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Smith Alarm Systems

The Deal

Bought By
David Dodson
Year
1989
Vehicle
One of the original search funds, under Irv Grousbeck's model
Kind
Physical operations

A Dallas alarm company, bought by the man who had just written the model's first course material.

What Happened Next

The proof the model worked; Dodson went on to two more searches and to three decades of backing others, by his own fund's account of itself.

The exit ends of journeys like this one, where the buyer has announced the purchase itself, are on Buyers.

Method & Source

This record is double-sourced: it joined when the purchase and, where the company has traded on, the exit could both be read in primary accounts rather than inferred.

Both of these are the same party's own account, on two different sites. Both sources are the searcher's own account on two different firms' sites: his biography hosted by one investment firm, which states in one sentence that he raised a search fund and bought this company, and the about page of the fund he later founded. The deal is from 1989 and predates every backer on this record, so there is no third party whose own words could corroborate it; what stands behind it is one person stating his own history in two places. Read again in early September 2026, the fund's about page says only that he raised his search fund over thirty years ago and names neither the company nor the year, so the company and the year now rest on the biography alone.