Liberty Search Ventures
At a Glance
A useful co-investor to know once you have a lead: it fills 5 to 10% of the round and brings board support, but it is not the anchor that assembles your cap table.
- Pricing
- Custom Pricing, Investment terms, not fees: traditional search-fund economics, typically 5 to 10% of a deal's capital commitments ($0.5M to $1.5M), co-investing alongside lead institutional backers.
- Best For
- Traditional searchers assembling a cap table who want an active co-investor and board member alongside a lead fund
- Track Record
- Founded 2019, with a portfolio page naming 122 entries, eighty of them search partners, and four board seats and one exit named on its team page; publishes no fund size and no count of its own.
- The vehicle page states the role and the size in its own words: 5 to 10% of the capital commitments, and $0.5M to $1.5M per investment. Read the first of those carefully, because it is the number most often misread. It is a share of a search's COMMITMENTS and not a share of the deal, which is a far smaller figure than it looks. The portfolio sits on a third page, which renders eighteen cards behind a Load More button and sets every company name as an image rather than as text, so a reader cannot copy or search the names. The parent presents itself as Liberty Partners while the domain still carries the older holdings name. RE-TRIED THROUGH THE SITE'S OWN API on the date above, and the names are not reachable that way either. The site is WordPress, its REST index declares no portfolio post type, the portfolio page returns empty rendered content because the theme composes it in blocks, and the media endpoint answers an error rather than a list. Two company names survive as image alt text, Almond Capital and Bravo Capital Partners, and the rest carry INITIALS in image title attributes rather than nothing, sixteen of them from AC and AGH to BWC and SBP. Its pagination is a decoy: the query parameter returns different bytes on every page and an identical set of thirty-three title attributes, so a paginated crawl reports five pages of the same cards. This is a wall in the shape that looks like a thin page. RENDERED IN FULL on the date above, and the answer is a wall rather than a pending read: fully composed, the portfolio page's body is 766 characters and carries no company name anywhere, so the initials are all a reader gets. The eighteen cards are alphabetical and stop at BA, which makes them the opening slice of a longer list. Every pagination value serves that same slice, so the rest of the portfolio sits beyond reach of any tool rather than behind a better one. Read at: The vehicle's page, the parent home page, the about, team and portfolio pages, and the portfolio pagination endpoint the site itself calls.
- 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
- New York.
- Invests
- No investing scope on the pages this review read, so ask whether it will look at a search where you are.
- Buys
- Its search page names no company criteria at all. The firm's direct private-equity page states $1M to $10M+ of EBITDA up to $50M of enterprise value in healthcare, B2B, financial and professional services, which is what Liberty buys itself rather than what a searcher it backs must find.
- Before A First Call
- Solo or duo teams, which is the only shape it names. It asks for intellectual curiosity, emotional intelligence and self-starting, and sets no other published condition.
- First-Time Operators
- Four traits it looks for, intellectual curiosity, emotional intelligence, passion and self-starting, and no fifth about having run anything.
- 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
- Typically $500K to $1.5M per investment, holding 5 to 10% of a search's capital commitments.
- 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.
- Roadmap Stages
- 1. Learn & Choose Your Path3. Set Up & Fund the Search
Pros and Cons
Pros
- A dedicated search-fund vehicle inside a broader PE firm, focused only on traditional deals
- Backs the full arc from search through exit, with board involvement
- Co-invests alongside the large institutional search funds, so it slots into a syndicate
Cons
- A co-investor rather than a lead, so you still need a lead investor in the room
- Publishes no fund size, no count of its own and no returns, and its portfolio page sets company names as images, so 122 entries are countable and almost none are readable
- Terms and process not published, the category norm
What Searchers Say
Presents as a traditional search-fund co-investor sitting beside the large institutional backers; a newer, quieter name than the anchor funds, with limited independent community signal so far.
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