Mandalore Partners at the 22nd INSEAD PE & VC Conference — Paris, June 3, 2026

Source : https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/the-22nd-insead-pe-vc-conference-tickets-1986720290871

The European private markets calendar has a standout date this summer: the 22nd INSEAD PE & VC Conference, taking place on Wednesday, June 3, 2026 at Le Cnam (National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts) in Paris. Mandalore Partners will be attending, and we look forward to connecting with investors, fund managers, and private capital professionals throughout the day.

About the Conference

The INSEAD PE & VC Conference is one of Europe's most established gatherings for private capital professionals. Now in its 22nd edition, the event brings together leading voices from across the private markets ecosystem for a full day of structured panels, audience-led Q&A sessions, and meaningful networking opportunities.

This year's edition comes with a refreshed format and a sharper thematic focus, designed specifically for practitioners — whether they are managing capital, deploying it, or building the companies that attract it. The conference takes place at the iconic Cnam building in the heart of Paris, a venue that has historically hosted major academic and industry events.

What to Expect: Nine Sessions Across Private Markets

The 2026 programme features nine dedicated panels covering the full breadth of the private capital landscape. The day is structured to move from macro allocation questions to asset-class-specific conversations, ending with a cocktail reception for informal networking:

• Capital Allocation — Earning the re-up in a more selective market

• Secondaries — Governance, conflicts, and the price of liquidity at scale

• Institutional Investing — Perspectives from major allocators

• Private Equity — Deal dynamics and value creation in the current cycle

• Private Credit — The evolving role of direct lending and alternative credit

• Infrastructure — Long-duration assets in a higher-rate environment

• AI & Tech — Investment theses and value creation in the technology sector

• Sustainability — Impact integration and the state of ESG in private markets

• Venture Outcomes — Paths to liquidity, portfolio construction, and lessons from recent vintages

Each panel includes an open Q&A segment, giving attendees direct access to the speakers and the ability to shape the conversation. Between the morning coffee, the lunch networking session, the inter-panel breaks, and the evening cocktail reception, the conference is intentionally designed to maximise professional interaction throughout the day.

Why This Conference Matters in 2026

The private markets industry is navigating one of its most complex periods: a recalibration of valuations, slower exit activity, mounting LP scrutiny on DPI, and the emergence of AI as both an investment theme and an operational tool across the asset class. The INSEAD PE & VC Conference creates a forum where these tensions — and the opportunities they generate — can be discussed candidly by the practitioners closest to them.

For a firm like Mandalore Partners, which operates at the intersection of venture capital and corporate innovation, events like this are not merely networking occasions. They are an opportunity to stay close to how allocators are thinking, how emerging managers are positioning themselves, and where the most interesting convergences between technology and institutional capital are taking place.

Mandalore Partners Will Be There

Mandalore Partners is a Venture Capital-as-a-Service firm with a dual mandate: deploying capital into high-potential early-stage companies, and helping corporations build and invest in new ventures alongside us. Our focus areas span Fintech, InsurTech, IndustryTech, and ImpactTech — sectors where we believe the most durable value creation opportunities remain underexplored.

We will be attending the 22nd INSEAD PE & VC Conference across the full programme day. Whether you are a fund manager, an LP, a founder, or a fellow attendee curious about our model, we welcome the opportunity to connect in person.

About Mandalore Partners

Mandalore Partners is a Venture Capital-as-a-Service firm operating across Europe and Southeast Asia. We provide institutional-grade VC capabilities — from deal sourcing and investment committee support to portfolio monitoring — to corporations seeking to engage with the innovation ecosystem without building an in-house VC team. We also invest directly from our own vehicle, alongside our LP base.

Our approach combines a proprietary deal flow network, cross-border sourcing between Europe and Asia, and a hands-on venture studio model that allows us to co-build companies with corporate partners from day one. Sectors of focus include Fintech, InsurTech, IndustryTech, and ImpactTech.

Connect With Us at the Event

If you are attending the 22nd INSEAD PE & VC Conference and would like to connect with the Mandalore Partners team, we would be glad to meet. Whether during the lunch break, between sessions, or at the evening cocktail reception, we are open to conversations — no formal agenda required.

You can reach us in advance via our website or connect with us on LinkedIn. We look forward to seeing you on June 3rd at Le Cnam.

Retour sur INSEAD ETA Conference 2026 : Ce que le monde des Search Funds révèle aux investisseurs corporate

We attended the INSEAD Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition & Search Funds Hub (ETA) Conference 2026 in Fontainebleau as an outsider — a corporate venture capital investor, not a searcher. I left with five sharp takeaways that matter well beyond the search fund community, and a clear conviction about the role institutional corporate capital can play in the European SME acquisition landscape.

What is ETA, and why does this conference matter?

Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) refers to the practice of raising capital to fund the search for and acquisition of a single operating company, typically a profitable SME. The searcher becomes CEO post-acquisition, operates the business for 5 to 7 years, and exits to a PE buyer or strategic acquirer.

The model was pioneered at Stanford in the 1980s. It took thirty years to cross the Atlantic in any meaningful way. Today, it is one of the fastest-growing alternative investment strategies in Europe — and the INSEAD conference, now in its third year, is its intellectual centre of gravity on this side of the world.

Why does it matter to corporate investors? Because 500,000 European SMEs need new ownership in the next decade. Many of them operate in financial services, insurance distribution, wealth management, and business services — sectors where institutional corporate investors have strategic skin in the game. The succession wave is not just a demographic trend; it is one of the largest structural opportunities in European private markets over the next ten years.

An asset class at an inflection point — and bifurcating fast

The day opened with research from Prof. Ivana Naumovska (INSEAD), whose work on search fund performance signals set the intellectual tone for everything that followed. Her finding is both reassuring and cautionary: the model works extraordinarily well — but only for the right people, backed by the right investors.

The traditional proxies that investors use to select searchers — elite MBA, top-tier investment banking background, partner search — are statistically meaningful, but incomplete. They fail to capture the qualities that actually determine long-term performance: resilience through the 13-month acquisition process, calibrated ambition (neither too low nor too high), genuine humility with sellers and employees, and the kind of empathy that keeps a business owner at the table through difficult negotiations.

📊 Key Research Finding

The return distribution is becoming bimodal. A minority of high-quality searcher-investor partnerships continue to generate outstanding returns. A growing majority — driven by less experienced investors chasing the asset class — are underperforming. This is the pattern of every alternative asset class that transitions from niche to mainstream.

The expansion of the investor base from a tight community of operational veterans (ex-CEOs, serial entrepreneurs, former PE operators) to a broader pool of financial investors has had a measurable impact on outcomes. Experienced investors don't just bring capital — they bring judgment on critical decisions (when to walk away from a deal, how to structure a management team, how to manage a difficult vendor relationship). Diluting that expertise has consequences.

The implication is not that the model is failing. It is that selection — of searchers, of investors, and increasingly of co-investors — matters more than ever.

The European geography: who is winning, who is emerging

Panel 1 brought together investors from Relay Investments, Ambit Partners, JB46 Partners, Istria Capital, and Inseta Partners to map the global search fund landscape. The European picture is heterogeneous — and more interesting than the headline numbers suggest.

France's first standout search fund exit — confirmed by multiple panelists who had been involved in its structuring — is a significant milestone. It validates the model in a market that has historically been skeptical, and signals the beginning of a local LP ecosystem capable of backing more searchers at scale.

AI and the sourcing paradox: democratisation destroys differentiation

Panel 2a, dedicated to search strategies in the age of AI, featured a fascinating tension. On one hand, new tools like Bantum — a multi-agent AI platform built specifically for searchers — now allow any operator to score, rank, and outreach to thousands of SME targets in days. Bantum combines data from Northdata and multiple proprietary sources, runs AI agents in competitive "debate" to score companies across 15 dimensions, and automates outreach across email, LinkedIn, handwritten letter bots, and fax. Cost: $100–$200 per month for individual searchers.

On the other hand, when every searcher has the same tool, they arrive at the same 100 companies. The sourcing advantage that technology created has been immediately competed away.

What am I doing that's truly proprietary? The answer is never the tool. It's the relationship, the sector knowledge, and the reason the seller picks up the phone for you specifically.

— Composite of multiple panelists, Panel 2a

The operators winning in this environment are returning to fundamentals: in-person attendance at sector trade shows, direct mail campaigns, conversations at industry dinners, referrals from trusted sector networks. In Germany specifically — where company data is largely private, business school ecosystems are thin, and family offices control much of the SME ownership landscape — proprietary sourcing via genuine sector relationships remains the only reliable strategy.

💡 Implication for Corporate LPs

A strategic corporate LP who can open doors to retiring company owners — through sector credibility, personal introductions, or the implicit validation of their brand — is a sourcing advantage no algorithm can replicate. This is one of the strongest structural arguments for a corporate LP anchor in a HoldCo roll-up vehicle.

The four ETA routes: from self-funded to HoldCo roll-up

Prof. Naumovska's framework for the four ETA routes clarified a conversation that is often muddled in practice. They are not variations of the same model — they have different capital structures, different investor profiles, different risk distributions, and critically, different suitability for institutional involvement.

The HoldCo roll-up is the model that has attracted the most interest from institutional capital — and the most scrutiny. We address the risks directly in the next section.

From LOI to close: what the deal process really looks like

Panel 3b, focused on the deal process from Letter of Intent to closing, produced the most operationally dense content of the day. The panelists — all experienced searchers and operators — were unambiguous: the transaction process is where most acquisitions are won or lost, and it is overwhelmingly a people process, not a financial one.

The seller relationship is everything

The consensus across all panelists: position yourself as the person who will care for the seller's life's work, not as a financial buyer. Use lawyers to deliver difficult news during negotiations — preserving the personal relationship for the operator. Know the names of the seller's children. Have dinner with their spouse. Understand what they built and why it matters to them.

Timeline reality: searchers typically project 3 months from LOI to close. The average is closer to 6. Some deals take 13 months. After 6 to 7 months in a live process, the searcher has exhausted most of the goodwill they started with — what remains is the human relationship itself. Build it early and protect it throughout.

Investor communication discipline is a deal variable

Post-LOI investor management is not administrative — it is strategic. Send a 2-to-5-page synthesis within days of signing the LOI: what excites you, what you still need to learn, what the timeline looks like. Follow up biweekly with genuine updates. The fatal error is a two-page summary followed by three months of silence, then a 90-page data room that answers none of the original questions.

⚖️ Due Diligence Rule

The one expense you should never cut in a search fund transaction: legal counsel. Structure all other advisors on partial success fees. Work alongside advisors in real time — don't wait for the final report. And the most important principle: the worst outcome is not losing a deal. It's closing the wrong one.

⚠️ The committed capital warning every institutional investor must hear

The sharpest moment of the afternoon came from Lenka Polarova (PT Investment, 63 portfolio companies), whose assessment of the committed capital / HoldCo roll-up model was direct enough to reshape the room's sentiment on the topic.

⚠ Critical Warning — Lenka Polarova, PT Investment

The return distribution of committed capital / HoldCo roll-up vehicles resembles VC, not traditional search. Approximately 80% of operators fail. The common failure pattern: three acquisitions at €200K EBITDA each, momentum slows, the operator runs out of runway before achieving a meaningful exit path. Competing against PE funds with full infrastructure, proven playbooks, and institutional capital at scale is structurally disadvantageous for a first-time consolidator without a proven M&A track record.

This is not an argument against the model. It is an argument for extreme rigor in operator selection and thesis specification. The model works — for the right operator, in the right sector, with the right capital structure. The 20% who succeed generate the returns that make it worthwhile for investors. But 80% of the operators who attempt it do not achieve a meaningful exit.

The panel's recommended alternative for most searchers: a traditional single acquisition — targeting a company with €1.5–2M EBITDA — followed by selective tuck-in acquisitions funded by cash flow and debt after demonstrating value creation in years one through three. This approach maintains the financial leverage, operational focus, and exit clarity that make traditional search funds attractive, while allowing for inorganic growth once the operator has demonstrated capability at scale.

5 takeaways for corporate investors and institutional LPs

• 1 - The succession wave is structural, not cyclical

  500,000 European SMEs need new ownership in the next decade. For insurance groups, banks, and mutualist institutions, many of these companies sit in their distribution ecosystems — brokers, CGPIs, wealth advisors, MGA platforms. This is not a market to observe from a distance.

• 2 - The traditional search fund model is not designed for institutional capital

  10–20 individual investors, €0.5–2M checks, high operational engagement — this format is structurally incompatible with institutional LP governance requirements. The HoldCo roll-up vehicle with a dedicated committed capital fund is the right entry point for corporate LPs.

• 3 - An 80% failure rate demands exceptional operator selection

  The committed capital model only works with a senior operator who has a proven M&A track record and a highly specific sector thesis. Financial sophistication is insufficient. Sourcing and operating experience in the target sector is the non-negotiable criterion.

• 4 - Corporate LP anchor = structural competitive advantage

  In a sourcing environment where AI has eliminated data differentiation, a corporate LP who can open doors to sellers — through sector credibility, warm introductions, or commercial partnership offers — changes the economics of the roll-up. This is not soft value; it is a genuine sourcing moat.

• 5 - Keep CVC and ETA narratives strictly separated in client conversations

  Venture capital (early-stage startups) and ETA/acquisition vehicles (mature SMEs) serve different strategic purposes, operate on different timescales, and require different governance structures. Conflating them in the same pitch creates confusion and undermines credibility with both institutional and corporate audiences.

Conclusion: a market worth watching — on the right terms

The INSEAD ETA Conference 2026 confirmed what the data has been suggesting for several years: European search funds are no longer a curiosity. They are a legitimate alternative asset class with a growing track record, an increasingly professional investor base, and a structural tailwind — the succession of half a million companies — that will sustain deal flow for a decade.

For institutional investors in insurance, banking, and asset management, the question is not whether to engage with this market. It is how, and on what terms. The HoldCo roll-up model offers the clearest structural entry point — but it demands the right operator, the right thesis, and an honest accounting of the failure risk. A corporate LP who brings more than capital — sector relationships, commercial partnerships, regulatory credibility — is not just a financial participant. They are a structural advantage embedded in the vehicle's competitive logic.

At Mandalore Partners, we structure venture and acquisition vehicles for large insurance and banking groups navigating exactly this decision. The conversation we started at Fontainebleau is one we intend to continue — with the right partners, on the right terms.