Insights
Practical thinking on LP diligence, institutional memory, AI in alternative investing, and allocation team operations.
Allocator Strategy
Every limited partner buys the same funds. Almost none of them buy for the same reasons. A guide to how liability structure, governance, and reporting obligations shape allocation behavior across the five major LP types.
Matthew S. · Sep 2026 · 12 minMarket Notes
A new recurring column on macro cross currents and what they mean for portfolio construction, plus the people moves worth noticing.
Matthew S. · Sep 2026 · 9 minAI & Diligence
A practical, evidence-first framework for choosing, testing, and governing AI tools across private market diligence and monitoring workflows.
Matthew S. · Sep 2026 · 14 minLP Playbook
Most allocators leave conferences with a stack of business cards and nothing that changes a decision. Here is the pre, during, and post process that turns three days of panels into usable diligence.
Matthew S. · Aug 2026 · 10 minPerformance & Reporting
Every quarter you inherit a number nobody traded. Here is how experienced allocators read fair value marks, spot where optimism accumulates, and hold managers to a consistent standard.
Matthew S. · Aug 2026 · 11 minLP Playbook
A practical, opinionated look at the notebooks, calculators, headphones, and reference texts that quietly make institutional diligence work better. Every recommendation is something a working allocator would actually keep on the desk.
Matthew S. · Jul 2026 · 8 minInstitutional Memory
Ten books that shape how serious institutional allocators think about probability, valuation, private markets, and the difference between skill and luck.
Matthew S. · Jul 2026 · 9 minDiligence
A GP-approved reference list is a sales tool. Great LPs treat it as a starting point, not the destination. Here is how to run reference calls that actually change your conviction.
Matthew S. · Jul 2026 · 9 minInstitutional Memory
What every LP should model before they sign the sub docs: how the fee load actually flows, where GPs make quiet money, and the terms worth negotiating in a side letter.
Matthew S. · Jul 2026 · 11 minPrivate Credit
A working guide for institutional LPs who want to move past yield-chasing and underwrite private credit like a real asset class: taxonomy, diligence, pacing, and monitoring.
Matthew S. · Jul 2026 · 10 minLP Diligence & Workflow
Most LP co-invest programs fail quietly. Not because deals go bad, but because the process cannot keep up with the sponsor. Here is how sophisticated allocators build a repeatable pipeline that GPs actually want to share.
Matthew S. · Jul 2026 · 9 minDiligence
Investment diligence tells you whether a strategy can win. Operational due diligence tells you whether the firm behind it can be trusted to hold your capital. Here is how leading LPs run ODD without turning it into a checklist exercise.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 10 minPerformance & Reporting
A practical LP guide to private market performance measurement: where IRR misleads, when TWR helps, how Public Market Equivalents work, and how to build a benchmarking stack that survives an investment committee.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 11 minLP Diligence & Workflow
Re-ups feel like the easy part of an LP's job, which is exactly why they are the most under-diligenced commitments in most portfolios. Here is the framework serious allocators use to decide whether the next fund deserves the next ticket.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 9 minLP Diligence & Workflow
A practical LP guide to capital call mechanics, forecasting on two horizons, funding from a tiered liquidity stack, and building an audit trail that holds up years later.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 10 minLP Diligence & Workflow
The secondary market is no longer a clearing house for distressed LP interests. It has become a core liquidity and portfolio-construction tool - and a separate underwriting problem from primary commitments.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 14 minLP Diligence & Workflow
A working LP's guide to the private equity J-curve: what it is, why it happens, how to read it across fund life, and how to design a program that absorbs it.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 9 minPortfolio Construction
Co-investments promise lower fees and concentrated alpha, but the fee savings only matter if the program is built with the same discipline as primary fund selection. A working framework for sourcing, underwriting, sizing, and measuring a co-investment book.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 11 minPortfolio Construction
Pacing decisions drive vintage diversification, which often matters more than manager selection. Here is how institutional LPs build, stress, and actually use a commitment pacing model.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 9 minPerformance Measurement
Net IRR alone hides more than it reveals. Here is how institutional LPs combine DPI, TVPI, MOIC, RVPI, and PME to read a manager honestly, benchmark across vintages, and avoid the most common reporting traps.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 10 minLP Diligence & Workflow
A first-time fund has no fund-level track record, no firm history, and no reference base of prior LPs. That does not mean less diligence - it means different diligence. Here is the framework serious allocators use to underwrite what does not exist yet.
Matthew S. · Jun 2026 · 11 minLP Operations
Most institutional LPs treat portfolio reviews as a reporting exercise. The best allocators use them as a strategic control point. Here is the review framework we have seen work at endowments, family offices, and sovereign funds.
Matthew S. · May 2026 · 8 minSecondaries
Continuation funds now account for the majority of GP-led secondary volume. Most LPs still treat the roll-versus-sell decision as a one-off scramble. Here is the framework serious allocators are building instead.
Allocator Desk Research · May 2026 · 9 minOperations & Monitoring
Fund-level credit has quietly rewritten how private market returns are reported. Here is the diligence and monitoring framework serious allocators are using to see through it.
Allocator Desk Editorial · May 2026 · 11 minLP Diligence & Workflow
Most LP reference calls confirm what the GP wants confirmed. Here is how serious allocators design references that test judgement, partnership behaviour, and operational truth.
Matthew S. · Apr 2026 · 12 minLP Operations
Side letters are the most negotiated documents in private markets and the least operationalised. Here is how serious LPs turn them from filed PDFs into living, auditable obligations.
Matthew S. · Apr 2026 · 11 minLP Diligence & Workflow
Most investment committee memos fail before they're read. Here's how institutional allocators structure IC memos that actually drive decisions, and how AI is changing the workflow.
Allocator Desk Team · Mar 2026 · 12 minGovernance
Boards ask hard questions. Regulators move goalposts. What an immutable, timestamped decision record looks like in practice — and why it's becoming a baseline expectation for serious institutional allocators.
Matthew S. · Feb 2026 · 5 minRelationship Management
As portfolios grow, systematic relationship tracking becomes a genuine competitive advantage. The disciplines that separate top-quartile LP teams from the rest aren't secrets — they're systems.
Matthew S. · Feb 2026 · 6 minOperations
Excel was never built for multi-vintage fund tracking. Here is what the forward-thinking endowments and foundations quietly replacing it are doing instead — and why the timing is now.
Matthew S. · Jan 2026 · 5 minIC Process
Most LP teams have an investment committee in name only. What a disciplined, documented IC process actually looks like — and why it matters more as regulatory and board scrutiny increases.
Matthew S. · Jan 2026 · 7 minAI & Diligence
AI should surface patterns, not make decisions. Here is a practical framework for using machine intelligence in alternative investment diligence without compromising fiduciary judgment.
Matthew S. · Jan 2026 · 6 minInstitutional Memory
When a principal leaves, they take years of GP relationships, reference call notes, and pattern recognition with them. This is an underappreciated structural risk — and memory systems change the equation.
Matthew S. · Jan 2026 · 8 min