Burnout for Searchers?

August 06, 2025

by an member from University of Warwick in London, UK

Hey fellas, I've been creeping the forums for a while and am noticing a lot of searchers feeling burnt out or discouraged. As an aspiring searcher myself, and just from the outside, the search phase seems to be a pretty gruelling process. I'm in DevOps & intelligence infrastructure and recently one of our clients has been able to source over $2B in offers to PE since April. I could put something together to automate the search process(for both myself and you guys), if that's something the community would be interested in? Not selling anything, just looking to validate an idea. Would love any input, and always game to jump on a call for a chat with someone more experienced on searchfunds.

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Reply by a searcher
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Austin, TX, USA

I think the burnout is partly just because there have been so many searchers new to the space recently that it's gotten way overheated. IMO it's happening on multiple fronts. There's a ton of hype around how easy it is to buy and run a business (it's not), so there have been a lot of new searchers expecting easy wins. Those new searchers are often inexperienced and willing to pay too much for businesses becuase they don't know any better. That convinces more business owners to want to sell their business thinking they can get a higher multiple which perpetuates the cycle. However, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the searcher agreed to pay, it matters what can get funded, so the deal doesn't go through as hoped. However, most people aren't as quick to talk about the deals that didn't go through. I think this makes it much harder to actually find a deal (too much supply on the buyside), and then harder to get it to close as expectations are off, and banks are (appropriately) tightening their guidelines. I say this not to shoot down your idea necessarily, I think these tools are great. But I'm not convinced it will help the burnout side of things, as these underlying issues are still in place

Reply by an intermediary
from University of Wisconsin in Lawrence, KS, USA

It all depends on whether your LOI clearly stated what you are basing your valuation on. If you dont have that, then there is no rule other than it is not uncommon for revenues to dip a bit during diligence as the sellers group is focused on working with the buyer on diligence and not as much on the shop. But, if you did clearly lay out your valuation metrics, it is perfectly acceptable to request an adjustment. But, as as several of the comments suggest, there is no hard and fast rule for there there are so many variables that go into that decision. We we make an offer, we clearly state in the LOI what we are basing the purchase price on. And might have an adjustment if it signficantly deviates, but not so for a slight change.

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