# ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition)

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

It is the umbrella the whole field uses, and the three routes under it ask completely different things of you. A traditional [search fund](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/search-fund) raises money from investors to pay you while you look, and they take most of the equity. A [self-funded search](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/self-funded-search) puts your own savings and an acquisition loan behind one deal, and you keep far more of it. An [employed search](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/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](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/searcher) around 25% of the equity, while a self-funded buyer putting 10% down on a $4,000,000 business usually owns all of it.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/eta
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt