Hi there, I wanted to drop a comment here about funded and unfunded searchers. My definitions are Unfunded searcher is essentially an Independent Sponsor and funded searcher is what I'd assume most of www.searchfunder community is about - find a family office or a specialized PE group to get a searcher on the 1-2 year salary contract to search for the deal to fund and run that business as part of the deal.

Independent Sponsor is your typical PE less committed fund(s). Much tougher... speaking from the personal experience but is doable as there are plenty of success stories.

The purpose of the post is to point out that traditional searchfunders shouldn't ignore Independent Sponsors (IS) to co-invest on a deal or coming to us to fund a deal. Moreover, a lot of IS are sophisticated investors and/or C-suite operators who spun off a family office or funded PE groups and started on their own. Myself included. So, IS have pretty good rolodex of equity and debt partners from HNWI and SFOs to traditional PEs.

What it comes down to is that Traditional Searchers with knowledge of a family business or a company for sale can come to the Independent Sponsors to fund deals. You may find us easier to deal with as we're also "looking", pushing and pulling, and every deal is The Deal. If you have any deal flow come talk to us as well. Most of us, IS, specialize. My group is working on deals in the Specialty Consumer space - F&B, Health & Wellness, Personal Care and Specialty Retail. We'd look at business services deals as well, but try to play within consumer as much as possible. That's what we know best. Check us out on www..assemblergc.com. Happy searching!