ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition)

Definition

Buying an existing company as the route into running one yourself.

Why It Matters

It is the umbrella the whole field uses, and the three routes under it ask completely different things of you. A traditional search fund raises money from investors to pay you while you look, and they take most of the equity. A self-funded search puts your own savings and an acquisition loan behind one deal, and you keep far more of it. An employed search pays you a salary to find and then run a company somebody else owns most of. Deciding which one you are doing is the first real decision, because it sets your budget, your timeline, and how much of the result is yours.

In numbers: A traditional search commonly leaves the searcher around 25% of the equity, while a self-funded buyer putting 10% down on a $2,000,000 business usually owns all of it.