Building in Public as a Competitive Advantage in operating iSearchFund

Member resources:

Frequent asked questions:

What is Searchfunder.com?

Searchfunder.com is an online community of searchers, investors, lenders, brokers and other professionals. Over 80% of those involved in searchfunds maintain a Searchfunder account to help them network, hire, and mentor others.

What are the benefits of membership?

In addition to accessing the most active online network of business buyers, Searchfunder licenses research that is simply not cost effective for individuals. Access over 15,000 industry reports and 50,000 transaction financials. You also get monthly credits for contact information for your company sourcing campaign with the option to purchase more at drastically discounted rates. Searchfunder has pre-purchased access from these data providers in order to empower individual buyers and to help searchers level the playing field versus private equity.

Do you have deals?

While we are primarily a buy-side network, we do have hundreds of brokers that regularly post deals to the community.

Can I find an internship on Searchfunder?

Absolutely! We have the industry's largest intern job board. If you are considering a search, the first step is to help another business buyer so you can hit the ground running.

What does it cost?

Searchfunder is a subscription service. We offer flexible monthly, annual and lifetime memberships.

Monthly

$79 / month

Annual

$19 / month

Lifetime

$432 / once

Those who maintain an account with us for over 4 continuous years are permanently added to the community without the need for a membership.

Do I need an MBA to join?

While a large number of our members come from dedicated programs at Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, Chicago Booth, and other top programs, searching is no longer reserved for the elite. With the current abundance of dry powder in private equity, and an increasing number of business owners reaching retirement age, good deals rarely go unfunded.

Post a question, deal, job, etc...

Make a post...

Complete registration to post.

by a searcher from Stanford University
in San Mateo, CA, USA

1yr ago

Building in Public as a Competitive Advantage in operating iSearchFund

First of all: redacted

Now, a question: Has anyone tried #BuildingInPublic with Search Funds? We didn't find any examples, so my partner Matthew Chesky and I decided to be the first.

Here's why: We have a secret weapon called redacted, and we're planning to power our new Search Fund called The Glowsides Company (Glowsides) with this new FinTech AI engine.

So here goes: Consider this the first post, one that I had not planned to write until just now.

redacted

Prologue:

Glowsides is designed as a network acquisition company (NAC) to roll up a complete ecosystem within the target vertical.

We decided to also add brand equity by using a consumer-friendly name. We picked the premium cigar industry for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that Amazon and Co are not planning to enter the tobacco category any time soon. Glowsides is meant to be a vertically integrated platform that also provides services to 3rd-parties, starting with wholesale. Glowsides will then add retail, manufacturing, and other business and technology services companies to round out the strategy.

Alpha:

Project Alpha is the codename for the first acquisition under the Glowsides NAC, and in the spirit of #BuildingInPublic, we will share our LOI-in-the-Works here with the community. The target is a friendly team of veterans, and this deal will form a great foundation for the Glowsides ecosystem. Since Mike and I go back several years with the founding team of the target company, we're fortunate to not have to look at it purely as a financial deal but as a strategic partnership to help realize our dream of creating a top premium cigar maker.

Thoughts?

So what do you think of this whole approach? Pros, cons, suggestions, or other feedback and comments?

Community

Regardless, if you are at all connected to the premium cigars industry, we're hoping you'll join this conversation and the soon-to-be-launched community platform. Stay tuned!

1 Like

50 Views

reply by an admin 1yr ago
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Portland, OR, USA

We encourage everyone to share their journey on Searchfunder, so please feel free to continue to share as you move forward. Authentic long format posts are often the most engaging, particularly if you can share the lows in addition to the highs (see redacted)

Very few people, including ^redacted‌, have mentioned vertical integration here, so that would be an interesting topic to explore further. have

^redacted‌, & ^redacted‌ are the only other folks to mention Building-in-Public, but I suppose that's what we've been doing at Searchfunder all this time.

You are also the very first person to mention Cigars on Searchfunder and only ^redacted‌, ^redacted‌, ^redacted‌, ^redacted‌, ^redacted‌, & ^redacted‌ have mentioned tobacco.

If anyone else has something to share about their Search Journey, or related topics, please post them and I'll do my best to get them going.