Would you sell equity in your future earnings (carry) for upfront cash today?

One of my favorite topics is income share agreements whereby students finance their tuition by essentially selling equity in their future earnings (e.g., entitlement to X% of salary for Y years with a >100% cap on the "principal" of the "loan") instead of taking on traditional debt.

It made me think about this question: would you sell a future portion of your earnings for some of that money upfront today?

Please do not consider any questions of gaming the system (e.g., I sell myself on being a PE MD, take the money, then go work at McDonalds). I don't think that's in the spirit of the conversation. but I do otherwise welcome any discussion on the logistics of how this would work.

For PE professionals, the benefit would be achieving liquidity early on when the balance of PE earnings come from locked up carried interest. This would effectively allow you to bring tomorrow's earnings into today, for a price.

Potential questions would be: At what price would you be willing to trade future earnings for present earnings? How do you value potential future earnings given an uncertain professional outcome in investing?

7 Comments
 

I'd sell 100% of my future earnings for 10 mil, short the company that bought them, then not work for a while. Once the company goes under, my agreement is void and my shorts are through the roof. Work smarter not harder monkeys 

 

Looked it up. Seems like you are right, except in this case, my argument wins every time. Those are just the rules

 

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