Applied Equity (formerly Bradford Brown)
At a Glance
The cap-table seat searchers keep choosing in tech-flavored services; verify the current count in the room, since his own site will not tell you.
- Pricing
- Custom Pricing, Investment terms, not fees: search-fund economics per the model's conventions; nothing is published.
- Best For
- Traditional searchers in tech-adjacent services who want deep operating-strategy help from a single committed partner rather than a fund apparatus
- Track Record
- Run by two former McKinsey senior partners with two special advisors, by its team page; investing since 2004, 100-plus searchers backed and 70-plus companies acquired by its own counters. Its portfolio is fifty-eight entries, twenty-seven under search funds, fourteen under venture and seventeen under exits of its own positions.
- Lane
- Traditional
- Funds
- The search phase and the deal
- In the Round
- Says it joins a round somebody else prices, so bring it a lead.
- Based
- Boston and New York.
- Invests
- Nowhere stated in words; its portfolio spans the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, India, Dubai and Sweden, and it calls several Latin American searchers its own.
- Buys
- B2B services carrying compliance requirements, tech-enabled services, vertical and niche horizontal software, healthcare practices, and multi-unit rollups. No size band appears anywhere on its site.
- Before A First Call
- Warm introductions from institutional investors, in its own words on the front door, beside an entrepreneurs page that says it would like to hear from you and offers a submission form. The firm publishes both a bar and an open form, and the bar is the sentence a reader should weigh.
- First-Time Operators
- A front page describing an expert-mentor model for young entrepreneurs, which names who it aims at without making youth or inexperience a condition either way.
- How Long The Search Runs
- No length on the search and nothing about what happens if it ends without a deal, on the pages this review read. Ask what the clock is before you sign anything.
- Published Terms
- No check size, stake or fee on the pages this review read. Most firms on this shelf publish none, so ask early rather than late.
- What A Searcher Gets
- Not published on the pages this review read. It is the figure a searcher most wants and most of this shelf does not print it, so ask before the first call rather than after.
- After The Close
- Says it invests as a principal with a long-term hold perspective.
- Roadmap Stages
- 1. Learn & Choose Your Path3. Set Up & Fund the Search
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Named on a striking number of active searchers' own cap-table pages, which is the evidence that matters
- Eighteen McKinsey partner years in digital and analytics is rare board-seat depth
- A one-partner shop moves and decides like one
Cons
- Two brand names (Bradford Brown Capital, Applied Equity), a canonical tag that still points at the old host, and five spellings of its own name across its posts
- Its own homepage asks prospective searchers to come through warm introductions from institutional investors, so a cold approach is unlikely to land; the only door is the footer form on every page
- Reported acquisition counts vary across its own pages, from thirty in a 2018 release to seventy on its counters
What Searchers Say
The site now presents as Applied Equity of Boston and New York, with the Bradford Brown name surviving in its canonical tags, its feed title and its social handles; its own pages state search fund investing since 2004, 100-plus searchers and 70-plus companies. Read whole across a hundred and fourteen pages: a portfolio of fifty-eight entries in three categories, twenty-three dated releases from 2016 to 2021 that are the only dated deal facts on the site, and a gallery of seven chief executives beside their companies.
How to Approach
Firms do not publish a term sheet you can prepare against, so this is how traditional (investor-backed) search capital comes in, what it weighs, and how to arrive ready.
The Typical Arc
- A first conversation on your background and why search, before any deal.
- A deep dive on your plan: industries, criteria, and how you will source.
- Backing for the search itself, then a fresh underwrite when you bring a live deal.
- A board seat and governance once you close.
What It Weighs
- Whether you will finish a two-year search, not only start one.
- The quality of your thesis and target criteria.
- How you will behave on a cap table over a long hold.
How to Prepare
- Bring a sourcing thesis, not a blank slate. Buyer Profile Builder
- Know which firms lead versus follow, and on what terms. Investors
- Make your operator case on one page. Buyer Profile Builder