Friend Booting up Structured Equity Fund - Placement Agents?

Friend of mine is looking to boot up a fund in the ~$50m range. He was a lawyer, and then founded a successful co he scaled very cleanly & sold recently, net low 8 figures for himself.

Now looking to offer financing to LMM businesses in the same range. I really love his strategy (same industry)...convinced he will crush it as our industry is underserved. It's relatively new so sophisticated lenders familiar with the space don't exist yet. Think of the way lenders treated SaaS in the 00s :)

Anyways, how normal would it be to use a placement agent for something this size? Good signal? Negative signal? Who should he be talking to?

4 Comments
 

My two cents is that you are going to have a tough time getting a placement agent to work on $50M size, or at least a reputable one. Simply doesn't seem worth the time for the low fee potential. Obviously raising the fund without the placement agent will look better, but not everyone is capable of doing that. How well connected is your friend/does he have contacts in his network that can stroke $5-$15M checks for his fund? 

 

My two cents is that you are going to have a tough time getting a placement agent to work on $50M size, or at least a reputable one. Simply doesn't seem worth the time for the low fee potential. Obviously raising the fund without the placement agent will look better, but not everyone is capable of doing that. How well connected is your friend/does he have contacts in his network that can stroke $5-$15M checks for his fund? 

I agree, seems hard to attract a placement agent that it would be worth the effort for.

IMO, he could raise $$$ on his own quite easily excluding whatever he ends up putting in as GP commit.

He was telling me he isn't bullish on being to do it though for whatever reason. I'm a little surprised given he has an awesome looking resume - top school, VC funded startup, good exit, etc...

Maybe just grabbing a preqin sub and working his way down a list of family offices?

 

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