The Haves and the Have-Nots: How Are Some Firms Beating The Fundraising Odds, While Others Fail Miserably?
Talk to any firm that’s painfully plodded along at fundraising for the past year, and they’ll blame it all on the environment. “It’s tough out there with cash-strapped LPs and fears about the future of private equity,” they’ll say. These “Have-Not” firms are basically stuck in fundraising purgatory, and they sing a very, very different tune than that of the “Haves.” And there are certainly plenty of “Haves” who seemed to defy an impossible fundraising market. Just last week Odyssey Capital topped the target on its fourth fund by half. There are more where that came from (incomplete list below). But I want to know, what is the difference here? Are the “Have-Nots” just mediocre firms that got swept up by a rising tide? Are they the “tourist” PE firms like the ones the FT called out today? Or is it a symptom of the type of investors they have? Or is it their investment strategy? What about the performance of existing prior portfolios? Or, maybe the “Haves” simply got lucky?
