Jordan Carter·August 2, 2022

A Brutal Search Rewarded with Success After 3 Years

Jordan Carter is a former investment banker and private equity professional (SMU undergrad, Wharton MBA) who conducted a grueling 3.5-year self-funded search before acquiring BNA Grant Services and Software on July 31, 2020. BNA, founded in 2000, helps municipal governments identify, write, and administer grants for infrastructure and community projects — a highly specialized niche with almost no competition at scale. Jordan acquired the business with roughly $2.4-2.5m in revenue and ~40% margins, funding the deal through a painful independent equity raise on SearchFunder (hit rate under 10%) that was ultimately rescued by warm intros from Robert Graham, his future co-founder at Search Investment Group (SIG). The search itself was defined by false starts: years of part-time searching while consulting, two deals lost under LOI with real money spent on QoE and legal, and a failure to bid aggressively on a blue-collar business that closed successfully for another buyer. By June 2022 (two years in), BNA had grown to approximately $3.5m in revenue — nearly 50% growth — driven by repositioning a team member into business development, selling the firm's scalable research product to new cities, and simply meeting the enormous unmet demand in the market. Jordan now co-runs SIG to provide the equity capital and support to other self-funded searchers that he lacked when he started.

Deal facts

revenue: $2.4-2.5m at acquisition; ~$3.5m at time of recording (June 2022)
financing structure: SBA loan + patchwork equity raise from individual investors via SearchFunder; supported by Robert Graham (co-founder of SIG) warm intros
notes: Margins approximately 40%; ~22 employees at acquisition in July 2020; closed July 31, 2020; deal went under LOI February 2020. Guest liquidated his 401k (~$80-90k) and saved ~$150k gross from consulting to fund equity. SIG (Search Investment Group) did not yet exist; equity raise done independently then assisted by Robert Graham.

Why this business

Jordan was drawn to BNA because it served local/municipal government — a customer base he liked from prior PE experience with government contractors — and had a niche with almost no competition, a mission-driven team, and sticky recurring relationships with cities that could not justify full-time in-house grant staff. The sellers' integrity and the business's organic growth track record (zero debt, 20-year history) also made him confident. He initially nearly passed because he had no background in city government or grant writing, but advisors encouraged him to keep looking.

What's working

Extreme scarcity of competition: very few firms of similar scale do municipal grant writing, creating pricing power and easy client acquisition for a capable team
Massive unmet demand: far more cities need the service than BNA can currently serve, driving nearly 50% revenue growth in two years post-acquisition
Mission-driven, predominantly female team with high passion and low turnover; culture was strong at acquisition and maintained through transition
Team-based model deploying specialists across public works, fire, police, parks, etc. delivers expertise no single city employee could replicate
Existing software/research product that can be sold into new cities with minimal incremental cost, enabling a scalable revenue layer
Repositioning one employee who wanted to do business development into that role unlocked significant new sales activity
ROI story with clients (sometimes 100x return on fees via grant awards won) makes selling straightforward

What's hard

Search lasted roughly 3.5 years (fall 2016 to July 2020) — far longer than anticipated, partly because Jordan started part-time while consulting and underestimated how brutal sourcing is
Equity raise was painful: reached out to every investor on SearchFunder, hit rate of less than 1-in-10 actually wiring money; many investors demanded 40-45% equity stake
Lost at least two deals under LOI (one software company whose seller withdrew the night a purchase agreement was submitted; one killed in diligence after spending real money on QoE and legal)
Passed on a blue-collar services business at 5x that went on to close successfully — over-discounted a good business because valuation felt rich
Closed a deal in July 2020 during COVID — could not meet sellers for lunch/dinner or shake hands, all in-person meetings were masked and socially distanced
Onboarding challenge: had to learn an opaque industry (municipal grant writing) from scratch; early days required extensive listening and humility
Grant consultants can burn out due to demanding client service requirements and detailed reporting obligations

Notable quotes

I felt a calling. I felt like this was it.

You're one person and if you're spreading yourself across multiple different industries and just saying if I like it or if I fundamentally believe the industry is somewhat healthy I'll take a look, I do think that probably negatively affected my deal flow at that time from brokers.

Every time you lose an LOI the later the stage it is the more damaging it is to the searcher's psyche. And we say searcher — these are people. I mean I was a human. I'm doing this and you're alone and nobody has a vested interest in your search.

I tried to do it myself. I tried to do this other thing myself. And I just learned the another side of the chasm. I look back and I go was there an easier way.