The Search Fund Model: How to Raise $140M and Acquire a Business

A search fund is a vehicle where an entrepreneur raises capital specifically to find, acquire, and grow an existing business rather than building one from scratch.

Larry Chiang explained the model directly: raise $140 million, spend $100 million on the acquisition, then grow the company using the remaining capital and your operational expertise.

The entrepreneur running the search fund makes money on the spread — the difference between what they raised, what they spent, and the value they create through growth.

Irving Grousbeck, a Stanford professor, literally wrote the case study on entrepreneurship through acquisition and the search fund model now taught at business schools worldwide.

The key insight is that you do not need to invent something new — you can acquire an existing business with proven revenue and apply better marketing, sales, and operations to scale it.

Search fund operators look for businesses doing between $5 million and $50 million in revenue that are undermarketed, undersold, or operationally inefficient — exactly the kind of businesses Simply Scale already helps.

From a software standpoint, the modern search fund is about acquiring companies and then using technology and AI to multiply their output — taking over a business using software as the leverage.

The overlap with growth consulting is direct: the skills you use to scale a client from $50,000 to $300,000 a month are the same skills a search fund operator uses to grow an acquired company.

Larry Chiang has been an investor in search funds and operates at the intersection of venture capital, real-world networking, and deal flow — connecting entrepreneurs to acquisition opportunities.

The search fund model turns a growth consultant into an owner-operator — instead of just getting paid to grow someone else's business, you own equity in the businesses you grow.

For agency owners stuck at $15,000 to $30,000 a month, the search fund model represents the next evolution: stop trading time for retainers and start acquiring equity in the businesses you scale.

The path from growth consulting to search fund is natural — you already know how to diagnose broken businesses, fix their revenue systems, and scale them, which is exactly what acquired companies need.