Searcher

Definition

The person who runs a search and then runs the business they buy.

Why It Matters

It is a job title that exists almost nowhere else, and the confusion is real: a searcher is not an investor, not a broker and not a consultant, and all three are in the room. The role has two halves most people are not equally good at. The first is two years of cold outreach and rejection to find one company; the second is operating it for years afterwards, which is where the money is actually made. Read the path pages before the deal pages, because which flavor of search you run decides what you are paid while you look and what you own at the end.

In numbers: A searcher earning 25% of the equity in a company bought for $6,000,000, with $1,500,000 of equity in the stack, holds $375,000 of it at closing, before any growth at all.