Is there a step below running a search fund / being an entrepreneur in residence?

Thinking about making a longer thread with my situation since I’m at a bit of a cross roads with my next career step. I work in lower middle market IB and it’s time to move on from my current firm (been there 3 years, not much growth opportunities beyond that, etc). I don’t hate it, deal teams are lean and I get great client exposure (sometimes even acting as outsourced CFO) but there is no clear path up. Obvious answer would be to lateral to a bigger, more established platform. A big part of me wants to do something entrepreneurial (partially why I have stayed so long - enjoy working with founder/entrepreneur clients. Smaller deal sizes but I don't really care) and that leads me to the search fund question.

I find the search fund model intriguing but I’m not a typical candidate. I’m 27 so a little on the young end, not in business school, etc.

I thought of doing a search fund on my own (so to speak) - finding a business on BizBuySell that I could buy (or make a meaningful minority investment) and help run. Tremendous risk in that but I still technically fall under a “dumb 20-something” so...why not take a little risk while I'm young?

But is there an in-between? It seems like most search funds just have the entrepreneurs they are supporting to try and buy a company to run and an army of unpaid college interns.

Is there some kind of role for a #2 so to speak? I would try to co-invest and would hope to get some sort of equity and of course would be contributing sweat since this would be my full-time job.

Any other thoughts or next steps you think I might find interesting?

tl;dr - IB analyst at lower MM IB wondering about next career steps. Stay in finance or something more entrepreneurial but am I too young for a search fund?