Search funds allow entrepreneurs without capital to buy small businesses. However, only an exclusive club can access the financing to do so and are often forced to re-sell their businesses. We’ve put a twist on the search-fund model to make it more inclusive and long-term.

A flowchart outlines a five-stage Inclusive Search Fund process, listing each stage’s duration and activities on the left, with corresponding barriers—such as investor bias and lack of networks—detailed in colored boxes on the right.

“We’re concerned that search funds lack diversity, industry experience and appropriate incentives. According to research from Stanford, approximately 95% of searchers are men and 80% are MBA educated. Very rarely do searchers have prior experience in the industry or the community they buy into.”


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BANC committee submission on SME financing

Canada can continue treating its financing monoculture as inevitable, or it can follow the lead of peer jurisdictions and intentionally build the institutional diversity required for a different outcome. The status quo produces predictable, cumulative exclusions that compound over time into lower productivity, narrower entrepreneurship, weaker community resilience and entrenched inequity.

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