SoCal ETA Alliance

Description

The SoCal ETA Alliance is Southern California's community for entrepreneurship through acquisition. We connect searchers, operators, investors, and service providers across the region, from MBA students exploring acquisition as a career path to active searchers closing deals, to the capital partners and advisors backing them. ETA is a proven path to business ownership. Instead of starting from scratch, acquisition entrepreneurs step into existing companies with real revenue, real customers, and real operations. They bring leadership, strategy, and growth. The business brings the foundation. With millions of baby boomer-owned businesses facing ownership transitions over the next decade, the opportunity has never been larger. The Alliance was founded by MBA students and alumni from UCLA Anderson and USC Marshall who saw a gap: the East Coast and Midwest had established ETA communities and conferences. Southern California did not. We built one. Our flagship event is the SoCal ETA Conference, the West Coast's premier gathering for the acquisition entrepreneurship community. The conference brings together searchers at every stage, experienced operators, institutional and independent investors, lenders, and service providers for a full day of panels, workshops, and networking. Past programming has covered search fund models, self-funded and hybrid approaches, deal sourcing, acquisition financing, post-acquisition operations, and value creation. The Alliance is intentionally school-agnostic. Our leadership includes alumni and club officers from Anderson, Marshall, and other SoCal business programs — ensuring the community grows beyond any single cohort or institution. Whether you are at Pepperdine, LMU, Claremont, or came to ETA outside of business school entirely, this is your network. If you are exploring ETA for the first time, actively searching, operating an acquired business, or investing in the next generation of acquisition entrepreneurs, follow us.