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What an LP actually looks at in a deck

Strategy and TVPI matter. They aren't what gets a fund funded. The real filter is operational — and most first-time GPs miss it.

08 April 2026 · 8 min read · Osman Ahmed

First-time GPs send me decks. The decks are good. Strategy is articulated, market sized, edge claimed, returns model attached.

Then most of them don’t get funded.

The reason isn’t the strategy. It’s that the deck answers the wrong questions.

What LPs actually decide

An LP allocation isn’t an investment decision in the way most people mean. It’s a vendor procurement decision dressed up as an investment decision. The LP is buying a service — capital deployment, sourcing, portfolio construction, reporting, governance — over a 10-year contract they can’t easily exit.

That changes what they look at.

The filter sits roughly in this order:

  1. Can this team operate a fund. Not “can they invest” — that’s table stakes. Can they handle compliance, LP relations, fund admin, capital calls, distributions, audits, side letter complexity, anti-money-laundering reviews, and the seventeen other things that have nothing to do with picking deals.

  2. Will this team still be operating this fund in year seven. Funds break apart. Co-founders leave. The “key person” clause is in every LPA for a reason.

  3. What does the GP do when something goes wrong. Because something will. The honest answer to “describe a deal that went sideways and how you handled it” is the single most informative answer in the entire diligence process.

  4. Strategy and edge. Yes, this matters. It comes after the operational filter, not before it.

  5. Track record. Often the most-cited and least-relevant factor for first-time funds. Sample size is too small for statistical signal.

What this means for the deck

The deck should answer the operational and durability questions before the strategy questions. Most decks do the opposite.

Things that move LPs more than first-time GPs realise:

  • A clean fund admin partner already engaged
  • LP reporting samples ready to circulate
  • A real back-office plan, not a “we’ll figure it out post-close”
  • Co-investment policy and conflicts handling
  • Recycling provisions and management fee step-downs
  • Specifically, how the GP gets paid in years 4-10 — when management fees taper

The instinct test

If you can’t answer “what does year six of this fund look like operationally” in detail, the deck isn’t ready. Not because it’s a bad fund, but because the LP can’t underwrite the operational risk yet.

Every first-time GP wants to talk about the next ten companies they’ll invest in. The LP wants to talk about the next ten years of the fund they’re committing to.

These are not the same conversation.