What it has is depth: more ETA case studies than any other program, a three-course sequence taught by a single practitioner-academic, and an alumni record that spans the United States, Latin America, and Russia.

In the overall ranking of the best MBAs for search fund careers, Yale SOM sits in Tier 2 alongside programs like Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Wharton, and INSEAD. What distinguishes it within that tier is the sheer volume of academic material available. A student at Yale SOM will encounter more real-world ETA scenarios in the classroom than at almost any other program.

The tradeoff is institutional infrastructure. Booth has the Polsky Center and a formal ETA Fellows program. Wharton has a $10M endowment. Kellogg has the Zell Fellows ETA track. Yale SOM's infrastructure is leaner, built more around Wasserstein personally than around a center or endowment. For students who value academic rigor and close faculty mentorship over programmatic resources, that concentration is a feature. For students who want a broader institutional safety net, it is a consideration.

Who should choose Yale SOM

Yale SOM is the right choice for a specific kind of ETA candidate. The program is best suited for students who want to study acquisition entrepreneurship at maximum academic depth: who want to read 100+ case studies, take three sequential courses, and learn from a practitioner who has both operated and taught at the highest level.

It is also a strong fit for students with an international thesis. Vekhov's Russia acquisition and Moreno's Colombian deal both originated in Wasserstein's classroom, which suggests that Yale SOM does an unusually good job of preparing students to apply the ETA model outside the typical US corridor. Students exploring the relationship between MBA programs and ETA outcomes will find that Yale SOM offers one of the most compelling academic value propositions in the field.

Students who prioritize brand-name recognition, large-scale networking events, or fellowship funding may find a better fit at HBS, Stanford, or Wharton. But for those who want the deepest classroom preparation available, Yale SOM has built something that no other program can match.