About us
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Our mission
Generational Transfer Entrepreneurs (GTE) aims to be more than just a capital resource for our search partners and operators. We strive to maximize your likelihood of success by providing sound guidance that's leveraged upon 100+ years of executive-level and management experience collectively across our entire management team and investors. Like any true partnership, we realize our success is rooted in your success and we will do everything in our power to guide you towards a positive outcome.
The Search Process
Raise
You begin your journey by spending 2–6 months raising a fund from trusted partners to pay for your search. Utilize GTE's capital and vast experience to bolster your investor bullpen.
Search
You now have 12–24 months to find and acquire a business. Good thing we ran a search fund accelerator for 5 years. Leverage GTE's know-how to execute a successful search.
Acquire
You've found a company and have ~6 months to close the deal. We've been down this road many times before and can advise on piecing together all the intricacies of closing the deal.
Manage
You're the new CEO and you're ready to run your company for the next 4–7+ years. Tap into GTE's deep executive-level experience to help you grow and manage your new business.
Exit
4–7+ years have passed and you're now ready to sell and move on to the next big thing. GTE will be right there with you to answer any questions regarding the best exit strategy.
The story behind our firm
2013
After spending decades of running and growing his family's business New Enterprise Stone & Lime Company (NESL) to a billion-dollar enterprise, Jamie Van Buren steps down as COO to pursue a new challenge: Entrepreneurship through Acquisition (ETA). Jamie's decision to leave NESL eventually led to the family's successful exit in 2021.
2014
Jamie Van Buren finds, acquires, and begins dramatically turning around PennStress, a precast and prestress concrete company.
2015
Jamie's son, Brenden, starts working for PennStress and subsequently attends Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper Business School's full-time MBA program to grow as a business leader. It is here that Brenden begins learning and exploring search funds as a viable method for acquiring small privately held businesses via both strong mentorship and financing. This ultimately leads the Van Burens further down the path of EtA.
2017
With a passion for ETA, Jamie, Brenden, and Brenden's classmate Gabriel Chick officially form Generational Transfer Entrepreneurs (GTE), a search fund accelerator providing a platform encompassing mentorship, funding, as well as systems and processes to help aspiring CEOs achieve entrepreneurship-through-acquisition.
2022
After having acquired five businesses between 2017 and 2020, GTE strategically pivots away from its accelerator model to focus 100% of its efforts on investing and advising in traditional search funds as well as providing gap investment capital to both traditional and self-funded searchers alike.
The value we bring
01
Capital
We help provide equity capital to ensure success at the conclusion of the entrepreneur's search.
02
Searching
We ran an accelerator for five years where we refined and optimized the most efficient processes to carry out a search.
03
Operations
Our management team carries 100+ years of executive-level experience diagnosing issues and implementing sound strategies.
04
Network
Having searched for over five years with several classes of searchers, we’ve built up a vast network of valuable connections.
Our office
