The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 30 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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…”
Kim: Sales requires initiating positivity first despite uncertain reciprocation
“At the same time, you will never know if the person is going to react positively, so you have no choice but to be positive and go first.”
Kim: Persuasion is desire minus fear; reduce fear instead of stoking desire
“I believe that persuasion is desire minus fear. So what people want minus how scared they are. So many books on persuasion talk about how to stoke desire, how to get people interested. I think that that's very credible, very real. But I find that most of succe…”
Kim: Fundraising pitches fail from lack of trust, not lack of belief
“The fundamental truth is that's usually not where the sale falls down. Most people will believe that people are good investors. Most people will believe that the opportunity makes sense. They just don't trust the person. There's a big difference between belief…”
Kim: Investor introductions require respect and credibility, not close personal intimacy
“If I want somebody to help me get into an account, that individual's relationship with the person they need to contact, I don't need an intimacy between them. They don't have to be close friends. It does help, obviously. That person just has to be respected. I…”
Kim: Sales meetings must immediately establish rapport, credibility, attention, and interest
“Every meeting must start with four things. You must establish rapport. You must establish credibility. You have to gain their attention. You have to generate interest, and you better do it fast.”
Kim: Pitching should target LP emotional desires and values before logic
“Here's where almost everybody gets it wrong. Everybody focuses on the logos, the logic. That is almost never where you want to start. You have to be logical. But you want to address the person's emotional desires for what they want, and then their ethical or i…”
Kim: Fundraise capacity equals track record plus differentiation divided by complexity
“This is the essence of the equation I call the law of differentiation. Your track record plus your differentiation divided by the complexity of your story is generally how much money you can raise.”
Kim: Pitching pension plans requires respecting bureaucratic processes and administrative needs
“I have found that pension plan investors, people who don't have a lot of upside, if I make 10 times money for you don't get paid anymore. Your job is hard because you work in an environment that can be bureaucratic, political, disrespectful. Can be. Not all pe…”
Kim: Pitching sovereign wealth funds requires a strategic national benefit angle
“If you're talking to sovereigns, you better have something strategic. You better have some reason why it benefits the country. Better look through and say, hey, this is why your nation benefits.”
Kim: Pitching fund-of-funds requires emphasizing strategy differentiation
“If you're talking to a fund of funds, The asset manager, you better say something really differentiated. Because they're selling differentiation.”
Kim: Fundraisers must always trade off fund size, terms, and closing speed
“Then the law of trade-offs. It's one of the easiest and best laws to understand that you're always trading off size and terms and speed. It's size times terms times speed.”
Kim: No fundraiser can save a fund lacking differentiation and track record
“If the product is not worth raising money for, no matter how good you are, you can't raise money. In other words, if you have no differentiation, your track record's bad, it's a really complicated story, you're out of business. The general partners in that sit…”
Kim: Downsize fund targets when your investment strategy falls out of favor
“If your strategy's out of favor, if it's not in vogue, then what do you do? You raise less money.”
Kim: PE megafunds scaled by capitalizing on the 2009 financial crisis
“When 2009 came around, there was a set of very large funds. The market went into a nuclear winter, but those mega funds already had great fundraisers and they were going out and servicing clients and making sure that they knew what was going on and the global …”
Kim: High-performing sales teams use volume incentives; service teams use group pay
“You literally will not find a sales organization that's a high-performing sales organization that doesn't have some sort of volume incentive. You never find a service organization that does anything but pay people on a group.”
Kim: Alternative asset IR compensation weights base and carry across role buckets
“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, …”
Kim: Sales is a trainable skill; introverts can become exquisite salespeople
“Sales can be a trained skill. I sat next to very introverted people. Who were exquisite salespeople. I sat next to people who I considered to be pretty average horsepower. Very strong salespeople. I sat next to a very good looking, very charming people who cou…”
Kim: True empathy requires treating others how they want to be treated
“Turns out that's not right. Turns out you want to do unto others as they want to be done unto them. The way I want to be treated is not the way you want to be treated.”
Kim: Left General Catalyst to lead AI company Lila Sciences
“I now run a artificial intelligence company called Lila Sciences, which has fundraising as a component to it. But I was finishing a big fundraiser, my last from General Catalyst, and I was feeling the urge to try something different the last chapter of my life…”
Kim: Fund capital raised equals pipeline times conversion ratio times check size
“The macro process is your pipeline times your conversion ratio times the size of the contract or the bite size of the investment Equals the amount of money you're going to receive as a sale or how much money you're going to raise.”
Kim: Enter every meeting knowing your opening statement and closing objective
“Whenever I walk into a meeting, a hundred percent of the time, I have two things that I will do. And this is probably since birth. I will know what my first thing I'm going to say is. Then I know what my closing objective is.”
Kim: Repeating LP objections back with clarifying questions exposes underlying concerns
“Repeat back what they said. You want to make sure they say an objection. I think your fees are too high. Ok, that's an objection. Then you literally just have to repeat back. Ok, so hey, you just said our fees are too high. Can you give me some more color on t…”
Kim: Structures almost every conversation using IBM's classic sales call framework
“For 30 plus years, almost every conversation I have fits that structure. It's a habit. Anybody I ever meet, that is how I will structure a conversation.”
Kim: Overidentifying as a master fundraiser limited his broader leadership potential
“At some level, I think I've underperformed my true potential. I got so attached to the sales persona and being this super fundraiser. I raised a lot of money in my career. I'm proud of it, but I got really attached to that persona, that identity. When there ar…”