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10 days to go until the search fund event of the year! 

This is your final call to secure your tickets to The ETA Awards. Register by 31 October, before tickets sell out!!

The ETA Awards, hosted by Gerald Edelman, is taking place on 5 November in London, England. This event celebrates excellence in the ETA space, bringing together an international community of searchers, investors, operators, and academic leaders to connect, learn, and recognise achievements in the space.

Today’s Rundown

• Earnouts and their use in search fund acquisitions

• Launching and exiting a search fund

• Finding & bonding with off-market business owners

• 4 deal / launch announcements

• 6 new career opportunities

Database Overview

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Weekly Highlights

• Yale published a paper on earnouts and their use in search fund acquisitions:

  • In broader M&A markets, 22–23% of deals in 2024–2025 included earnouts

  • An IESE poll of 41 search fund investors found earnout use rising sharply in non-U.S. ETA transactions, signaling growing reliance on contingent pricing to bridge valuation gaps

  • Earnouts typically help reconcile valuation gaps of 15–20%, such as a buyer offering $10 million for a $2 million-EBITDA firm versus a seller’s $12 million ask; the added $2 million becomes contingent on performance (e.g., reaching $2.4 million EBITDA)

  • Alternative deal structures - escrows (1–10% of purchase price, 6–24 months holdback), seller notes (5–10% interest, 3–7 year term), and rolled equity (5–30% ownership retained) - provide varying levels of risk-sharing, but earnouts uniquely offer contingent upside and reduced up-front cash needs

  • Financial modeling in the Yale case shows that funding an earnout can materially affect economics: a CEO’s net proceeds could drop from $2.9 million (no earnout) to $1.7 million when funded with new equity, underscoring how earnouts dilute returns despite facilitating deal closures

• Stanislas Simon-Beaulieu, a successful search fund investor, shares his experience on launching and exiting a search fund:

  • Caméléon Invest has backed 15 searchers (mainly in France), completed 5 acquisitions, and already achieved 1 successful exit since entering the space in 2020.

  • The firm exclusively targets growing markets and avoids concentration risks (e.g., dependence on a single supplier)

  • Searchers are selected primarily for operational leadership experience across diverse teams

  • Cassius Search Platform: Launched in 2024 as the first French entrepreneurial investment platform for SME acquisitions; aims to raise 2 new search funds per year, each with a distinct sector focus

  • Joto Transmission - co-founded in 2025 with Pierre-Philippe de Bouville (ex-McKinsey, B2B software founder) - is the first Cassius-backed search fund, dedicated to B2B software acquisitions

  • The French ecosystem has seen ~3 waves of searchers since 2018–2019; over a dozen new entrants expected in 2025. Institutional participation remains limited, but French funds-of-search-funds and family offices are growing contributors

• Entrepreneurial Capital, a search fund investor, and Rejigg, a marketplace for deals, published a presentation on finding & bonding with off-market business owners:

  • Calling business owners has a much higher hit rate than emails (0.67% vs. 0.09%) but hit rate is still under 1%

  • When Rejigg reaches out to owners, they achieve 1 LOI in every 30 “good conversations”

  • The best deals happen when the buyer chooses the searcher for non-monetary reasons (they weren’t the highest bidder, they were the best bidder)

  • Be creative in your approach to reach out to sellers, e.g. meet the sellers family, have them meet your family or send a unique, thoughtful, or funny gift

Deal / Launch Announcements

• 🇦🇹 ASPEON Partners, a search fund managed by Anton Stockert-Seilern and Stephan Pöll, has acquired AlpinEnergie, a B2B energy brokerage (link)

• 🇵🇱 Lynx Trail Capital, a search fund managed by Michał Łukasz Kamiński and Constantin Marek, has acquired ICEA, a digital marketing agency (link)

• 🇮🇹 Federico Verderi and Elvio Emanuele Rossini launched B2R Italian Investments, a sector-agnostic search fund (link)

• 🇩🇪 Talu Hakverdi and Maximilian Gorzelitz launched OLTA Nachfolge, a search fund focused on asset-light and infrastructure-adjacent businesses (link)

Career Opportunities

• [PE-Asset] (Junior) M&A Manager | CorpFin Search | Remote (apply)

• [PE-Asset] Head of Finance | CorpFin Search | Essen (apply)*

• [PE] Junior Investment Analyst | Pictet | Geneva (apply)

• [PE] Investment Intern | Cinven | Milan (apply)

• [PE] Investment Intern | Partners Group | London (apply)

• [PE] Investment Intern | La Caisse CDPQ | London (apply)

_*Headhunter

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