Deep Dive: Six months in: The lessons I didn’t expect as a searcher (and what actually works)
My personal findings - Pierre Haarfeld from Feldwerk Nachfolge
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A few weeks ago, I got one of those polite, well-written “no, thank you” emails from an owner I had contacted directly. If you do enough outreach, you start collecting those messages like postcards. But if a company still looks interesting after a second look, I do not treat no as the end of the conversation. I replied. Not with a template. Not with a clever trick. And definitely not with a quick follow-up note. I wrote back with genuine empathy and a very specific, human connection to his situation.
One week later, we met in person.
During that meeting, he told me something that stuck with me. He receives a steady stream of succession requests every month. Mine was the first one he had actually agreed to meet about. Most people think search is about finding companies. It’s really about building a repeatable way to create chances. Search isn’t a research project, and it’s not a neat funnel where logic guarantees outcomes. It’s a craft and it looks a lot like great B2B-sales, just with higher stakes.
My biggest learnings so far (and what I’d actually bet on)
Search is sales at CEO-stakes
Yes, you need volume. You need a machine. You need consistent outreach and follow-ups, otherwise nothing happens. But the edge doesn’t come from the slickest pitch. It comes from understanding the owner, building trust, and having the discipline to stay in the game long enough for timing to work in your favor. Sometimes a “no” is just the start of a real conversation.The rollercoaster is part of the deal
Some days five owners call back. Other days your inbox turns into a curated exhibition of rejection. That volatility doesn’t mean something is broken. It’s the reality. The only way I’ve found to handle it is simple: don’t manage search with motivation. Manage it with a system.Motivation underwriting matters as much as numbers
You’ll hear stories that sound perfect on paper. Owners in their late 40s who want more time for family. A business that supposedly runs without them. Seven-figure profits with almost no drama. When the story is that clean, I get curious. Not cynical. Curious. Because the most important information is often in the gap between what people say and what they actually need.Your A-targets can vanish overnight
I keep multiple top-priority opportunities active in parallel, because reality forces you to. A customer concentration issue shows up. The financials don’t reconcile. “Recurring revenue” turns out to be project work with good retention and a nice narrative. Or the seller simply changes their mind. Search is binary. You either buy a company or you don’t. Everything else is activity. The underrated skill is keeping the funnel alive long enough for the right deal to meet the right moment.Don’t outsource conviction to public data
Germany looks like a “perfect data country” from the outside. There’s plenty of information available and we use all of it. But I’ve been repeatedly surprised by how misleading the official picture can be. If you only trust external data, you’ll end up in the same ocean as everyone else. That doesn’t mean ignoring data. It means respecting its limits and doing the work that isn’t visible from the outside.
After six months, I’m convinced that search rewards people who run a system, not people who wait for clarity. The learnings above shaped my weekly operating system and these are the five non negotiables that keep my weekly operating system effective, especially when the noise is loud.
Consistency beats intensity. I’m not trying to “win” with a heroic week. I want steady output every week: outreach, follow ups, and pipeline hygiene. The engine has to run even when I don’t feel like it.
Always replenish the top of the funnel. No matter how promising a current opportunity looks, I keep feeding the top. The funnel can look full on Monday and feel empty by Friday. The only sustainable defense is steady replenishment.
Build challengers into your process. I actively surround myself with people who calibrate my judgment: am I too optimistic, too skeptical, too narrow, too excited? Entrepreneurship is growth, not already knowing everything. Search is no different.
Underwrite seller motivation, not just numbers. Every week, I make sure I’m not only checking financial and commercial boxes, but also developing a real hypothesis around the seller’s motivation. Deals don’t fail only in Excel. They fail in misaligned expectations.
Be skeptical of “recurring” unless you can explain it like a mechanic. One of my biggest deal killer patterns is confusing retention with recurring revenue. Many businesses describe revenue as “recurring,” but what they really have is strong customer loyalty in a project based model. That can still be a great business, but it needs a different level of underwriting and a different risk lens. If you don’t understand why revenue repeats, you don’t understand the business.
Closing thought: trust the process, and push your luck. Search is humbling. You can do everything “right” and still get surprised. Owners respond late. Processes change mid-flight. A deal that looked ready collapses for reasons no one predicted. Luck plays a role. You can’t control the noise. But you can control the system. So I try to push my luck to the limit, stay disciplined, and keep building chances.
Insight of the week
Although search funds are often discussed as an “asset class with a proven playbook,” this IESE note argues that a meaningful share of value destruction comes from two repeatable, human failure modes: (i) sellers who remain actively involved post-close, and (ii) leadership breakdowns, at the CEO level and/or the board level.
On seller involvement, the mechanism is not “malice” but predictable psychology: the same embedded relationship that gets the deal done can later create authority leakage as grief/ego dynamics surface. The practical mitigation is structural: clean physical/role separation immediately, a board member building a direct seller relationship, and contractual tools like removal mechanics, non-voting observer roles, paid advisory agreements, or time-boxed put/call options when the seller insists on rolling equity.
On leadership, the note’s sharper point is that “inexperienced CEO” risk is only half the story: boards can fail by being either too hands-off on objectives/feedback or too involved in execution (“nose in, fingers out”), and remedies depend on diagnosis. The author frames the CEO’s required evolution as moving from a relationship-building early posture to an “achiever” operator who can set standards, make hard calls, and build an A-team, while boards need to treat “coachability” as the gating variable that determines whether mentorship/coaching is viable or whether replacement is the fiduciary move.
Reference
IESE note on post-acquisition challenges in search funds (seller involvement, CEO/board dynamics).
Deal watch
Deals
𝗪𝗔𝗗 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 - 𝗕𝗘
WAD Capital, managed by Michaël Vandelaer, completed the acquisition of HBI Tyres & Wheels, a business operating in the manufacturing and distribution of tyres and wheels. Link
𝗥𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗮𝗺 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽 - UK
River Cam Group, a vehicle founded by Louis Lew out of Thames Equity Partners, completed a full buyout of UK law firm Ives & Co Solicitors. Link
𝗦𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 - UK
Skingevity, a medical aesthetics platform, completed its first three clinic acquisitions in the UK. Link
𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 - 𝗘𝗦
Preludio Partners, co-founded by Andrés Garrido and Curro Fita following their time together at Aptimus Capital, closed a full buyout of Spanish packaging business Envases Sanz Belda. Link
Launches
𝗖𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗻𝗮𝘂 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 - UK
Darshan Chohan and Miguel Agustín Limón de Alba have launched Castelnau Capital, targeting acquisitions in B2B services and SaaS. Link
For the commute
How to Find 10x MOIC, 30%+ IRR Deals (Step-by-Step) (Buyers and Builders Podcast)
This episode challenges the common habit in ETA/search-fund circles of treating the Stanford Search Fund Study as an “index” you can expect to match, arguing instead that returns are heavily skewed, where a small number of outliers drive most outcomes. Drawing on a Yale dataset of 1,192 investor-level outcomes, the host’s core point is that access (who consistently gets exposure to the best deals/operators) matters more than incremental spreadsheet work for generating 10x MOIC / 30%+ IRR results. It walks through why most portfolios will never look like the headline averages people cite, and what elite investors/searchers do differently to increase the odds of catching those rare winners. Spotify Link
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