The trick to this success was that before I started searching I spent about a year researching what others were doing and looking for patterns of what worked. Communication, I thought, was the key. Months were spent building and A/B testing little tools to scale outreach as well as testing email copy and measuring response rates. If I raised any money, I didn't want to waste it learning how to search or burn cash learning what communication would work.

I also figured out how much communication I could actually send in a day without getting into trouble with sending providers or getting personally burned out. I needed to build a process to scale my outreach effortlessly when I eventually brought a team together. Over time I built a list of tested communication templates that would allow me to hit the ground running. And, id built a mechanism for tracking the performance of those emails and other communications once they were sent.

Once I felt like I had a workable and scalable process ironed out, I kicked off my search for a business while simultaneously exploring traditional search fund and equity raise routes. I launched my efforts with a team of about 5 full time interns and a full time employee focused on finding a business running my process. My entire process was templated out in some powerfully macroed spreadsheets that were largely point and click efforts. Tracking data was a bit of a nightmare but it worked.