Building Fund I at Speed: Lineage’s Partnership with bunch

Lineage Partners is an emerging, forward-thinking investment platform founded by Carlo Schmid and John Schanbacher. Lineage is built around a structured, search-driven acquisition strategy and a high-velocity deployment approach. 

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As the first fund of searchers in Germany investing across Europe, Lineage combines the speed and ambition of the technology world with a grounded, long-term approach to acquiring and operating profitable traditional businesses. With patient capital and hands-on operational support, the firm aims to raise the bar for search funds across the European market.

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After a series of interim closings throughout 2024 and 2025, the team reached a defining milestone in December with the final close of LINEAGE – Fund of Searchers Fund I at €25M, hitting its hard cap and becoming oversubscribed following the addition of Danish investors.

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Closing the fund marked both the culmination of years of preparation and the beginning of a very different phase. Fundraising activities gave way to capital deployment, investor reporting, and regulatory obligations. Carlo relocated to Munich to oversee operations more closely, establishing a solid operational base and ensuring that execution on the ground matched the ambition behind the fund.

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Today, Lineage operates in full “deployment mode.” The pipeline of searchers and incoming opportunities is active, investment evaluation is ongoing, and business-as-usual operations are running smoothly. With a long-term mindset guiding investment decisions, the firm is focused on helping searchers step into ownership of profitable businesses and build enduring companies.

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At the same time, Lineage is already looking ahead, laying the groundwork for a larger Fund II launch and maintaining strong operator-first momentum as it scales.

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For Lineage, the successful final close of Fund I was a moment of celebration, but it also triggered a complex operational countdown. With the inclusion of Danish investors, the firm faced a rigorous 180-day requirement to deliver audited accounts to LPs by June. 

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As Carlo Schmid relocated to Munich to institutionalise operations, it became clear that the firm's growth was outstripping its fragmented setup. The team needed more than just a software tool; they needed a "finished work" approach that could handle the complexity of international investors with Invest Europe reporting while they focused on deploying capital into a full pipeline of searchers.

Lineage’s search for a partner led them to bunch, driven by the need for an integrated, end-to-end operating setup rather than a patchwork of separate providers. The goal was to avoid acting as an intermediary across administration, accounting, tax, and reporting, and instead run core functions within one coordinated environment.

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By bringing these processes onto a shared foundation including  bunchtax, a joint venture with Moore TK offering unified tax and accounting services under the bunch umbrella – Lineage gained a single, reliable source of truth for both managers and investors, reducing friction and enabling the team to stay focused on deploying capital.

Since partnering with bunch, Lineage has successfully run five capital calls and reporting cycles on the platform with total reliability. The partnership has empowered the team to maintain "business as usual" operations even during high-velocity deployment phases.

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By leveraging bunch’s specialised teams, Lineage has transformed its back office into a strategic asset. The audit preparation that once felt like a bottleneck is now a streamlined process, with the team on track to meet their reporting goals.

As Lineage looks forward toward the launch of Fund II, the partnership is set to deepen through bunch’s ambitious product roadmap. A key milestone will be the automation of the Jahresabschluss;the legally mandated annual financial statement comprising the balance sheet (Bilanz), profit and loss statement (Gewinn- und Verlustrechnung), and explanatory notes (Anhang) that will be finalized in the springtime. Traditionally, this is a daunting task where tax, accounting, and fund administration are treated as separate, manual silos.

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With bunch’s  infrastructure designed to collapse these barriers, reducing reporting times by up to 80%, Lineage is building its future on a foundation designed for the next generation of private markets.

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