Built to serve the community.

Search-fund buyers have Stanford. Funded searchers have Searchfunder. Self-funded acquirers, ETA buyers, and the operators who follow have a thousand podcast episodes, a dozen Twitter threads, scattered courses, and exactly zero canonical reference. StarForge Advisors exists to be that reference — open, current, primary-source, and useful at 11 p.m. when you're staring at a Schedule of Adjustments that doesn't match the trial balance.

Our mission

Provide real, decision-grade value to the searchfunder, ETA, and SMB acquirer community — for free, without paywalls, without login walls, and without the soft email gates that have become the default elsewhere. The library, the calculators, and the analysis are the product. There is nothing upsell-shaped on the other side of any link.

Education stays free

Every guide, every calculator, every comparison table on this site will remain free to read and use. That is a permanent commitment, not a launch promo. We do not run a paid tier, paid coaching, paid community, paid courses, or consulting engagements. We do not sell strategic reviews or "office hours." If you want to read it, you can read it.

How the project is sustained

Keeping the work free still costs real time and money. We sustain the project through three clearly labeled revenue streams, none of which give a third party editorial influence over what we publish:

• Brand sponsorships. Companies that serve our audience can sponsor the newsletter, a research report, or a section of the site. Sponsorships are always disclosed in the issue or surface they appear on.
• Partnerships. Lenders, QoE providers, law firms, insurance brokers, and operating tools that we'd genuinely point a friend toward can become listed partners. Partnerships are disclosed in-context anywhere they appear.
• Advertising. Clearly labeled ad placements in the newsletter, in select reports, and where appropriate on the site itself. Always identified as advertising; never dressed up as editorial.

For the full version of this — including categories, the editorial firewall, and what we won't accept — see our disclosure policy.

Editorial principles

1. Open by default. Educational content is never gated. Calculators run without an email. Templates download without an email.
2. Cite primary sources. SBA SOPs by section. Named practitioners. Linked source documents. No "experts say…" without naming the experts.
3. Decision-grade, not motivational. Tell readers what to do this week. Skip the "you can do this!" energy.
4. Disclose every commercial relationship in-context. Sponsor, partner, advertiser — labeled in the place it appears, and in the disclosure policy.
5. Quantify. "Working capital can be a problem" is useless; "working capital pegs are reportedly disputed in 30%+ of post-LOI deals; the typical cure is X" is a guide.
6. Show your work on opinions. Distinguish observation, inference, and opinion. Use "in our reading of the SOP" rather than presenting interpretation as fact.
7. Update in place. Cornerstone guides display a last reviewed date and are refreshed quarterly.

Who runs it

StarForge Advisors is run by an independent editorial team focused exclusively on the self-funded acquirer, ETA, and SMB operator audience. We are not affiliated with any lender, brokerage, fund, or training program. We have no clients to keep happy and no sales target attached to any guide.

Contact

General inquiries, corrections, or "you got this wrong" notes: hello@starforgeadvisors.com. Specific factual errors: corrections@starforgeadvisors.com. Sponsorship, partnership, or advertising inquiries: partners@starforgeadvisors.com.