When Capital Meets Community: Rethinking ETA for Scale and Impact

Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition isn’t new. But the way we’re financing it, and who gets access, is changing for good.

The Problem with “Business as Usual”

At New Majority Capital and RPCK, we start from a simple belief: entrepreneurial talent is equally distributed—opportunity is not.

Across our respective careers in finance, law, entrepreneurship, and investing, we’ve seen the same structural barriers repeat:

• High-potential operators without access to capital
• Funding models that rely on pattern recognition and, in doing so, exclude many of those same operators
• Capital deployed chasing the rare unicorn, with meaningful returns few and far between

Traditional investment frameworks weren’t connecting these dots—nor were they incentivized to do so. Meanwhile, the idea of “entrepreneurship” has become synonymous with Silicon Valley-style startups—when, in reality, acquisition can be just as entrepreneurial, and often far more sustainable for the communities we care about.

What we’re building together at NMC is more ambitious: a fund grounded in values, not just valuations. We share a belief that meaningful returns don’t have to come at the expense of the people and places that matter most.

Our work together is rooted in a shared frustration with business-as-usual capital—and a long-running conversation about how we might do things differently. That alignment is why this partnership exists, and why we believe it’s uniquely positioned to help shift what’s possible.

Two Forces, One Opportunity

Two major forces shaped the architecture of what we built:

First, we’re living through a monumental generational transfer of small business ownership: The Silver Tsunami. Millions of business owners, many of whom built essential neighborhood institutions over decades, are retiring. However, unlike large enterprises, most of these businesses lack a clear succession plan. Some will be passed to family or sold to competitors. But many will simply shut down, taking jobs, wealth, and community stability with them.

Second, we know the next generation of operators is out there, but traditional capital pathways aren’t built to serve them. Whether due to geography, educational pedigree, or other barriers, too many capable entrepreneurs are locked out before they even begin. That’s not just unjust, it’s inefficient. We’re leaving value on the table.

What if we could bridge those two realities: by helping emerging entrepreneurs step into ownership of proven businesses and giving retiring owners a meaningful path to exit?

That’s the opportunity we saw. But unlocking it at scale required something more than a good idea; it required a new structure to support it.

What We Built: A Structure That Doesn’t Fit a Mold

To turn this opportunity into a scalable strategy, we needed a vehicle that didn’t yet exist. Existing fund models, whether venture, private equity, or catalytic capital, weren’t designed to do what we were setting out to do. They each carried assumptions that didn’t fit:

• Venture assumes high failure rates and seeks outsized wins, often requiring entrepreneurs to chase exponential scale at the expense of durability.
• Private equity favors operational control and consolidation, rarely accessible to new operators without their own capital or pedigree.
• Grant-based or philanthropic structures, while useful for pilot programs, typically can’t sustain commercial returns or support wealth transfer.

We weren’t trying to retrofit any one of these models but rather build a bridge between them. One that could meet the needs of mission-aligned investors and underrepresented entrepreneurs, while complying with the same financial and legal rigor as any mainstream investment vehicle.

Together, we co-designed a blended capital structure built to:

• Aggregates funding across philanthropic, CRA, corporate, and private sources
• Deploys self-liquidating equity in place of traditional ownership or high-pressure returns
• Invests in real, cash-flowing businesses with clear succession plans
• Mitigates risk for entrepreneurs, employees, and investors alike

Why It’s Working: Making the Trail as We Walk It

This fund has been built through testing, iterating, and refining—always anchored to purpose.

We often describe this work as carving a trail up a mountain. It’s slow, sometimes messy, and full of unexpected barriers: from regulatory complexity to political headwinds to skepticism around new models. But every time we make the path clearer, others can follow more easily.

We’ve already seen this take shape:

• Operators who never imagined ownership was within reach are now running profitable, community-rooted companies
• Retiring founders are exiting with pride, knowing their employees and legacies are being stewarded, not stripped
• Investors are earning consistent, risk-mitigated returns without relying on hypergrowth or high-stakes exits

We’re not chasing unicorns or betting on lottery-ticket outcomes. Instead, we’re building a model where consistent doubles and triples, across dozens of deals, add up to something far more enduring. We’re proving that inclusive ownership can be both investable and repeatable.

We were honored to see this work recognized by the Grunin Prize for Legal Innovation—but external validation has never been the goal. What matters most is that the model is working and getting stronger with each iteration.

What’s Next: From Model to Movement

The fund structure we’ve created is already showing what’s possible when capital meets community, when the tools of finance are used not to gatekeep opportunity, but to unlock it. But we’re just getting started. What we’re proving can be replicated:

• By other investors seeking measurable returns alongside real impact
• By entrepreneurs ready to step into ownership
• And by retiring owners who care about the future of what they’ve built

This isn’t charity, and it’s not experimental. This is a commercially viable, legally rigorous strategy to transfer generational wealth, grow local economies, and expand who gets to own and operate successful businesses in this country. We’re calling in partners who believe in building the road as we go and investors who are aligned not just on returns, but on the belief that ownership is power, and power should be distributed more fairly.

Let’s build the next chapter of entrepreneurship, one acquisition at a time.

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About the Authors

Chintan Panchal is the Founder and Managing Partner of RPCK, a global impact law firm working with leading investors, funds, and entrepreneurs to structure innovative, scalable solutions that drive measurable change.

Kris Schumacher is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of New Majority Capital, an impact investment firm pioneering an inclusive approach to Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) by helping underrepresented entrepreneurs acquire and operate existing small businesses.