Search Fund data sets

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by an investor from IE Business School
in Hamburg, Germany

3yrs ago

Search Fund data sets

Hi Searchfunder.com community,

does anyone know how to access the dataset Stanford and IESE use to compile their bi-annual studies?

To be more precise - I would like to get a better understanding of the top-performing search funds in the space:
- What industries were they in?
- Company characteristics?
- How was the value of the business increased?
- ...

Thank you!
Adrian

1 Like

142 Views

reply by a professional 3yrs ago
from University of Southern California in North Palm Beach, FL, USA

Be careful following the “leaders.” Consider buyer competition, such as what you can learn here: redacted Buyer competition is responsible for more bad deals than seller misrepresentation or lousy businesses.

reply by a searcher 3yrs ago
from IESE Business School in London, UK

Hi Adrian, I think Stanford / IESE teams don't share underlying data, but reports have answers to your questions on unnamed data set. Most successful company would be so because they had bold moves in unexpected industries with companies of not the best characteristics at the outset, but with great search team and navigating towards more recurring revenues made them very successful
Some key points to success based on my observations were:
1. Great investor guidance and searcher/s able to listen and implement - >30% IRRs don't just come from searcher, they come from both side efforts
2. Starting with limited recurrence business (hence low multiple) and moving to highly recurring growth (say desktop accounting to SaaS model). I think top-line growth, not margin expansion was behind the most successful SF acquisitions.
3. Long hold periods - I would think many of the most successful SFs are still running
There are names of specific acquisitions discussed in SF books that you might want to have a look at
Hope this helps and happy to chat if needed