Private Equity Fundraising

Hey - I work in sales at a private equity fund. I help fundraise for our funds. I mostly work with portfolio managers and large investment advisors.
Any advise from people here as to how you have been successful in a fundraising role at a private equity fund?

 
Best Response

Capital raising can be pretty cool, but it's also pretty niche. You're not doing DD on investments themselves. Instead, you're going to be doing DD on investors and on the PE funds themselves. You need to be able to match up the right investors with the right funds. If you constantly bombard the same investors with requests for every fund you know of, they're going to tell you to fuck off.

As such, you are going to have to get to understand the investment profiles of the people you're dealing with (probably endowment fund managers). You need to understand where they currently have money, how much money they are looking to invest in PE each year, and which funds best fit their portfolio. To sell the fund to the investor, you're going to need to understand the broad investment strategy of the PE fund. How are they going to make money? How is the risk they take different from that which the investor already has in his portfolio?

And why would they want to deal with you? So, you're going to need to manage a lot of relationships. In the end, that's the most important and valuable part of your job, since you can teach anyone to crunch numbers in Excel, but you can't really teach good people skills. Also, those relationships are transferrable. And you can make a lot of money raising capital for hedge funds, venture capital firms, and private equity shops.

And it's not that hard. It's risk-free money. You don't have to take punts to make cash.

 

Fundraising will allow you to interface directly with GPs - this is great exposure. You will be involved with putting together PPM's, which is equivalent to a CIM that you've likely produced before if you're coming from an IB background - this will pretty much cover everything about the fund, strategy and a term sheet.

As others have said, it is very investor relations/marketing oriented, so make sure you have a desire for this role. In addition, PE funds groups also are segmented by different verticals within PE: distressed, buyout, late-stage venture, and credit.

Work life balance compared to a banking role will be great. However, pay is much lower than banking.

There is some cyclicality to the volume of projects, as fundraising is tied to the markets and asset allocations for LPs (e.g. CalPERS just announced their lowering their allocation % to PE); but there are still many funds who will be raising a new fund in the next 12-18 months (this would be a good question to ask, if you land an interview).

 

PE fundraising interacts with investors, therefore its a more biz deve salesy role. This is a niche role that requires someone who understands the fundraising/introduction cycle. When a fund is not marketing or raising a new fund, it's a cushey job, but when you're fundraising its a high pressure around the clock job.

 

Hey guys, I have some questions regarding fundraising. If you have a target of let's say $6bn for a new fund. Is it okay if you just raise $3bn? Also I think the time limit is one year and half to try to raise a new fund in Europe but why would some firms cancel their attempts after just 6-7 months? Thank you!

 

Unless you're KKR Carlyle Blackstone for a first time fund, your $6 bln target will likely get you shoveled aside because that fund size is way too big. but understand that it's not the core of your question.

If your target is some number but you only ended up raising half, that does not look good on you bc you either aimed too high and investors didnt bite or market condition wasnt good. Either way you end up having to explain why when you fundraise next.

On canceling fund raise, it's really painful to sit through meetings trying to pitch something that nobody wants/has capital for bc of a 2008 maybe. If it's obvious to a manager that he/she will never be able to raise a meaningful amount, time to cancel and re-evaluate before wasting time and money on travel and placement agents.

 

Where exactly do you apply if you want fundraising/marketer kind of role? I thought these were done primarily by partners of the firms. Are there graduate opportunities as well?

I love my bananas!
 

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I love my bananas!
 

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