Press & events
Where the ecosystem gathers.
Search fund conferences are where searchers meet investors, deals get sourced, and the people in this asset class find each other. Going before you have a fund is the cheapest way to find out whether you want one.
Hosted at USC · October 23, 2026
The ETA Bootcamp comes to campus.
Join us for a one-day intensive on the nuts and bolts of search and entrepreneurship through acquisition, hosted by the Lloyd Greif Center at USC Marshall and organized by Dustin Sellers and Chris Lueck.
We’ll cover search, financing, evaluating deals, and what happens once you actually own the thing. Along the way, there will be plenty of time to meet searchers, operators, business owners, investors, and the ETA-curious.
We’re building the Trojan ETA ecosystem in real time. Come be part of it.
- When Friday, October 23, 2026. Program 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM, networking until 6:00 PM. Doors at 7:15 AM.
- Where Fertitta Hall, JFF LL105. 610 Childs Way, University Park Campus, Los Angeles.
- Host Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, USC Marshall School of Business.
Advance registration is open, and refunds are available up to seven days before the event. Guests needing accommodations to participate may contact Jessica Silva at entreevents@marshall.usc.edu or (213) 821-2019.
The calendar
The ETA conference circuit.
Dates move year to year, so each entry links to the host, not to a single year’s registration page. Check the host site for the current edition.
- SoCal ETA Conference April · Los Angeles
- Co-hosted by USC Marshall and UCLA Anderson. Southern California’s flagship ETA gathering, run jointly by the USC Marshall Entrepreneur Association and the UCLA Anderson ETA Club. Two tracks, one for first-time searchers and one for operators. This is the one closest to home — and the one USC helps put on.
- Booth–Kellogg ETA Conference November · Chicago
- The largest ETA conference in the country, drawing north of 900 attendees. Hosted by the Chicago Booth ETA Group with the Polsky Center and Kellogg. Heavy presence from lenders, brokers, and deal attorneys alongside searchers and investors.
- HBS Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Conference Fall · Boston
- Harvard Business School’s annual ETA conference, run out of the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. HBS also runs a session series through the academic year featuring search investors and alumni who have bought companies.
- Wharton ETA Summit Spring · Philadelphia
- Held at Huntsman Hall. Denser on institutional investors than most, which makes it a useful room if you are raising rather than sourcing.
- Southeast ETA Conference (SEETA) September · rotating host
- Co-hosted by Georgetown McDonough, Duke Fuqua, UNC Kenan-Flagler, and UVA Darden. The host school rotates year to year, so the location changes — check the site before booking travel.
Know of one we are missing? Tell us.
In the press
What the business press is writing.
Search funds have gone from a footnote to a recurring subject in the business press, driven by the same demographic story that makes the model work. A selection is collected here.
Several of these sit behind a paywall. Most are readable free through the USC Libraries with your student login.
- This Shortcut to Private-Equity Riches Is Minting Young Millionaires
- The most current mainstream account of the boom — search funds, independent sponsors, and SBA-financed acquisitions, with the personal risk that comes with them.
- MBA Hotshots Just Want a One-Off Private Equity Deal
- A clear-eyed overview of the traditional search fund model and why it has become the destination of choice for ambitious MBAs.
- Search Funds: An MBA Shortcut to the C-Suite
- Follows Chris Lueck — now an adjunct professor in this program — raising Pylon Capital straight out of USC Marshall. The closest thing this list has to a home story.
- Paying Entrepreneurs to Find the Right Business
- One of the earliest major-media treatments of the model, from a time when a few dozen search funds existed rather than several hundred.
- Offering an Exit Strategy for Aging European Business Owners
- The succession side of the trade. Follows the first search fund acquisition in Spain and the aging-owner problem driving the model’s spread in Europe.
- How CEOs-in-Waiting Buy the Companies They Want to Run
- Search funds as a route to the corner office for people with neither a startup idea nor the résumé to be hired as CEO. Draws on Stanford research.
- How Entrepreneurial MBA Grads Can Benefit From Search Funds
- The mechanics: Stanford return data, searcher economics, and the MBA-to-CEO path, with the growth curve from 11 funds in 2010 to 66 in 2020.
- Search Funds: A Financing Option for Business Buyers
- A plain explanation of the two-stage model — money to search, then money to buy — told through Jim Southern and Pacific Lake Partners.
- Acquiring Companies Without Money: The Rise of Fundless Search Models
- Brent Beshore on the difference between a traditional search fund and a fundless sponsor, and why both compete well in the lower middle market.
- How the Search Fund Model Is Reshaping Small Business Ownership
- A current read on search funds as a bridge between retiring founders and the next generation of owners.
- The Small Business Acquisition Boom Is Creating a New Class of Entrepreneurs
- Buying rather than founding as a mainstream career path, set against roughly six million businesses expected to change hands by 2035.
- These Moms Ditched Corporate Life to Buy Their Own Businesses
- More than ten women who left corporate roles to acquire companies, spanning self-funded, traditional, incubated, and sponsored search.
Have a piece worth adding? Send it over.