Minimums from $25,000 · 1,400+ accredited investors · $1M+ EBITDA deals only
CapitalPad for Investors
Review self-funded acquisitions individually: the operator leading the transaction, the company’s financials, the structure, and the investor terms, each with a full data room.
Allocations start at $25,000 per deal, accredited investors only.
CapitalPad for Searchers
CapitalPad invests $500K to $2M behind self-funded searchers acquiring companies with $1M or more of EBITDA, under LOI. One SPV, one wire, one line on your cap table.
No fees to searchers, whether or not the deal closes.
CapitalPad for Investors
Self-funded raises are private, quick, and filled through the searcher’s own contacts. Even investors who follow the model closely rarely see the deals.
CapitalPad presents these acquisitions to accredited investors at the post-LOI stage, each underwritten and carrying a complete diligence file. The mandate begins at $1M of EBITDA, the level at which we believe a company can support passive outside capital.
Each deal carries its own preferred structure: the preference rate, any step-up, reporting rights, and the searcher’s own capital and guarantee in the deal. Everything sits in the deal room before a dollar moves.
Operator capability, financial history, structure, and terms clear underwriting before members see anything. Fewer than 5% of reviewed deals are presented, roughly one per month across deal types.
$25,000 per deal for accredited individuals through one SPV. Institutions allocate from $750,000 directly, with no carried interest. Approval creates no obligation to invest.
SBA 7(a) structures, personal guarantees, seller notes, equity injection requirements, and QoE timelines are the working vocabulary here. The team has bought and operated companies and reads your deal the way you built it.
Every co-investor consolidates into one SPV: a single subscription package, a single wire at close, and one entity for your lender to underwrite instead of a dozen individual investors.
Searchers never pay CapitalPad a fee at any point, including on deals that die in diligence. Carry comes from CapitalPad’s own investors.
CapitalPad for Searchers
CapitalPad selectively backs self-funded searchers, investing $500K to $2M of equity per acquisition. The mandate starts at $1M of EBITDA: established companies with the financial history to support outside capital.
Send the LOI, the financials, and your model for a read on fit within a few business days. The opportunity stays blinded until investors sign NDAs, and CapitalPad can anchor the equity stack or fill the final gap beside your SBA financing and seller note.
Market-standard terms are expected on both sides. Searchers pay nothing at any stage.
CapitalPad for Investors
“CapitalPad makes the deal sourcing and logistics of lower middle market investing easy.”
CapitalPad for Investors
“CapitalPad makes the deal sourcing and logistics of lower middle market investing easy.
CapitalPad for Searchers
“CapitalPad’s investment was invaluable for helping close our transaction. Highly recommended for searchers.”
CapitalPad for Searchers
“CapitalPad’s investment was invaluable for helping close our transaction. Highly recommended for searchers.”
The team behind CapitalPad has acquired and operated businesses through entrepreneurship through acquisition. SBA closings, post-acquisition transitions, the first year of ownership from the inside: it has been lived here, across 50+ lower middle market transactions.
The portfolio spans companies acquired by self-funded searchers, search fund operators, and independent sponsors across home services, healthcare, business services, and light industrial, acquired as established, profitable businesses.
A specific operating company under LOI, acquired by a searcher who will run it. Investors hold preferred equity in that single deal through a dedicated SPV; there is no fund and no pooling across deals.
Three structural features: the searcher has personal capital and a personal guarantee in the deal, outside investors hold preferred equity ahead of the searcher’s common, and entry happens post-LOI against a specific company rather than a blind search.
Accredited investors and institutions only, after onboarding and verification. Individuals participate from $25,000 per deal.
Each deal room carries the diligence file for that transaction: the company’s financials and tax returns, the deal memo, the structure and proposed investor terms, the sources-and-uses table, the plan for the business after close, and a recorded searcher interview. Questions go to the deal team through the room, and allocations are requested in the dashboard.
Concentrated ones. These are single small companies under first-time operators, often carrying SBA leverage of 80 to 90% of the purchase price, which amplifies outcomes in both directions. The personal guarantee binds the searcher, not the equity: investors can lose their full investment on a failed deal. Positions are illiquid until exit, typically five or more years. Position sizes should reflect all of it.
Investors pay 1.5% once, at funding, and nothing annually. Carried interest is 20% per deal and begins only after that deal has returned investors’ capital in full.
An executed LOI or late-stage diligence, a company earning $1M or more of EBITDA with a demonstrated history of profitability, a credible path to close including lender progress, and an operator prepared to run the business. Deals below the $1M floor, including deals underwritten on SDE rather than EBITDA, sit outside the mandate. Proposed investor terms should be market-standard for the self-funded structure.
No. CapitalPad provides acquisition equity only. The self-funded model means the searcher carries the search costs personally; CapitalPad enters once a specific company is under LOI.
Nothing, ever: not at review, not at close, and not if the transaction falls apart. CapitalPad is compensated through carried interest paid by its own investors.
$500K to $2M directly. Funds, family offices, and SBICs in the investor base can take direct allocations of $750,000 or more beside the CapitalPad vehicle when a raise runs larger. Depending on the deal, CapitalPad can anchor the equity or complete it.
A read on fit arrives within a few business days of the LOI and core materials, and firm commitments follow diligence and the investor process. Thirty or more days of runway before close is the preferred window and generally supports a larger allocation.
No. The personal guarantee stays with the searcher, which is standard for the model and part of why the economics favor the operator. CapitalPad participates as a passive preferred investor, and deals are structured so passive investors stay outside the guarantee.
Self-funded search is a model of entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA) in which the entrepreneur pays for the search personally, covering living expenses, sourcing, and diligence, and raises equity from investors only after signing a letter of intent on a specific company. This differs from a traditional search fund, where investors fund 18 to 24 months of searching before any target exists. The self-funded searcher carries the full cost and risk of the search period and keeps substantially more of the business, commonly 60 to 80% or more of the equity versus the 20 to 25% a traditional searcher typically earns.
The model has grown quickly, and its center of gravity sits outside the traditional MBA pipeline: mid-career professionals, military veterans, and operators with direct industry experience who want majority ownership and operational autonomy.
The capital stack usually has three layers. SBA 7(a) loans are the primary debt source, commonly covering 50 to 80% of the purchase price on ten-year terms, with the searcher signing a personal guarantee and contributing a minimum 10% equity injection; lenders underwrite the company’s debt service coverage, and Live Oak Bank and Huntington Bank are among the most active SBA lenders in the space. Investor equity typically makes up 10 to 30% of the deal. Seller financing often fills the remainder, and under the SBA’s 2025 lending guidelines (SOP 50 10 8), a seller note must sit on full standby for the life of the SBA loan to count toward the equity injection.
Enterprise values typically run $1M to $10M, with most deals between $2M and $7M, at entry multiples generally in the 3x to 5x range.
The self-funded market spans a wide quality range, and the honest dividing line is size. At the small end, deals are often underwritten on seller’s discretionary earnings (SDE) rather than EBITDA, the owner is the business, and the transaction is really the purchase of a job. Those deals can work for the buyer taking the operating seat; they rarely work for passive outside capital, because there is no margin for a management layer, investor returns, and debt service at once.
Above roughly $1M of EBITDA the math changes: the company has staff beneath the owner, financial history worth diligencing, and room in the cash flow for both the SBA payment and a preferred return. That threshold is where outside investors can rationally participate, and it is where CapitalPad’s mandate begins.
Because the searcher funds the search and signs the guarantee, self-funded economics run operator-heavy. The searcher holds majority common equity. Outside investors typically hold preferred equity with a preferred return, commonly quoted around 10 to 12% in the community, often with a step-up on invested capital, plus reporting rights. Checks per investor commonly run $25K to $250K, and holds tend toward 5 to 10 years, shaped by the SBA amortization schedule.
The Search Investment Group published the first dedicated self-funded search investing study in 2023, covering 279 respondents and 109 completed acquisitions, reporting median investor IRRs of 25 to 30% with a roughly 5% capital-loss rate. That dataset is young and self-reported, and past results are especially fragile here: the searcher landscape shifts faster than the data. For the traditional model’s longer-run figures, the Stanford GSB Search Fund Study reports a 33.9% aggregate IRR on 4.75x through year-end 2025, dollar-weighted and lifted by exceptional exits, with roughly a quarter of acquired companies showing a loss; current figures live on the search fund statistics page.
Both models trace to the search fund concept developed at Stanford Graduate School of Business, but they diverge on nearly every axis. Traditional searchers raise $400K to $600K of search capital and earn equity through vesting; self-funded searchers pay their own way and keep the majority. Traditional funds buy larger companies with conventional debt or private credit at higher multiples; self-funded deals run smaller, lean on SBA 7(a) financing with a personal guarantee, and close at lower multiples. Traditional investors hold board control and can replace the CEO; a self-funded searcher operates as a majority owner. The search fund page covers the traditional model in depth.
Both raise equity deal by deal at the post-LOI stage, but from different seats. An independent sponsor is usually a private equity professional running larger transactions with promote economics, governing from the board, and pursuing deal after deal as a career. A self-funded searcher is usually making a first acquisition, stepping into the CEO seat personally, and carrying the guarantee. The sponsor sells investors a track record of transactions; the searcher sells a company, a price, and themselves.
The self-funded world has its own circuit: the Self-Funded Search Conference hosted by Live Oak Bank, the Self-Funded Search Summit, and the HoldCo Conference on the operator side, alongside the broader ETA calendar (the Stanford Search Fund Conference, MIT and Wharton ETA summits, SMBash, and SEETA). Day to day, the community lives on Searchfunder and around resources like the Acquiring Minds interviews, and much of the deal flow moves through SBA lender relationships before it reaches anyone else.
Self-funded deal flow is the most fragmented in ETA. Raises happen through the searcher’s personal network in the weeks before close, under Regulation D, and are effectively invisible without direct relationships: conference attendance, Searchfunder activity, or SBA lenders who see deals early.
CapitalPad is the co-investment path. It participates at the post-LOI stage in self-funded acquisitions above $1M of EBITDA, presents each deal to accredited investors with a complete diligence file, and pools co-investors into one SPV per transaction, with minimums from $25,000. Fewer than 5% of the deals reviewed are presented. Accredited investors can apply for access; searchers with a qualifying deal under LOI can submit it for review.
CapitalPad does not provide personalized investment advice or recommendations. All information made available through this website, including materials related to potential investment opportunities, is for informational purposes only and is not authored or guaranteed by CapitalPad.
Investors acknowledge and accept the inherent risks of investing in private securities, including the risk of a total loss of invested capital. Past performance of any entity, individual, or investment strategy is not indicative of, and does not guarantee, future results. Any forward-looking statements or projections are hypothetical in nature, may not materialize, and should not be relied upon as a guarantee of future performance.
Investors are solely responsible for conducting their own independent due diligence prior to making any investment decision. Investments made through CapitalPad are speculative, illiquid, not FDIC-insured, not bank-guaranteed, and may lose value. There may be no secondary market for these securities.
Investments may also involve limited or no voting rights. Investors should assume that they will not have influence over the management or operations of the underlying entity.
By participating, investors acknowledge that all investments involve significant risk and that neither CapitalPad nor its affiliates make any representation, warranty, or guarantee as to the performance of any investment.
