NextGen Growth Partners
At a Glance
A legitimate third path between self-funded and traditional; take it for the platform and the risk transfer, not the equity math, and model all three paths before choosing.
- Pricing
- Custom Pricing, Not a fee or a fund investment in your entity: EIRs are brought into the firm's structure with compensation and equity terms set by the firm; understand exactly what you would own before comparing it to running your own search.
- Best For
- Aspiring owner-operators who want the searching experience with committed capital and infrastructure behind them, and who accept firm economics in exchange; whether the seat pays a salary is not stated on its site
- Track Record
- Founded in 2016; the CEO-in-residence model, renamed from entrepreneur-in-residence in 2025, and it says every CEO-in-Residence who partnered with it in Fund I went on to acquire a business. Fund I closed above $50M in 2018, Fund II above $100M in 2022 and Fund III at a $165M hard cap in 2024. Its portfolio page lists thirteen companies and four realized, with two exits announced in 2024 and 2025, and its team page seven CEOs-in-residence.
- Lane
- Employed
- Funds
- The search phase and the deal
- Based
- Chicago and Austin.
- Invests
- Businesses headquartered in the United States, by its intermediaries page.
- Buys
- Founder- or family-owned mission-critical B2B services businesses at $5M to $50M of revenue and $2M to $8M+ of EBITDA on its home page, in facilities services, niche contracting, professional and technical services, and business process services. Its intermediaries page puts the platform floor at $1.5M of EBITDA and lists twelve current industries from managed IT services to commercial cleaning.
- Before A First Call
- Two or three industries you intend to search, each with a visible link to your own career, provided as part of the application. Then a screening call, an interview, a case study, a personality assessment, an evaluation by its advisory board and a reference check, in its FAQ's order.
- First-Time Operators
- Its criteria say experience is everything and that candidates must have a track record of achievement and leadership, which reads like a gate and is not one: a bar on achievement, not on 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
- 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
- Up to 25% of the equity by vesting, which it calls identical economics to a traditional search fund, plus the option to put up to 10% into your own search. No page states whether the seat pays a salary.
- After The Close
- Gives a new CEO a board, a director of portfolio operations, formal onboarding, regular check-ins and a career coach after the acquisition.
- Roadmap Stages
- 1. Learn & Choose Your Path
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Removes the fundraising and personal-runway burden entirely; capital is committed before you start
- Institutional sourcing, diligence, and operating support around the CIR, and three funds closed, the third at a $165M hard cap
- A credible path for operators without the network or savings a self-funded or traditional search demands
Cons
- You are an employee-entrepreneur inside the firm's economics, not the owner of your own search vehicle
- Equity outcomes are structurally smaller than a successful self-funded purchase and different from traditional-search vesting; compare the three paths on paper
- Thesis and deal selection are shared decisions with the firm
What Searchers Say
Frequently listed among the employed-searcher and accelerator-style models in community roundups, and named on another backer's roster as a search entity with one of its residents beside it. Sentiment is generally positive on the experience and honest about the trade: less risk, less ownership.
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