PE fundraising is a pipeline, and the thing about a pipeline is that it ends in a record: every prospective investor a general partner meets is a row with an owner and a stage, and at the close the rows that said yes become commitments the fund will call against for a decade. This page is about that pipeline from the fund's side, what the record has to hold at each stage, and why the row that was a prospect must become the row that holds the commitment rather than being retyped on closing day. It is not about finding investors, which has its own page here, and it uses the worked figures from this site's worksheets.
The stages, and what is known at each
First meeting: a name, an institution, who introduced them, and who at the fund owns the conversation. Data room: the investor's diligence has started and the documents they asked for are logged. Soft circle: a number has been mentioned and it is not a commitment. Legal: the subscription agreement is with their counsel. Closed: the commitment is signed and the number is fixed. Each stage adds a fact to the same row, and the record's job is to hold the row through all five without anybody keeping a second list.
The soft circle is not a commitment, and the record should say so
Fundraising is reported internally in soft circles, and a fund that treats them as commitments finds its first close smaller than its spreadsheet. The record holds the soft-circled amount as an indication with a date, separate from the commitment field, which stays empty until the agreement is signed. When the fund sizes its first close it sums the signed commitments, and the difference between that and the circled total is the honest measure of how far the raise has to go.
The close: the prospect becomes the commitment
On the day of a close the rows that signed become commitments, and everything the fund will do for ten years is a fraction of those numbers. On this site's worked example an investor who committed five million dollars will, at a ten percent call, be sent a notice for five hundred thousand and left with two million seven hundred and fifty thousand uncalled after their fourth call. If the prospect row and the commitment row are the same row, the close is a status change; if they are different products, every investor is retyped and the conversation history is lost. That is the whole argument for keeping PE fundraising in the investor record rather than in a separate pipeline tool.
After the close: the pipeline for the next fund starts the same day
The investors who committed are the first prospects for the next fund, and their experience of the calls and the letters over the next three years is the raise. A record that keeps what each investor was sent and asked is the next fund's pipeline already half built. That is why the investor record and the fundraising pipeline are one list at different stages, and why a fund that keeps them apart raises its second fund from a spreadsheet it has to rebuild.
Questions people ask about pe fundraising
Is PE fundraising software different from a deal CRM?
The deal CRM's pipeline is companies; the fundraising pipeline is investors. Platforms built for firms with both teams carry both; below that size the investor record holds the fundraising pipeline as prospects with no commitment yet.
What should the record hold about a placement agent's introductions?
Who introduced each investor and on what terms, on the investor's row, because the agent's fee is computed from the commitments that closed through them and the fund will need that list at the close.
Does Rapportvo find investors?
No. It holds the investors a fund is already talking to, from first meeting to commitment, and never sells introductions, lists or leads.