Brydon Group
At a Glance
The employed lane's scale option: if you would search on salary, the cohort with twenty platforms bought is the bench strength to compare everyone else against.
- Pricing
- Custom Pricing, Employment economics, not fees: a salary commensurate with experience during the search; what equity the role earns is not published.
- Best For
- Experienced operators and executives who want the employed path with cohort structure, committed capital, and bigger-than-usual platform ambitions
- Track Record
- 36 CEOs-in-residence across five cohorts since 2022 by its program page, and 21 CEOs operating and 46 acquisitions as of March 2026 by its home page. Its portfolio resolves the acquisitions into twenty platforms bought from 2023 and twenty-six tuck-ins, one platform exited in 2025. Four verticals, software, business, healthcare and government services, targeting $30M or more of equity behind each platform; committed capital of $570M and more across its funds at the end of 2025, by its own count.
- Lane
- Employed
- Funds
- The search phase and the deal
- Based
- Washington, DC.
- Invests
- No investing scope on the pages this review read, so ask whether it will look at a search where you are.
- Buys
- Platform businesses with $5M to $25M of revenue and $1M to $5M of EBITDA, bought 90% to 100% outright.
- Before A First Call
- An application through its own hiring system, and deep experience in its core sectors, which it describes as consulting partners, P&L owners, or private-equity-backed C-suite executives.
- First-Time Operators
- States a bar that a first-time operator has to clear, usually having owned a profit and loss.
- 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
- States its capital is 100% committed with no fundraising contingencies, so a deal carries no financing condition of its own.
- What A Searcher Gets
- What a CEO-in-residence is paid, and what equity the role earns, is not published anywhere on its pages; read whole, twelve pages, and the nearest sentences are a salary commensurate with experience and, for its other programs, participating in the value you generate.
- After The Close
- Says great companies are built over years, not quarters.
- Roadmap Stages
- 1. Learn & Choose Your Path3. Set Up & Fund the Search
Pros and Cons
Pros
- A salary during the search removes the personal burn that ends many searches early
- Twenty platforms bought in three years, with a chief executive named beside each, is a real, recent track record for a young program
- $30M-plus of committed equity per platform aims higher than most first acquisitions
Cons
- Equity splits and salary figures are not published, so the trade against a traditional search is hard to price from outside
- An annual application window (decisions by late March) sets the calendar for you
- The thesis is shaped with the firm, so you trade some of the searcher's autonomy
What Searchers Say
A frequently named program in the employed-searcher lane; the cohort model and veteran/underrepresented recruiting emphasis are its recurring differentiators.
How to Approach
Firms do not publish a term sheet you can prepare against, so this is how employed searcher (salary model) capital comes in, what it weighs, and how to arrive ready.
The Typical Arc
- A recruiting process more than a fundraise: you are applying to a program.
- A case or deal exercise and a panel with the partners who would back you.
- A salary and committed capital, in exchange for most of the equity.
What It Weighs
- Whether you can operate, since the firm is hiring a CEO.
- Fit with the firm's playbook and the cadence its portfolio runs at.
- Why you would trade ownership for a salary and a built-in backer.
How to Prepare
- Know the firm's thesis and portfolio cold. Investors
- Weigh salary and equity against owning outright. Path Economics
- Bring a real deal, underwritten end to end. Underwrite a Deal