I’m writing this as of November 2025. It’s been 5 years since I was searching to buy a business, and it’s been nearly 4 years since I closed on my first acquisition.
A lot has changed for buyers in terms of education, financing, and competition. This post is a breakdown of what I’ve seen change in the searchfund landscape and where I think things are headed.
I can distinctly remember a few lightbulb moments in 2020 that made me determined to buy a business. 1) I was constantly referring out bookkeeping. I was doing small business advising and most of my clients had terrible books so it was hard to advise them. I was usually sending them to my buddy Jason at FinClarity who did a great job. 2) I met with a potential advising client Adam who had bought 2 accounting firms and he told me there were thousands of accounting firms for sale. 3) My friend Andrew told me about a site called Searchfunder where people posted about buying small businesses. 4) I heard Nick Huber on My First Million talk about buying storage unit businesses, and I thought buying bookkeeping businesses would be similar rinse and repeat (I was so wrong). 5) I was frustrated with not having more upside and was ready to bet on myself.
I stumbled my way through for +11 months trying to understand how deals were structured and find one worth buying. I talked to a few accounting firm owners I knew about trying to buy a firm and a few told me not to do it. Then I cold DM’d a guy named Sam Rosati and he told me to reach out to his buddy Mike Jerman – one of the first real enthusiasts for my plan because Mike had been part of dozens of acconting acquisitions. I also got connected to Shannon Hay – a banker who specialized in accounting firm deals and helped me with typical deal structures. Looking back now there were so many random connections and friends of friends who helped get the info and guidance I needed to keep moving to the next step. (Thanks all!)
But I still struggled to get in front of any good deals because the business brokers for accounting firms wouldn’t talk to me as a non CPA. So then I put together a list of targets to cold email and struck gold with my first email send – a perfect deal for me that was 100% bookkeeping with $800k revenue and $180k SDE. I thought I was on my way to glory – and then that deal fell apart a few weeks before closing. I was searching nights, weekends, and early mornings while working a lot. Plus we had 2 young kids living in peak quarantine. Only a handful of people in my life knew I was trying to buy an accounting firm. Around that time stuck at home I also got back into Twitter and found the small business community fascinating.
I was in the lonely, draining marathon that is searching to buy a business. I had one deal fall apart at the very end, and a lot of other deals looking like bad fits the more I dug in. I was getting down to the end of my list of firms to reach out to. It was fall 2021 and I knew if I didn’t find an acquisition before year end I’d have to wait until after tax season. With my last batch of 70 emails I suddenly had 2 good targets in New Hampshire…and by this time I’d seen enough bad deals to know what a good one looked like so I pounced. And I probably overpaid – C’est la vie in ETA. We closed December 31, 2021 and the real work began.
Fast forward four years and this past weekend felt like a meta moment. I was sitting in the Harvard Business School conference seeing new searchers just as hopeful and not nearly as lost as I was when I started. But the environment and community has changed a LOT.
What’s changed for searchers today vs five years ago?
- More community – there’s search fund classes at 3-4x the MBA programs vs what there used to be. There’s search bootcamps and paid training groups such as SMBootcamp, SearchFund Coalition, SMB Deal Hunter, Acquisition Lab. There’s WhatsApp groups, FB Groups, Discord groups, and more. There’s conferences such as SMBash, Main St Summit, and Buy Then Build Summit.
- More education – back when I searched it was the Harvard Buying A Business Book, Think Like An Owner Podcast, and Acquisitions Anonymous Podcast. Will Smith hadn’t even started Acquiring Minds podcast – which is now a massive wealth of information. And now there’s blogs, people sharing financial models, coaching programs, Instagram accounts sharing deals, TikTok videos breaking down acquisitions, etc.
- More bad information. A lot of days this feels like a ‘get rich quick’ scheme or ‘get wealthy flipping houses’ era in the 90s. There’s people online overhyping the silver tsunami as “buy a boomer business, get rid of the fax machine, and stack cheddar like a food inspector’ as the holdco entrepreneur Jay Z would say. If Chip and Joanna start buying businesses its all over folks…
- More investors. It feels like everyone and their mom has started a search investment fund. Back in 2020 the only two models I was aware of was traditional search model and me only owning 20-25% or 100% self funded where I’d own 100% of the business. I was very opposed to not owning the majority of the business. Now its very common to see self funded searches raise some equity to buy a bigger business but still retain 70-90% ownership. If I had been aware of that step up model I might’ve done a deal that way.
- More financing options. There’s a lot of great SBA lenders in the space, there’s great loan brokers, and a plethora of different banks with different underwriting policies. Getting a good deal under LOI is the hard part, financing is not as hard as most would think. I am surprised they still haven’t raised the SBA limit since 2010 from $5M.
- More competition – sort of. It’s become very crowded at the top of the funnel. For every one HVAC deal in Dallas or virtual bookkeeping firm there’s 200 searcher inquiries for a business broker. But only 10% of those are serious. There’s more competition at the inquiry stage, but its not as crowded as you think at the closing table. There’s a lot of wantrepreneurs, perfectionists, and pretenders who will never take the leap. For example I met Chris Edwards who was searching at the same time as me and has since successfully bought and exited. But for every one Chris I meet that says they’re gonna do it I get 20 more who want to pick my brain but won’t ever close. And that’s understandable – its a risky path and most searchers have lots of great W2 options.
- More big buyers coming down market. There’s an absurd amount of ‘dry capital’ in PE funds that must to be deployed and invested. So they continue to come down market and go after smaller deals. Like Rich Jordan competing for $100k SDE HVAC deals with billion dollar roll ups. This also means there’s more buyers for searchers to exit to – as we continue to hear more stories of searchers selling within 2, 4, 6 years, etc
What’s stayed the same:
- Good deals are still hard to find. You can get interns, you can pay for sourcing platforms or buy side brokers. But its still very hard to get a deal under LOI that’s a solid business at a decent price.
- Search is still a grind. Ask anyone who’s been searching for 10-18 months or given up on their search. Bad seller financials, dealing with brokers, dealing with bad attorneys, broken deals, burning cash, etc. is exhausting.
- Sellers are still not prepared to sell. The majority of business owners who want to sell overvalue their business, don’t have clean financials, and don’t know how long it’ll take. I know because I see it all the time from our accounting prospects and due diligence clients.
My predictions:
- Default and bankruptcy rates will rise. I see a distinct bell curve with our business buyer accounting clients. We handle post close accounting for +80 business buyers and there’s a lot in the messy middle J curve that aren’t making much money the first 1-2 years. We’ve seen one bankruptcy, and a few huge growth stories. But as more buyers rush in and face the challenge of running a small businesss with lots of debt – failure rates will increase a bit.
- There will be more massive success stories. Folks like Rich Jordan, Mike Botkin, Johannes Hock, Michael Aubrey – who bought a business and increased the value 5x, 10x, 100x, etc.
- The community and the competition will keep growing. I think we’re in the early innings and more people will continue to gravitate towards this entrepreneurship model like I’ve felt.
- International market will grow. Search funds in LatAm and Europe are going through the similar cycle the US had – starting in top MBA programs, growing in more colleges, more investors, and more education inspiring more people. But they don’t have the government loan programs like the SBA.
- Less 100% self funded searchers. Prices will creep up making it harder to do the traditional 10% debt/10% cash/80% loan model that’s worked or self funded searchers. And a lot of invetors groups and boot camps are providing lots of value like a tech incubator so searchers like the idea of having investor help and some cash to go after bigger deals.
- Small business acquisitions will continue to be a wild west asset class. Major mispricing, messy deals, lots of emotion.
- Buying a business will continue to be on the biggest wealth building opportunities available.
Thanks to everyone that’s helped me on this journey and thank you to the clients who trust us with their accounting during their own journey. It’s a fantastic community to be a part of. Onwards!
