Fundraising Executive and Principal, BerchWood Partners

>> I'm Chris Hastings, and I work at a small placement agent firm; advisory firm -- 13 people. And what we do is raise capital for private equity firms, which consist of venture capital firms. Mezzanine funds. Distressed debt funds. Pretty much everything except hedge funds. So we raise capital from limited partners, which consist of endowments -- like Penn State's endowment. Corporate pension funds. Public pension funds. Family offices. Insurance companies. That invest capital into -- a good example would be KKR, which everyone has heard of. We would act as their advisor to help them raise the capital for their fund. So typically I'm looking at, you know, a fund manager. So these could be -- they're earlier stage. We're not doing large deals. We're doing $3 to $500 million raises. So it could be a management team that came out of a larger fund, that wants to start their own fund. So I'm looking at information describing who the team is. What their track record is. And assessing whether my firm should pitch that business and try to win that business to be hired as an advisor. And the way we get paid is a percentage -- which is typically in the 2% range -- of the capital that we raise. And it gets paid over a time period. So typically I am looking at management teams and their track records on investing in companies. And assessing whether we want to move forward and go after that business. Major criteria include how good the track record is. So you're looking for, what we refer to as top-core tile managers. And then depending on the timer period -- I mean private equity firms typically are looking for, you know, 20% to 25% returns. Not all of them hit that. And it's our job to find the managers that have been able to hit their targets, you know, for a sustained period of time. The other thing we look for is continuity of a team. So it's very important for us that, you know, typically these teams are anywhere between 5 to 20 people. And you want to make sure that you're working with teams that have worked together in the past for an extended period. You don't want a team that's come together in the past 30 days, and you know, even though they may have great, individual backgrounds, you want to make sure that they can work together effectively to produce the returns that our investors are looking for. [ Silence ]