Kim: Alternative asset IR compensation weights base and carry across role buckets
John Kim (Kimmer) · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · May 25, 2026 · at 1:01:53
Fundraising veteran John Kim explains the formulaic three-bucket structure alternative asset managers use to set investor relations compensation.
0:00 / 0:24exact quote · 24.3s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“What happens is they look at the professional and they say, what percent of your job is in the associate's bucket? What percent of your job is in the vice president's bucket? What percent of your job is in the senior bucket? And multiply by those percentages, what does an associate get paid? What does a vice president get paid? What does a partner get paid? What is the carried interest multiplied by those ratios? It almost always perfectly describes the person's compensation. Anybody can do that calculation.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from John Kim (Kimmer)
Kim: PE IR hiring is broken, prioritizing external personas over actual skills
“The whole industry is upside down. People aren't looking for skills, they're looking for personas. If you have a great persona that actually fits, you'll get the job even though you have no experience.”
Kim: Junior IR professionals out-earn deal peers; IR partners earn less
“So what's kind of interesting is that the younger you are in their career, actually the more money you make relative to your peers because the younger professional gets to do some of the selling. Occasionally actually gets to advise the GP because you're trave…”
Kim: LP fundraising meetings are auditions to match a preconceived persona
“You need to know what you're auditioning for. Because it's not a sales pitch. It's not an interview. It's an audition. The idea that you're walking in, they know what they think they're looking for.”
Kim: GPs hire IR heads based on the external persona they desire
“GPs tend to put in that position the person they want other people to think they are before they meet them.”
Kim: IR professionals should receive equal pay to investment deal counterparts
“If you're a vice president, you should get paid like a vice president. When I'm looking at the vice president, we're equal. If I'm in the Navy and you're in the Army and we're the same rank, we should be paid the same. You're doing something very different tha…”
Kim: Treating IR as second-class citizens breeds victimhood and industry dystopia
“The whole idea of ego deprivation, of walking around being a second-class citizen in a job, that creates a dystopia. That creates a victimhood for a lot of people in the industry. If I actually think about the A thing that people complain about most in the job…”