Search Fund are Paradise

The slightly pixelated spreadsheet on your laptop screen, filled with hundreds of potential acquisition targets for the search fund you're interning at, starts to blur at the edges. It's 2 am, and you're on your 7th cup of coffee. The promise of 'real world finance experience' echoes in your mind like an ironic meme. The infamous intern tasks you've been assigned - tasks like compiling an endless list of companies, generating valuation models for businesses that wouldn’t be profitable even if they printed their own money, and "managing relationships" with industry brokers that make used car salesmen seem ethical – all seem far from the glamorous world of finance you had imagined.

Your mentor, the search fund owner, promised you hands-on experience and mentioned something about 'finding the needle in the haystack.' So far, it feels more like finding a specific grain of sand on a beach, and that beach is in a snow globe.

Days turn into weeks, each filled with the exhilarating joy of turning “no” into “maybe” and a “maybe” into yet another “no.” But hey, who needs sleep when you’re getting hands-on experience? Your mantra becomes "the harder the struggle, the sweeter the equity," even though your current equity stake is a grand total of zero percent.

As the summer months approach, you're still on the hunt, convinced that the perfect target company is out there somewhere, hidden amongst the million rows of Excel data. That's the dream, right? The unpaid grind today will someday materialize into an impressive, lucrative resume bullet point. And you're still somehow optimistic because, let’s face it, optimism is an intern's most valuable currency.

In July, just as you are about to present a prospective target that you truly believe in, your mentor casually remarks, “Oh yeah, we considered that one last year. Not viable.” Your heart sinks as you wonder whether this is some sort of cruel joke or just another harsh lesson in the school of hard knocks.

Yet, despite the soul-crushing monotony and grinding tedium, you can't help but feel a sense of elation. Every rejection, every wasted model, every dead-end conversation; it's all part of the journey. You're a warrior in the trench, fighting the good fight.

Just when you're about to throw in the towel, you get a lead, a promising company with a motivated seller. The call goes well. You can't help but smile. This could be it! As you hang up, you realize that it's all worth it. The adrenaline, the chase, the sheer unpredictability. This is what it's all about.

You’re under no illusions. Your mentor might swoop in and take all the glory. The lead might fizzle out into another dead-end. But for now, it’s a potential. And that potential carries a rush like no other.

So you soldier on, armed with your laptop, fueled by lukewarm coffee, and animated by sheer optimism. The spreadsheet begins to blur again, the countless cells becoming a symbol of all the possibilities that lie ahead.

You laugh to yourself and think, "Search Funds are Paradise."