PE Fundraising
Private Equity Fundraising
PE fundraising timelines averaged 18.6 months in 2025. DPI is at historic lows. LPs are concentrating commitments with fewer managers. The GPs who still close on time aren't the ones with the best pitch decks. They're the ones who reach the right allocator, at the right institution, through the right relationship path. That's what we build.
LP Decision Framework
What LPs Evaluate Before Writing a Check
DPI. That's the conversation now. DPI as a share of total PE AUM hit 6 percent in the 12 months ended June 2025. The 2015-2019 average was 16 percent. LPs have been staring at unrealized paper gains for years while capital calls keep coming. They're done with MOIC projections on a slide.
After DPI, it's team. Not the team bio page. The actual attribution. Which partner sourced the top-quartile deals? Is that person still at the firm? Did the fund's returns come from one outlier or consistent execution across the portfolio? If your best deal was sourced by someone who left after Fund II, LPs will know.
Operational value creation is the third filter. Not the slide that says "we have an operating partner." The evidence. Revenue growth post-acquisition versus pre-acquisition. Margin expansion with specific drivers. McKinsey's 2026 Global Private Markets Report found that operational value creation is now the primary source of returns. The days of buying at 6x, relevering, and selling at 8x on multiple expansion alone are finished.
We build your LP target universe around these realities. Every allocator in your program is classified by mandate authority, check size range, strategy fit, and current allocation status. The outreach references specific trust paths between your team and each target. Not a mail merge. A credible introduction grounded in mapped relationships.
Mandate-Level Targeting
LP Targeting Below the Organization Level
CalPERS has a private equity team, a real estate team, and an infrastructure team. Different mandates, different check sizes, different IC processes, different people. Sending your buyout fund pitch to the real estate allocator at CalPERS isn't a near miss. It's a wasted first impression that doesn't get undone.
We classify every institutional contact at the mandate level. A pension fund CIO with PE discretion is a different target than the consultant who recommends managers to that same pension's board. A family office principal who writes $25M checks directly is a different target than the multi-family office advisor who recommends managers to 40 families. Both matter. They require different approaches.
For PE specifically, the LP universe segments by strategy appetite. A lower-middle-market buyout fund ($50-150M checks) maps to different allocators than a growth equity fund or a sector-specific fund. Pensions with $500M PE programs and $50M minimum commitments won't look at your $200M fund. But their former CIO who's now at a $2B family office might. We know the difference.
Process and Timeline
What 18.6 Months Actually Looks Like
PE fundraising timelines shortened for the first time since 2022. North American funds averaged 18.6 months in 2025, down from a record high the prior year. Still long. Still painful for a GP who'd rather be doing deals.
The pre-marketing phase runs 6 to 12 months before official launch. Informal conversations, gauge interest, refine positioning. Then the long tail: pension fund and endowment IC cycles. Family offices can move faster but they're a smaller share of institutional capital.
When you get busy running the portfolio, the follow-up cadence breaks and warm prospects go cold.
We handle the full cycle. Outreach launches within 3 to 4 weeks. Responses are classified by intent and routed accordingly. High-intent responses escalate immediately. Timing-based responses enter a monitored queue. You engage when there's a conversation to have. Everything that precedes it is handled.
Why This Isn't a Placement Agent
Placement agents work their own relationships. They charge a success fee on the new commitments they bring of about 1% to 2.5%, most often 1.5% to 2% (2.5% to 3% for first-time funds), paid in installments with interest, plus a retainer and a tail of most often 12 months (Cooley, October 2026). On a $200M fund where the agent brings $150M of new commitments, a 2 percent fee is $3M, about nine months of a 2 percent management fee. That comes directly from your management fees.
The structural problem is worse than the economics. The senior partner who closed the deal moves on. Junior staff do the actual work. When it's over, the relationships stay with the agent. The tail provision means you still owe fees on LPs who commit after termination. And some public pensions won't invest in agent-marketed funds at all.
We charge a fixed monthly fee. No success fee. No tail. All outreach runs under your brand. All LP data transfers to you permanently. The intelligence compounds across fund cycles because you own it. Full comparison: placement agent fees breakdown.
Frequently Asked
PE Fundraising Questions
PE fundraising timelines averaged 18.6 months in 2025, down from a record high the prior year. First-time PE funds average 17 to 24 months. The biggest variable is DPI: funds that can show realized returns compress timelines by 3 to 6 months compared to funds still sitting on unrealized paper gains.
Three things in this order: DPI (distributions to paid-in capital), team stability, and operational value creation capability. DPI as a share of total PE AUM was 6 percent in the 12 months ended June 2025, compared with a 2015-2019 average of 16 percent. LPs are tired of paper returns. They want money back. After DPI, they look at attribution (which deals drove returns and who led them), team continuity across fund cycles, and whether operational improvement is an institutional capability or a marketing slide.
Public pension funds remain the largest PE allocators by dollar volume. Endowments and foundations run the highest PE allocation percentages (25 to 35 percent of total portfolio). Family offices have become increasingly significant, particularly for sub-$500M funds where institutional pensions have minimum check size requirements. Fund of funds provide access for smaller GPs but add a fee layer. Corporate pensions are declining as a source due to de-risking trends.
Three structural differences. First, economics: fixed monthly fee versus a success fee on the new commitments the agent brings of about 1% to 2.5%, most often 1.5% to 2% (2.5% to 3% for first-time funds), paid in installments (Cooley, October 2026) and charged once per commitment (Morgan Lewis). On a $200M fund where the agent brings $150M of new commitments, a 2 percent fee is $3M. Second, conflicts: we don't run competing mandates. Third, ownership: every LP relationship, contact record, and interaction log transfers to you permanently. No tail provisions.
Yes. First-time PE funds hit a decade-low in 2025. Premier placement agents mostly won't take small first funds, because the fee arithmetic doesn't justify their effort and many keep minimum mandate sizes (Cooley, October 2026). We charge the same fixed fee regardless of fund size. The same infrastructure that runs a $500M raise runs a $75M raise. Emerging managers represent 44.7 percent of fund closings but capture only 15.7 percent of capital raised. They need systematic LP access more than anyone.
Related
Learn more about our fundraising programs and how they work across all strategies.
Read what LPs actually want in 2026 and how long it takes to raise a fund.
Compare our fundraising programs vs. placement agents.
Strategy-specific fundraising: venture capital, hedge funds, real estate, private credit.
Explore all fundraising research and the PE glossary.
Your next fund deserves a better process than cold emails and recycled LP lists.
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