Mandate 06 · Raise
Fund formation
First-time and emerging managers, prepared on the two questions an allocator underwrites.
The position
By the second meeting an allocator has seen the strategy before. Lower middle market, operationally involved, sector-focused, entering below the multiples where auctions clear — the description is shared by a large number of managers raising at the same time.
The enquiry running underneath the meeting is whether the past returns are attributable to this person, and whether the deals they describe doing next can be got by anyone else.
How it runs
Attribution is documented to the standard an allocator applies: which deals were sourced, which were led, at what point in the process, who else was in the room. The references that carry weight are the ones with no stake in the answer, and assembling them is a documentation exercise rather than a performance one.
Access is evidenced with specifics — named channels, relationships that predate the fund, deals seen before they were marketed. Then the meetings are ordered. A manager who opens with the largest and most process-driven institutions collects a set of declines that has to be explained to everyone approached afterwards.
What it holds
A conversation that starts at the second question, and a first close that is not asked to stand in for a pipeline it cannot evidence.
One manager per strategy per vintage.