Fundraising is the first activity qualifying the managerial process.
Fundraising is very tough, for
any kind of managers in any country of the world.
Because basically in the fundraising process, managers or general partners
have to convince investor to commit their money for a very long time.
If you remember in a closed-end fund or in a venture capital fund in the US or
UK, when investors decide to commit their money,
basically, for ten years, they cannot do anything
because the money is managed by the managers, and they cannot exit from the investment.
So, it's a very relevant and crucial decision for the investor.
For this reason, fundraising is a very well organized activity,
which is based basically on four different items.
The first item is represented by the so-called creation or launching of
the business idea. The second activity is represented by the selling job.
The third activity is represented by the debt raising.
And the last one is represented hopefully by closing.
Let's start with the creation or launching of the business idea.
The creation or launching of the business idea means to start convincing
investors to commit their money to the vehicle of private equity.
The creation of a business idea starts with something which is completely informal and
this informal activity is named testing the waters.
Testing the waters means basically to understand on a very confidential and
informal way, if investors want to commit their money to a certain vehicle of
private equity. Just to give an idea let’s imagine
if I want to start a closed-end fund focused on a startup,
Before launching the activity, it's fundamental to understand,
if the community of investors I would like to contact,
really want to invest in a startup.
If their sentiment is positive to investing in a startup, I go on;
otherwise, I have to change my business idea, and
to position, into another cluster,
my close end fund.
After testing the waters, if testing of waters is positive,
the creation of the business idea could become a bit more formal.
And typically managers or general partners have to write an info memorandum.
An info memorandum is a document,
it’s a set of slides in which managers
write all the characteristics of the vehicle they want to launch.
That means, for example, they have to declare what is the amount of the fund.
100 million Euros, 200 million Euros.
What is the mechanism of carried interest? What is the amount of management fee?
What are the criteria to manage the portfolio?
So there are a lot of items that qualify the business proposition
of the private equity investor, at the end of the creation of the business idea,
if, again, the sentiment of the investor is positive.
If we stay in the European Union, the asset management company
has to go to the supervisor and ask for an approval to start the activity.
In that very moment, the info memorandum is transformed
into an internal code of activity.
While on the contrary, in the US and
UK since venture capital funds don't need approval
in this case the info memorandum is simply just transformed into an LPA:
that means in a limited partnership agreement.
Even if the content is absolutely the same the little profile is different because
an internal code of activity is a document approved by a supervisor, an LPA,
is a comfort, but however, if managers are able to get to this moment,
they have a formal document or contract in their hands,
they can start the so-called selling job which is the second phase of activity.
Selling job means to try to convince
investors, in this case, not to give an opinion,
not to understand what is their sentiment, but
in the selling job the idea and the aim is to try to convince investors
to sign a document which is a letter of commitment.
In the letter of commitment,
there’s written what the amount of money is a certain investor wants to commit
to the close end fund, or to the venture capital fund.
Selling job typically is something, again, very confidential and private.
In most cases, is based on one-to-one meetings, because investors are hight
net worth individuals, or insurance companies, or investment banks,
but in some cases the selling job could be organized also into meetings;
not exactly in road shows like happens for IPOs, but
in meetings where many investors are involved.
If we stay in the UK or US, where a venture capital
funds can leverage, while closed-end funds cannot leverage,
in this case we have a third activity and
the third activity is represented by debt raising.
Debt raising means in this case to try to convince the banking system
to give money, in this case, not as limited partners, but just simply as a financier.
As you can imagine it's very tough, because on one hand you have to
convince investors to give money to your vehicle and
to give money they want to know if the banking system is ready to give debt.
On the other hand, you have to convince the banking system to give money to you
through debt, and they want to know if the limited partners are in.
Obviously, the bigger the reputation of the general partner is,
the easier the job is.
On the contrary, if the general partners are not very well known and
their track record is not incredible, it can be very difficult to
convince both the banking system and limited partners to commit their money.
However, if fundraising is successful in one and a half years in Europe
or in one year in the US and UK,
we get to the last phase where the last phase is closing.
Closing means that the private equity
firm was able to collect the entire amount of money.
That's quite important because with the closing activity, we come to an end of
the fundraising, and that very moment represents time 0.
At time 0 the PEI can start investing its money.
In many cases the closing might not be lucky and in this case
means the PE firm was not able to collect the entire amount of money.
In this case closing has got another meaning as you can imagine.
Closing means that we stop activity and
we are not able to launch the PE investments.