Starting Private Equity Fund

professional profile

May 19, 2022

by a professional from San Jose State University in Redwood City, CA, USA

Has anyone started their own Private Equity Fund?

I've done operations consulting for many years. I'm looking to acquire businesses and operate.

It appears to be more efficient to raise capital, acquire businesses and manage them.

Looking to networking with PE Founders.

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commentor profile
Reply by a professional
from University of Texas at Austin in Houston, TX, USA
I started one (and exited) almost four years ago at this point so would be happy to chat about this in more detail. I would agree that it's more "efficient" in the sense that once you raise capital, you can focus purely on deal flow, acquisitions, etc. and you can really take advantage of economies of scale and pool resources together across various companies in your fund. The difficult part is getting to the stage where investors will back you as LPs because as the GP of a PE fund, you typically have full authority to deploy capital as you see fit within the parameters of the investment thesis. So, typically, most people start with doing deal by deals and raising for each deal (this is what I did) as more investors are willing to invest that way before they put complete faith in you and back your fund, which they'll do once you've proven your ability to bring them favorable returns over the course of a couple of deals.

Also, a lot of running a PE fund becomes about macro-strategy in terms of acquisitions and your day-to-day does change quite a bit compared to just doing deal by deal, or at least mine did. Shoot me a message or email me redacted if you'd like to talk more!
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Reply by a searcher
from New York University in New York, NY, USA
Hey Pete. Would love to chat when you have time. I'm a former ops consultant and currently own and operate a small business in specialty healthcare and retail healthcare. I finish BSchool next year and my plan is to acquire businesses and operate them at a "fund level" instead of focusing solely on one business. Let me know if you're interested in discussing/brainstorming at some point.
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