Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen, co-founders of RealWide.com, a real estate search web site, met for lunch at the Fish Market restaurant in San Mateo, Calif. to discuss the coming week. It was September 21, 2005, and they planned to have their web site go live within a week. Although both felt proud of what they had accomplished over the last year, this was certainly not the time for nostalgia or back-patting. A number of critical pre-launch issues would likely consume this morning's discussion. In particular, they had yet to finalize the details of their first major financing and decide on a national or local (i.e., Bay Area) focus. Additionally, certain real estate listing web sites were threatening to block their search crawlers; some of their advisors were urging them to focus more on strategic issues and less on tactical execution details; and then there was the matter of the name-did RealWide truly represent their company? As they sat down, they both wondered, what would the coming week bring?

The case follows Josh Greenberg and John Fowler, two recent graduates from the Stanford GSB, as they complete the entire search fund process. It covers the formation of their search fund vehicle, Montebello Capital, their 16-month search phase, the acquisition of Aero Logistics, the operation and growth of the company, and the eventual exit. The case discusses many of the personal and professional elements of the search fund model.

This note gives a broad overview of the energy sector, highlighting trends and market dynamics in 2008. It is intended to be used as a basic primer for entrepreneurs and investors interested in the energy sector, not an exhaustive or definitive textbook for scientists and engineers. It discusses the importance of incumbent energy sources, including fossil fuels, as well as renewable power.

A search fund is a pool of capital raised to financially support the efforts of an entrepreneur, or a team of entrepreneurs, to locate a privately held company for acquisition. This study, as well as its predecessors in 1996, 1998, 2001,2003, and 2005 portrays the aggregate profile of search funds and the entrepreneurs who formed them, and evaluates the investment returns generated by first-time search funds to their original investors. Together, these studies reflect changes in the characteristics of search fund entrepreneurs and the performance of their funds over time.

In the spring of 2007, four budding companies were in the very early phase of their development. These entrepreneurial ventures illustrate the variety and breadth of new business ideas that can be pursued, and the unique issues that need to be tackled in order to turn each concept into a sustainable, profitable business. The case briefly describes each of the four companies-a footwear manufacturing company, a primary healthcare provider, a medical device, and a technology platform for creating biofuels and chemical products-in terms of the product or service being offered and the market being addressed.