What Is a CEO-in-Residence Programme? How It Works in Europe
A CEO-in-Residence (CIR) is an experienced executive who joins an institutional programme to find, acquire, and operate a founder-led SME as its new owner-operator. In the WAD Capital CEO-in-Residence Programme, the CIR sources their own acquisition target, leads negotiations with the business owner, and steps in as CEO with an initial 20% equity stake. WAD Capital provides 100% of the acquisition financing through WAD Capital Fund I, a Belgian privak (pricaf privée) regulated by the FSMA. No personal acquisition capital is required from the CIR. The programme runs 12 to 24 months from onboarding to acquisition close, structured across three phases: Search, Contact & Diligence; Negotiation & Acquisition; and Post-Acquisition. WAD Capital evaluates more than 500 executive candidates per cohort and selects approximately ten.
What Is a CEO-in-Residence and What Does the Role Involve?
Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA*) is the practice of acquiring an existing, profitable business rather than starting one from scratch. A CEO-in-Residence is the operator at the centre of that transaction — the person who identifies the company, builds the business case, negotiates the deal, and then runs the business as its CEO.
The model sits between two things executives often consider when they want out of corporate: starting their own company and joining a private equity-backed portfolio business as a hired executive. A CIR does neither. They own a meaningful equity stake from day one. They run the company with genuine operational autonomy. The institutional backing — capital, infrastructure, legal, financial support — removes the barriers that stop most executives from making the move independently.
At WAD Capital, the CIR is not placed into an acquisition chosen by the fund. They source it themselves. That distinction matters operationally. A CIR who has spent fifteen years in HVAC or logistics or industrial services brings a sector thesis, a relevant network, and domain knowledge that a generalist allocator simply does not have. That knowledge is what produces acquisitions at sub-5x EBITDA multiples in markets where auctions would price the same businesses at 12 to 15 times earnings.
How Is a CEO-in-Residence Programme Different from a Standard Search Fund?
A traditional self-funded search fund involves a single entrepreneur who raises personal search capital, spends 18 to 24 months looking for a business, then raises acquisition capital separately from a pool of individual investors. The searcher operates alone or in a two-person team. There is no shared infrastructure, no institutional support during the search phase, and no peer cohort.
WAD Capital operates differently. The programme runs on a cohort model: approximately ten CEO-in-Residence candidates per intake, all funded from the same institutional base, searching simultaneously and sharing learnings across the group. That structure changes what is practically possible during the search. When one CIR in the cohort runs into a particular type of due diligence problem or a specific structuring issue, the group has already worked through it — or can work through it together.
The financing structure is also categorically different. WAD Capital provides 100% of acquisition financing through WAD Capital Fund I. No personal acquisition capital is required from the CIR. Solo searchers in a self-funded model carry personal financial risk across the entire search phase before a deal is closed. Under the WAD Capital model, 99% of deal flow is sourced through Generative DealFlow™ — the firm's proprietary AI-powered sourcing methodology — combined with direct CIR outreach. The result is off-market acquisitions at price points the competitive auction market does not reach.
The 2024 Stanford GSB Search Fund Study tracked 681 ETA funds since 1984 and found aggregate pre-tax returns of 35.1% IRR. Those returns are real. They are also the output of a process that is structurally easier to execute when you have institutional capital, shared infrastructure, and a weekly Monday meeting with ten operators solving the same class of problems at the same time.
What Does the Search Phase of the WAD Capital Programme Actually Involve?
Most candidates who enter the programme expect deal flow to start quickly. It does not.
The first three weeks — Step 1 of the programme, called Investment Memo Creation — involve no outreach to companies at all. The CIR conducts deep market analysis, commissions analyst reports, gathers competitive performance data, and spends week three on a minimum of five expert interviews to validate the investment thesis. The Investment Memo is delivered and approved by WAD Capital's investment partners before the CIR approaches a single target company.
Step 2, Market Mapping, maps a minimum of 500 potential companies per subsector, all within 300 km of Brussels. Not 50. Not a curated shortlist of 30 businesses that look good from the outside. Five hundred companies, prioritised by investment size, strategic alignment, and estimated willingness to sell. That map becomes the CIR's working universe for the outreach campaign that follows.
Step 3 is the Outreach Strategy: a combination of automated campaign design, personalised cold outreach, and network-based introductions. Follow-on meetings in Step 5 target 40 or more conversations with owners who have expressed genuine interest. The KPI for Step 6 — Securing the First Letter of Intent — is three LOIs dispatched per month, with the objective of entering formal negotiation before the search phase extends past its planned timeline.
The steps are designed to compress the timeline that solo searchers historically struggle with. The 2024 IESE International Search Fund Study documented a record 59 new international search funds formed in 2023. The median search-to-acquisition timeline in that population runs well past 18 months. The WAD Capital programme structure, combined with the Deal Intelligence Platform managed through the/operations infrastructure, targets that timeline directly.
How Many European SMEs Are Available for CEO-in-Residence Acquisitions?
The addressable market is not a theoretical concern. The 2024 Annual Report on European SMEs published by the European Commission estimates that approximately 150,000 SMEs across the EU face ownership transition each year. The concentration is highest in manufacturing, construction, and B2B services — the exact sectors WAD Capital targets.
Frédéric Schilling's acquisition of Groupe Jordan in Hainaut is one example of what that market looks like in practice. After a 12-month search supported by WAD Capital and Wallonie Entreprendre, Frédéric closed the acquisition of a 35-year-old HVAC services business with a proven client base, a skilled technical team, and a founder who had no natural successor. The business became the founding acquisition of Kaeron, the HVAC platform he now leads. Frédéric'sfull profile is on the residents page. TheKaeron portfolio page documents the platform strategy in detail.
That transaction type repeats across the WAD Capital portfolio. OmniSecur's acquisition of Alsec in Nivelles, Walloon Brabant, followed the same logic: a technically excellent fire safety and security specialist, founded in 1987, with no successor. NexVolta's acquisition of Mignone SA in Manage, Hainaut, brought an electrical installation and construction specialist founded in 1987 into the energy transition thesis that CIR Guy-Louis de le Vingne had built from the ground up.
The supply of businesses is not the constraint. The supply of qualified, capitalised operators who can run them is.
What Equity and Financing Does a CEO-in-Residence Receive?
The CIR enters the acquired business with an initial 20% equity stake. WAD Capital holds the remaining 80%. That equity vests across three stages based on value creation milestones, not tenure. The structure is designed to align the CIR's incentives with operational performance, not calendar time.
WAD Capital provides 100% of acquisition financing through WAD Capital Fund I. The CIR does not need to contribute personal capital to fund the acquisition, though co-investment is available for CIRs who want to increase their ownership position. Entry multiples across WAD Capital's four completed acquisitions have all been below 5x EBITDA. The most recent Letter of Intent in the pipeline is under 4x.
That pricing discipline is the direct result of sourcing off-market businesses through direct CIR outreach and Generative DealFlow™, rather than participating in competitive auction processes where financial sponsors bid prices up to multiples that compress future returns before the new CEO has walked through the door.
What Happens After the Acquisition Closes?
The Post-Acquisition phase begins with Step 12 of the programme: Leadership Transition. The focus in the first 30 days is stakeholder communication — employees, suppliers, key customers — and establishing the CIR's direct operating authority while maintaining continuity for the people and relationships that make the business run.
Days 30 to 90 involve cultural integration, operational streamlining, and launch of the post-acquisition strategic plan. That plan covers three areas: the CARE-PROFIT framework for sustainable operational practices, digitisation of core business processes, and innovation investment appropriate to the sector. TheCARE-PROFIT framework is WAD Capital's proprietary alternative to generic ESG reporting — specific, measurable, and built for businesses in the €1 to 5 million EBITDA range.
Days 90 to 120 are focused on process optimisation and growth strategy development: identifying synergies, engaging key stakeholders in the new direction, and refining performance metrics that will govern the next phase of the business.
The observation period across the first 9 to 15 months post-acquisition is intentionally unhurried. These are businesses built over 20 to 40 years by founders who understood them deeply. Rapid structural change before the CIR has earned the trust of the team and mapped the real operating dynamics of the business is a reliable way to destroy the value that made the acquisition worth making
Who Is the CEO-in-Residence Programme Designed For?
Candidates who succeed in the WAD Capital programme typically have 10 to 20 years of operational experience, P&L responsibility at a credible scale, and a sector thesis specific enough to pass review by the investment committee. Geographic flexibility within roughly 300 km of Brussels is a practical requirement, given the target market.
The programme is not designed for executives who want to explore options or who are primarily motivated by financial outcomes. The search phase is methodical and sometimes tedious. Dead deals are data. Owner conversations that go nowhere for six months before collapsing on price are part of the process, not deviations from it. The CIRs who close acquisitions within a reasonable timeline are the ones who treat that process as a research operation, not a series of disappointments.
Cohort 2026 applications are currently open. WAD Capital'sresidents page shows the full current cohort across sectors. The programme mechanics, selection criteria, and application process are documented in detail at/faqs/ceo-in-residence. For executives who have read this and are ready to apply, the starting point is/join-cir.
