2026 Conference Schedule
The event will be held in-person at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business in Durham, North Carolina. There will not be a virtual or recorded option for the conference.
- Ben Thomason, Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship
- Adam Kouhel, Fuqua ETA Club, Co-President
- Mary Frances Luce, The Fuqua School of Business
New to ETA, or want a current read on where the market stands? This session sets the foundation: what ETA is, how the search models differ, who funds them, and what has shifted in the past twelve months. Steve Ressler frames the 2026 landscape with data on deal volume, capital availability, and searcher outcomes so every session that follows lands with context.
- Tyrus Williams, Georgetown, Student Leader
- Steve Ressler, The Brydon Group
Search has no governing body, no formal credo, and no one in charge, yet it holds together. What holds it together is a set of shared values the community carried for decades before anyone wrote them down. Jeff Stevens and Clayton Collins take up those values directly: where they came from, how they shape the way searchers, investors, and sellers treat one another, and why they matter more as the community grows.
Tim Bovard closes Friday with a practical charge for the weekend ahead. He shares how to turn two days of programming into relationships that last well past September, which conversations are worth seeking out, and how to approach the people you most want to meet. He also offers a look at how Search Fund Accelerator builds support around new CEOs to strengthen outcomes in the years after a deal closes.
- Tim Bovard, Search Fund Accelerator
At the close of Friday's sessions, join fellow attendees, speakers, and panelists for a networking reception to kick off the conference.
Art Baker opens with a candid read on the trends shaping ETA right now and what they mean for the people in the room, whether you are early in a search, working a deal, or already operating.
- Ben Thomason, Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship
- Robin Boudiette, UNC, Student Leader
- Art Baker, Kenan-Flagler Faculty, Clinical Associate Professor of Finance
Most people arrive at ETA looking for a return. Many stay because they found something better. This panel brings together three CEOs who bought businesses and built careers they did not see coming, across gifting, home health care, and outdoor recreation. Will Smith draws out what pulled them in, what surprised them most about ownership, and how running a company reshaped their definition of a life's work.
Linh Tran operated before he invested, and that sequence changed how he evaluates deals. In conversation with Will Smith, he walks through the move from running a company to backing the people who do, what he looks for in a searcher, and the parts of the operator experience that no diligence process can replicate.
There is no single path into ETA, and the models differ in more than structure. Each carries its own risk profile, timeline, and relationship with capital, and the right choice depends less on the math than on the life you are trying to build. Searchers who have taken different routes compare notes so you can choose a path that fits your circumstances rather than the one that sounds best.
Diligence is where deals are made or unwound, and where preparation shows. Attorneys, lenders, and investors pull back the curtain on what the process looks like from their side of the table and what they wish searchers understood earlier. You will leave with a clearer sense of who belongs on your deal team, when to bring them in, and how to tell a fixable problem from a reason to walk.
The deal closes and the hard part begins. Employees are uncertain, the seller is often still in the building, and every early move signals what kind of leader you intend to be. Operators who have lived it talk through what those first months actually demand of you and how to plan for long term value creation.
AI has moved from conference talking point to daily tool, though the gap between what is promised and what actually works remains wide. This panel skips the speculation and focuses on where the technology is earning its keep today, both during a search and inside an operating business, and how buyers should weigh it when evaluating a company.
Search has gone global, and the playbook changes at the border. Investors and operators working across Europe and Latin America discuss what carries over from the American model and what does not, from how deals get financed to how sellers think about handing over a business. Useful for anyone weighing an international search, or simply curious about a part of the ecosystem growing quickly.
Before diligence, before financing, there is the harder problem: finding a business worth buying and persuading an owner to sell it to you. This session covers how searchers build a pipeline, get in front of the right owners, and earn the trust of a founder handing over a life's work. Best suited to those in their first year of searching, or still deciding whether to start one.
Join us for a fireside chat with David T. Robinson, the James and Gail Vander Weide Professor of Finance at Duke's Fuqua School of Business, and Neal Jacobs, founder of Maven Equity. David teaches Fuqua's ETA class, and Neal, who has backed more than 60 entrepreneur acquisitions, shares practical lessons on what it takes to succeed in ETA. The conversation goes beyond tactics into Neal's philosophy of helping searchers “solve for you” — there is no one-size-fits-all path, only the path that best fits your goals, strengths, and definition of success.
A look back at the throughline across two days, and a look ahead at what comes next.
- Lucinda Bakken, Georgetown Entrepreneurship at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business
- Ben Thomason, Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Join us to close out SEETA 2026 with a celebratory reception in the Fuqua Fox Center.