A few days ago, I reconnected with a family office, and they reminded me of one of my favorite investing maxims—one Warren Buffett credits to Charlie Munger: "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price." I couldn't agree more! The challenge, of course, is that finding a wonderful company has never been easy. And finding one at a fair price feels even harder today. When I was searching full-time 12 years ago as a traditional searcher, it was already difficult to acquire a quality business at a reasonable valuation. Since then, the market has become dramatically more competitive. Private equity has continued moving downstream, and today I regularly see institutional capital competing for businesses with less than $1 million of EBITDA. That has led me to a view that may not be universally shared: for many aspiring entrepreneurs through acquisition, the most attractive path today may be a self-funded search focused on businesses in the $500K–$750K EBITDA range. Why? Because self-funded searchers aren't constrained by investor mandates or return expectations. If you can acquire a solid business at a reasonable price, operate it well, steadily grow EBITDA, and pay down acquisition debt, the long-term financial outcome can be exceptional—even if the business isn't "wonderful" on day one. I've also seen several posts suggesting franchising as an attractive alternative. I understand the appeal—I own a franchise myself. But in my experience, achieving meaningful scale (say, more than $500K of EBITDA) is challenging. While it's possible to grow by developing or acquiring multiple units, that's often much harder in practice than it appears on paper. I'm curious whether others are seeing the same trends? - Has the search market become materially more difficult over the past decade? - If you were starting your search today, would you pursue a traditional search, a self-funded search, or a franchise platform—and why?