Lot of Princeton guys, they did an info session there and was super uninspiring if u ask me. Mid market PE in pretty weird industries, seemed like pretty good WLB and had a diversity of majors and stuff but just didn’t seem like they were on an exceptional trajectory as a firm. Would not want to start my career there….

 

Don't think its exactly the worst place to start a career given I've heard they do expose junior staff to a lot from the get-go. Ideally, this would be a good thing to keep in mind especially if your goal is to be holistically strong.

 

Curious what makes you say they invest in “weird industries”? Looks like a lot of services roll-ups and software investments which seems pretty standard.

Also it looks like they’ve doubled their fund size every 2 years for the last 4 funds. What makes you say they’re not on a good trajectory?

 
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I work for an LP that did DD work on them last year. They focus only on software and business services companies and have a funky strategy - basically, they create something called 'aggregators' that are thematic. These aggregators are a little bit like conglomerates, they have a few sub-platforms e.g. child care, government transportation, insurance, logistics, etc. where they will acquire very small companies (like sub 1m EBITDA) focused on these sub-platform into the aggregator. The aggregator has their own finance, HR, M&A teams and so these aggregators run like their own mini conglomerate with pretty independent decision making ability to acquire targets. So you can think of it like a massive platform at the aggregator level with dozens of add-on acquisitions, like buy and build on steroids. For exits, they'll exit sub-platform by sub-platform and they might choose to retain the aggregator (with maybe 1 vertical left) and roll it into a continuation fund. 

The idea is to leverage their firm resources to squeeze value out of subscale companies and have them benefit from professionalisation from the Alpine platform and also inserting their own executives at both sub-platform and small add-on company level. They have this executives programme for fresh MBA grads and they'll parachute these guys into their portcos. 

m8 is right - their returns have been spectacular from Fund IV onwards, with returns in the 4-5x net TVPI range with good DPIs too. They've scaled extremely fast too, from a 250m Fund IV in 2011 to a 3.5b fund for Fund IX.

Not sure about exact comp numbers, but all team members get a cut of carried interest after their first year at Alpine, though allocations are likely small since Graham Weaver still holds a large percentage of carry and their portfolio team is stupidly large (like 50+). 

IMO it's a unique strategy and would likely be good exposure esp. at portco ops level, but really unsure if their strategy can still work at larger and larger fund sizes. The number of add-ons they do is mind-blowing, and it suggests that it will eventually blow up in their faces. Though not sure when it will happen (if ever).

 

Hey thanks for this, this probably the best explanation I have seen. Based on your experience I was also curious if you had any perspective on one rock capital? I know they are raising a 3.25 bill fund. Isn’t that unusual given that it took alpine almsot a decade+ and multiple funds to get that?

 

I haven't heard of One Rock, but from what I see they've roughly doubled their fund size every three years which is pretty common for good-performing funds. So yeah, not that unusual.

Lots of GPs have the incentive, especially if their first fund does well, to raise a large amount of money ASAP to earn management fees. If One Rock does raise USD3.25b that's USD65m per annum for the next ten years on one fund alone assuming 2% management fee on committed, that's a hell lot of money

 

Think this is pretty spot on. Also reviewed them as an LP. Graham Weaver is smashed it

I’d struggle to find a fund with better consistency / and conviction in their strategy. They’re likely to hit 3x net going forward and returns are top quartile

 

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