Rocky Mountain ETA Ecosystem
Acquisition is being taught, not just done.
A decade ago, buying a business was something you worked out alone. It is now on the syllabus at universities across this region.
Where it started here.
CU Boulder's Deming Center runs an entrepreneurship through acquisition course at the Leeds School of Business.
It is taught by Shannon Jones, who came to it from the industry rather than from academia and speaks at the conference. The course was catalysed by an MBA student who wanted it to exist, which is a fair description of how most of this ecosystem has been built.
That course is a large part of why RMETA exists at all. The conference grew out of the same work, and the pilot became a regional collaboration.
The Deming Center
The courses at CU Boulder.
Two graduate courses at the Leeds School of Business, taken in sequence. The first covers the whole arc of an acquisition; the second turns it into a search you could actually run.
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MBAX 6155
Entrepreneurship Through AcquisitionExplores entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA) of a company, rather than starting one from scratch. Readings and class discussions will include how to purchase a business, finance an acquisition, and operate and grow a business. Also, sourcing and identifying acquisition opportunities, strategic, operational, legal, and financial due diligence, valuation, tax considerations, raising capital, structuring and closing transactions, post-closing integration, managing and exiting the acquisition, and prototypes for pursuing including search fund and fundless deal sponsor models.
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MBAX 6156
Advanced Entrepreneurship Through AcquisitionBuilding on the foundational concepts of ETA I, ETA II is a hands-on, introspective, and execution-oriented seminar designed to help students develop a personal search strategy, articulate a clear point of view on the ETA landscape, and assess their readiness to launch. Students will leave this course with a personalized, investor-credible Search Readiness Dossier that includes a refined thesis, an aligned capital strategy, a preliminary financial model, and a statement of intent about their ETA path.
Where to look across the region.
Six universities collaborate on RMETA. Explore their entrepreneurship centres and current academic offerings directly.
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Students
The cheapest way to find out whether you want this career.
A day in a room with people who have actually done it, before you commit years to finding out the slow way.
Teaching this? Tell us.
If you run an acquisition course, a search practicum, or anything close to it at a university in this region, we would like it listed here. The point of the directory is that a student should be able to find it without already knowing it exists.
Faculty are also a standing part of the conference itself, developing research, building courses, and connecting academic programs to the people actually doing this work.
Get in touchStudents are part of this room.
Every year a good share of the conference is students working out whether this is the career they want. Saturday, November 7, 2026.