Why the best GPs run fundraising like tech sales
12:42The episode at a glance.
Summary
Kasper Wichmann reveals that private markets still operate on relationships and people, not pure data, despite the industry's claims of rationality. He identifies fundraising as a chronic afterthought for most GPs and outlines why the best performers now apply tech sales methodology—segmentation, conversion tracking, and top-of-mind positioning—to capital formation. The conversation covers the stark differences between institutional and wealth channels, where AI creates leverage in analytics but data quality remains the limiting factor, and concludes that portfolio construction strategy must precede any asset class selection.
Guest
Co-founder & CEO of Balentic; former institutional PE allocator with nearly two decades of experience evaluating and selecting funds globally. Wichmann built Balentic—an AI platform for GPs and LPs—to address the information asymmetry he observed firsthand as an LP, and now advises on capital formation strategy across both institutional and wealth channels.
In Kasper’s words.
“In private markets, we underwrite people. The data is table stakes. For a 10 to 12 to 15 year product, it's about the people.”
“Fundraising is still an afterthought. There's an assumption that if you have money, then I just have to talk to you long enough and you'll probably allocate to my fund. It's unfortunately not that simple, and it's actually gotten much more difficult now because money is much more scarce.”
“GPs don't do their homework, they don't ask questions, they don't listen, and they don't follow up thoughtfully. They treat it like a volume game—if I hit 100 investors, one will invest. It's not as simple as that.”
“If your conversion rate on first-time meetings is between 1% and 4%, you need to look hard at your sales process because you're spending an awful lot of time and money that's going absolutely nowhere.”
“The best GPs are treating fundraising much more like tech sales would: segmenting audiences, figuring out what messaging hits different segments, and staying top of mind so your name pops up automatically.”
“AI has huge applicability in private markets, but you need really high quality data. The challenge is that data exists but it's dispersed, often unreliable, and not actionable. Fundraising will remain largely a people business, but much of the grunt work lends itself extremely well to AI.”
“Portfolio construction comes first and foremost. What's your target return? What's your risk tolerance? Then look for strategies with very large end markets—AI and healthcare are defensive sectors with huge tailwinds.”
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