# Search capital

Money that pays a [searcher](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/searcher) to look, before there is any business to buy.

It is the rarest kind of money in this market and the reason the traditional path exists at all: almost every other lane asks the searcher to fund their own salary and expenses for two years. It is priced accordingly, usually converting into equity at a step-up when a deal closes, so it is the most expensive capital in the structure and the only kind that buys time. And the question investors ask first: it is equity in the search vehicle and not a loan, so a search ending without a purchase is written down by the people who funded it and the searcher repays nothing. The step-up is what pays for carrying that risk.

In numbers: A $500,000 [search fund](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/search-fund) covers roughly two years of a modest salary, travel, and deal costs, and typically converts at a step-up into the acquisition equity when a deal closes.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/search-capital
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