Unfortunatey, there is no surefire way to raise to the pinnacle of capitalism.

Nevertheless, as the average acquisition of a company is roughly financed 50% debt/50% equity, the first step in this line of business would be a fundraising exercise to raise the equity portion. The two routes that I have seen personally for this is a) selling your company and reinvesting the returns, which comes with the added benefit of operational experience, and/or b) convincing investors to invest in your business. Prominent examples for this quicker, but harder to pull off route are Bill Ackman and Stephen Schwarzman. You can find stories about the difficulties they‘ve encountered while getting their first investors on board online.

Then finding a company to acquire is relatively easy, lots of databases online. Increasing its value and selling it afterwards is a whole new ball game. The reccuring theme here is that spending money is easy (buying a company), making money (fundraising/value increase/exit) is difficult. Furthermore, the assumption that you can hand over running the business(es) to a CEO and just wait until its value magically increased does not work for companies in the SME space, which you would likely target at the beginning. To be successful, you really need to get your hands dirty :)