Tools you can put to work this afternoon

Firm & team

Describe the succession plan for key personnel and the economic retention mechanisms in place.

What an LP hears: Whether key-person risk is a governance afterthought or a designed system — vesting, no-fault divestment, named successors.

Firm & team

How are investment professionals compensated, and what is their co-investment commitment?

What an LP hears: Alignment that costs the team something. A number, signed, beats any sentence about 'strong alignment'.

Firm & team

How many investment professionals have left the firm in the past five years, and where did they go?

What an LP hears: Honest attrition with reasons. An unexplained zero worries LPs more than two explained departures.

Firm & team

What is the ownership structure of the firm, and are any stakes held by third parties?

What an LP hears: Who ultimately owns the GP, and whether a third-party shareholder could one day sit across from LPs.

Firm & team

Describe your fundraise to date: anchor investors, closing dates and pipeline.

What an LP hears: Momentum that can be verified. Names of anchors (if permitted), dated closes, and a pipeline that matches the strategy.

Strategy

What is your sourcing edge, and how is it demonstrably different from the incumbents in your segment?

What an LP hears: A repeatable mechanism, not adjectives. Deals sourced through the edge vs through banks.

Strategy

Describe a deal you passed on and why.

What an LP hears: Discipline. The question tests whether the process says no, not whether the story sounds smart.

Strategy

How does your strategy behave in a downturn — which assumptions break first?

What an LP hears: Whether the team has stress-tested its own model, not just borrowed last cycle's deck.

Strategy

What is your capacity constraint, and why is this fund size right for the strategy?

What an LP hears: That the fund size was derived from the pipeline, not reverse-engineered from a target multiple.

Strategy

Which part of your strategy has changed since your last fund, and what did you learn?

What an LP hears: A GP that updates. Sameness pitched as conviction is a yellow flag after a strange vintage.

Track record

Provide realized deal-level performance: entry, exit, MOIC and IRR, including fees and carry.

What an LP hears: Net-of-fee numbers, consistently computed. Gross-only answers in a track record table end conversations.

Track record

Which deals were completed at a prior firm, and what was your personal role in each?

What an LP hears: Attribution. LPs will triangulate with the prior firm's own disclosures — overclaiming is detectable.

Track record

Describe your worst-performing investment and what changed as a result.

What an LP hears: A specific loss, owned plainly, with a process change attached. Perfection reads as curation.

Track record

How do you calculate IRR and TVPI — including for partially realized positions and continuation vehicles?

What an LP hears: One methodology, stated once, applied everywhere — ILPA-aligned valuation and reporting language.

Track record

What was the largest single-position loss across the track record, as a share of fund NAV?

What an LP hears: Concentration honesty. The math will show it anyway; volunteering it buys credibility.

Fund terms

Walk through your fee and carry structure, including the management fee step-downs and the carry hurdle.

What an LP hears: Whether terms are competitive for the strategy and vintage — and whether the GP can explain them without the counsel.

Fund terms

What GP commitment will you make, and in what form?

What an LP hears: A percentage of the fund or a meaningful absolute number, actually funded — not pledged.

Fund terms

Describe your key-person, no-fault and investment-divestment provisions.

What an LP hears: Standard thresholds (e.g. key person at a named percentage of commitments) with sensible cure mechanics.

Fund terms

How are deal and fund expenses capped and disclosed, and what is the co-investment fee position?

What an LP hears: Broken-deal cost allocation and co-invest at carry or free — the fine print LPs' counsel reads first.

Fund terms

What is your stance on the ILPA reporting and fee-reporting templates?

What an LP hears: Adoption or a reasoned deviation. Silence on ILPA alignment is itself an answer.

Operations

Who is your fund administrator, auditor and custodian, and when were they appointed?

What an LP hears: Institutional-quality service providers in place before the DDQ, not 'in selection'.

Operations

Describe your fund's cash management and capital call mechanics, including notice periods.

What an LP hears: Ten-business-day calls, a third-party bank account, no GP access to unfunded commitments.

Operations

What insurance coverage does the management company carry (D&O, E&O, cyber)?

What an LP hears: Coverage sized to AUM and held at the right entities — an easy, cheap signal of operational maturity.

Operations

Describe your business continuity and cybersecurity arrangements.

What an LP hears: A real BCP with named systems and a tested backup; a paragraph of reassurance fails this line.

Operations

Which service providers perform fund valuation, and what is the GP's role in it?

What an LP hears: Independent valuation at least annually, with the process and dates named.

Compliance

Is the manager registered with the SEC or the relevant national regulator, and under what exemptions?

What an LP hears: A clear regulatory map — AIFMD marketing passports, NFA/SEC status, and who the compliance officer is.

Compliance

Describe any regulatory examinations, inquiries or sanctions in the past ten years.

What an LP hears: Full disclosure with outcomes. Undisclosed items surface in LP background checks, every time.

Compliance

How do you monitor and manage conflicts of interest across funds and vehicles?

What an LP hears: Named conflicts (allocation, co-invest, fees) with a written policy and a real example of it applied.

Compliance

What is your side letter and MFN policy?

What an LP hears: A constrained side letter framework with MFN mechanics LPs' counsel can accept without bespoke negotiation.

Compliance

Describe your AML/KYC program and the parties responsible for it.

What an LP hears: Outsourced or in-house, but written, dated and actually run at onboarding — not a policy PDF.

Reporting

What reports do you provide, at what frequency, and within how many days of period end?

What an LP hears: Quarterly unaudited within 45–60 days, audited annuals within 90–120, aligned to the ILPA template.

Reporting

Do you report in line with the ILPA reporting template, including fee and expense disclosure?

What an LP hears: Yes — or a stated roadmap. 'Template on request' is a soft no.

Reporting

Provide a sample quarterly report and annual letter (redacted).

What an LP hears: Willingness to show the actual artifact. The quality of that sample is the single fastest IR read an LP gets.

Reporting

How do you communicate mark-to-market movements and write-downs to LPs between reports?

What an LP hears: A defined interim communication trigger, not ad-hoc calls when the news is bad.

Reporting

Describe your investor portal or reporting infrastructure.

What an LP hears: Whatever the system, it should be described operationally — what the LP receives, when, and how.

ESG

Do you have a written responsible-investment policy, and is the firm a UN PRI signatory?

What an LP hears: A policy with an owner and a review date; PRI signatory status stated plainly if true, and not implied if not.

ESG

How are ESG factors integrated into investment decision-making, with a concrete example?

What an LP hears: One deal, one diligence step, one document. Frameworks without examples score as decoration.

ESG

Do you report on SFDR / sustainability indicators relevant to your investors?

What an LP hears: The correct SFDR classification for the fund and the entity, with the website disclosures that go with it.

ESG

Describe any ESG incident or controversy in the portfolio and how it was handled.

What an LP hears: The same discipline as the losses question: owned, specific, with the remediation named.

ESG

How do you approach diversity within the team and your supplier base?

What an LP hears: Facts and programs rather than aspirations; LPs increasingly score the difference.