305 Posts. Here's What Actually Matters, By Fund Stage.
Yeah, that's a lot of posts on fundraising
I’ve written a lot for fund managers over the years.
I’ve done interviews, benchmarks, breakdowns, three years and 305 pieces worth. Most of it, maybe you’ve never seen.
So instead of digging through the archive yourself, here’s the cut that matters based on where you actually are in your raise.
Just added a really cool new section to my personal website called Toolkit.
It contains our two popular diagnostic tools for fund managers who are not closing their fund quickly (GP Velocity) and (Site Audit)
Fund I, no track record yet: (70% of fund managers do not get beyond this stage)
Your credentials are worthless: here’s what LPs actually want: This piece explains how the skills that made you great in banking, law, medicine, or startups may now be working against you
The PDF placement agents pray you don’t read: This one explains what most first- and second-time GPs actually miss
The Chainsmokers’ Alex Pall on his own fundraise, “no-track-record optimism to running the institutional gauntlet”. Chainsmokers are one of my favorite musical artists. I really enjoyed talking with Alex.
GP Velocity™, the free diagnostic, and the Free LP Audit, both benchmarked against 318,450 indexed Form D filings. Start here if you haven’t already. Yes, we have over 5 million rows of Form D data.
Fund II-III, proving it wasn’t luck:
Cindy Padnos on what second-time managers keep getting wrong. Really insightful piece. Cindy is a real leader in the space.
The system to secure 1-4 LP meetings a day. We will go deeper into this when I return from vacation on July 20.
Why LPs ghost after the first meeting: It happens a lot. You can actually talk about ghosting in the first meeting. You can also come up with ways to make sure they do not ghost you, like mandate matching. We go into detail on this. Office hours this week and last week went deep on this. If you want to attend office hours, go here.
Fund III+, chasing anchor checks:
How to land a $40-93M check from a major endowment, the Fund III/IV anchor strategy series. This is fun and it takes about 24-36 months.
Beezer Clarkson and Ted Seides, both allocator-side, fund-of-funds-caliber perspective. Two of the smartest folks in PE+VC/alts.
All of it, organized properly, is here: the toolkit.
Housekeeping: I’m out on vacation through the 20th, so no Monday office hours next week. Back to normal on the 20th.
One more thing, when I’m back: there’s something new I’ve been sitting on.
Worth the wait.
Keep it real.
-ajm