Carried interest (carry)

The share of a deal's profits the operator earns after investors clear their preferred return and recover their capital, the reward for running the search and the business rather than for putting in the cash.

It is where a searcher's own upside lives: a common structure grants the searcher up to a third of the equity, vesting in tranches as investor returns cross agreed hurdles, so the carry pays for clearing the bar, not merely for closing a deal.