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Let’s start with your background. What led you to pursue the Search Fund path, and how did Touchstone Point come to life?
Like many searchers, I grew up around entrepreneurs and family business. My dad ran a small company, and over the years I saw how it steadily improved our standard of living, even if modestly. At university I tried a few ventures of my own, none of which got far, and after graduating I chose a career in industrial B2B sales. I was drawn to the earning potential, the pace, and the direct link between effort and reward. I enjoyed building new relationships, solving problems, and being accountable for results. Over time I moved into leadership roles, and most recently built out the sales team for a plastics distribution business, growing it from under $10 million to over $100 million in revenue across Australia and New Zealand. By the end of that experience, I was itching for full P&L ownership. I went to Melbourne Business School to complete an MBA and help me take that next step.
MBS didn’t offer anything on entrepreneurial acquisition, but one professor kept referring to a wave of Australian SME owners without clear succession options, where an ambitious upstart could step in and take the business forward. That sparked something. I’d been considering consulting, but then I came across an article about MBAs turning down McKinsey to buy small businesses. It hit home. I read the Stanford primer, Jan Simon’s book, listened to every podcast I could find, and started speaking with active searchers. The model combined my latent entrepreneurial ambition with my leadership aspirations. It was a chance to acquire a business with meaningful ownership, something bigger than I could take on alone, backed by a group of investors whose experience and support would magnify my chances of success. I launched Touchstone Point at the 2024 IESE Search Fund Conference in Barcelona and kicked off the capital raise shortly after.
It seems that raising a traditional SF in Australia is tough nowadays. What were the biggest challenges you faced during fundraising, and how did you overcome them? Can you tell us more about your investor base: who backed you, and what were they looking for in a searcher?
Raising a traditional search fund in Australia comes with two big challenges. First, standing out among the many exceptional people fundraising globally. Second, maintaining momentum through what is often a long and uncertain process.
Coming from a sales background, I was comfortable with prospecting, pipeline management, and long sales cycles. But I didn’t have the brand pull of a Harvard MBA, I wasn’t fluent in M&A like someone from private equity or investment banking, and I didn’t carry the polish of a former consultant. I was also raising in a country where the search ecosystem is still emerging. What I did have was a proven track record growing B2B businesses through sales and marketing, which are key value levers in search, and a strong academic foundation from my recently completed MBA. I leaned into those strengths and worked hard on my pitch. I spent over 60 hours using ChatGPT’s advanced voice tools as a pitch coach, refining every part of my story. Then I did what I know how to do: put in the numbers.
Everyone said the raise would be exponential. That once you secured a few local investors and some internationals, momentum would build. That didn’t happen for me. The raise stalled at around 60 percent after I had worked through a list of about 250 prospective investors. Frustrated, I went for a long walk. I had already mined LinkedIn and tapped every referral I could find, and felt like I had hit a wall. On that walk, it occurred to me that investors’ names are often listed on public registers. I began pulling the share registry of any search fund I could find in a country that provides that data for a reasonable fee. I paid for those records, wrote physical letters, followed up relentlessly, and uncovered more than 100 new investor leads. That process helped me claw across the finish line.
In total, I contacted over 400 potential investors, held 51 first-time introductory calls, and closed with 18 investors on the cap table. Despite the difficulty, I am incredibly proud of the group. It is an even split between local and international backers, including most of the key names in the Australian search community, along with Spectra, Cabiedes, several experienced private investors, and a few successful searchers now reinvesting. Together they complement the areas where I have less experience, particularly around M&A and finance, and reinforce the strengths I bring. While each investor had their own lens, there were clear patterns in what they looked for in a searcher. The consistent themes were strong cognitive ability, usually demonstrated through academic track record, relevant experience that could carry across the different phases of the search journey, and a personality and life stage suited to the demands of the model. Ultimately, they were backing a person to run a business, not just someone with a sharp pitch.
While fundraising, you also began exploring potential opportunities. What has surprised you most during this outreach phase?
Yes, while fundraising is intense, there is a natural bottleneck that prevents it from being full time. Once I had some traction with investors, I figured I might as well start searching. I felt confident that if the right deal came along, I would be able to execute on it, even before closing the raise.
Many people start with brokers and reviewing CIMs, but I chose to come up the learning curve on proprietary outreach as quickly as possible. One of the first things that stood out was how much inbound interest business owners are already getting. Some could name other searchers who had contacted them, along with private equity firms, brokers, and trade buyers. That level of activity makes it harder to stand out and build trust.
What surprised me most was the tension between scale and chemistry. You want to reach as many owners as possible to increase your chances of finding the right combination of business and chemistry with the owner. But the more personal and one-to-one the outreach, the more likely you are to get a genuine response and build that relationship. The tradeoff is time. Personalised outreach takes longer, which limits how many owners you can reach. Balancing those two forces has been more nuanced than I expected, and I am still figuring out how to get it right.
I moved quickly through high-volume outreach early on. It cast a wide net, created some deal flow, and helped me build relationships with intermediaries and owners across a few key industries. Even if the timing is not right today, I may end up saved in a folder for when they are ready to sell. Hopefully that is sometime within the next two years of my search.
You’ve mentioned the struggle to stand out in owners’ inboxes. How are you adapting your outreach strategy in the age of AI-driven personalization? Which sectors or business types are starting to look most promising, and are any of them surprising compared to your initial thesis?
Very quickly, you can set up an AI-driven outreach campaign using data from your background, the owner’s LinkedIn profile, and their broader online footprint to generate highly customised emails. I see countless people promoting AI tools that claim to fill your inbox with qualified leads. There are two issues with that. First, everyone else is doing it. Just look at your own junk folder. Second, it optimises for response rates, not trust. If a business owner were to call and reference a sincere-sounding message generated by AI, something you didn’t write and may not have even seen, that does nothing to build trust.
I’ve shifted to a more balanced approach. For owners and businesses I’m genuinely excited about, I use a mix of individually written physical letters, email, and LinkedIn messages, followed by more generic email if there’s no response after the first two or three touches. For broader coverage, I run more general outreach that helps surface companies already close to a sale process or actively considering succession. I’ve now covered over 40 sectors, including nearly all the common search acquisition categories in more mature markets. Through that process I’ve narrowed my focus to a few high-conviction sectors where there is strong alignment with my background, interests, and the fundamentals that typically make for a good search deal. In those sectors I’ve started to build out networks, connecting with advisors, suppliers, and in one case appointing a river guide to support deeper industry insight and introductions.
One surprise has been rediscovering a sector I had overlooked at the start. It’s where my father built his business, and one I was exposed to growing up. At first it felt too familiar. But through the lens of search, I now see a lot of potential in it, and it has become one of my high-conviction focus areas.
You’ve talked about the ‘chemistry’ needed with owners. What makes for a productive conversation, and what tends to derail it? You said that “when the model resonates, it really resonates.” What types of sellers seem to connect most with the traditional search narrative?
Firstly, I never talk about the search model itself. What resonates is not the traditional search fund narrative, but the combination of the benefits it offers to the seller and the person sitting across from them. It comes back to Sales 101. As one of my early sales mentors used to say, a prospect’s favourite radio station is WIIFM, What’s In It For Me.
Productive conversations start by listening. You need to understand their story, how they built the business, and what they want next. But that only happens once you’ve built enough credibility for them to open up. Once they do, it often comes down to three things.
First is financial. That is table stakes. Beyond that, it’s what you can offer that others cannot. Flexibility is a big one. Unlike trade buyers or private equity firms, I can be flexible on their role post-sale. Some owners want a clean break, others want to stay involved for a transition or beyond. I can work with either.
Then there is what happens after they sell. Owners care about what becomes of the business, the team, the customers, and the community they have built around it. When they see that I am focused on building rather than gutting or flipping, that tends to matter.
The types of sellers who connect with this vary, and I haven’t cracked the code on the attributes they all share. But one thing I have noticed is that if they highlight employee stories on their website or social media, especially non-professional achievements, or if their company is active in industry associations or involved in the local community, like sponsoring a youth football team, it’s often a good indicator that the search fund model is more likely to be a fit.
There’s growing interest in search in Australia and New Zealand, but you’ve noted a lack of qualified capital. What do you think needs to change to close that gap?
First, we need more acquisitions and successful exits from the current generation of searchers. That is what will ultimately build confidence in the model and help recycle capital within the ecosystem. Only time will make that happen. Every good outcome becomes another proof point.
Second, we need one of the top universities, either Melbourne Business School or AGSM, to actively support traditional search. Having an academic home is important, given that the traditional search model has always been rooted in academic institutions. It would help attract both capital and searchers, and a strong university brand behind it would bring additional credibility, especially when raising locally.
Third, it would help to see North American institutional investors establish regional offices or partnerships to support search in Asia Pacific. I reached out to hundreds of global investors and have no North American names on my cap table. That says a lot. Part of it comes down to opportunity cost, as investors in the US and Europe have a steady pipeline of familiar deals. Part of it is the lack of MBA brands they recognise in this region. And part of it is simply time zone misalignment. The Australian working day overlaps almost exactly with their night, which makes it difficult for them to manage investments here effectively without local support.
Ultimately, the model will take hold here in the same way it has in other markets. But it will take time, a few exits, and a stronger bridge between capital and searchers.
What advice would you give to a would-be searcher preparing to raise in Australia today?
Searchers get a lot of generic advice, so I’ll offer two things they might not hear elsewhere.
Firstly, build a network of searchers outside Australia, not just locally. I’ve had incredible support from other Australian searchers, and the community here is generous with their time. But at some point, you are all drawing from the same pool of capital and deals, and a bit of, albeit very mild, competitive tension naturally creeps in. That is to be expected. What has helped me enormously is having a tight network of searchers in Asia and Europe. With them, I can go deeper into a deal or a sector and speak more freely, without overlapping on target sectors or prospects.
Secondly, don’t mistake investor intro calls for real momentum, particularly with international investors. Many are happy to take a short call to learn about your background, and that is a good thing. It plants the seed for a relationship, and they may be thinking ahead to a potential gap deal. You want these relationships, even if just for gap opportunities. But them taking the call does not mean they are likely to back your search. International first-call to investment conversion rates are low, and that is something you should plan for. Keep your foot on the accelerator even if you think you have a strong investor pipeline based on early conversations. Optimism is good, but don’t slow down based on introductory call volume.
