VC/Private Equity: building a strong Capital Raising team

October 30, 2023

Our very established capital raising and marketing practice has remained busy and so we wanted to take a look at some attributes of a successful VC capital raising team.

It was great to see news this week that Britain leads Europe for VC investment in start-ups, it’s undoubtedly been a challenging year in private markets. During the post-pandemic booms times, the often-used expression “the war for talent” couldn’t have been more apt. Some of the most competitive offers we received were for Investment Managers and Directors, but in 2023, hiring for investment professionals has slowed. However, our very established capital raising and marketing practice has remained busy and so we wanted to take a look at some attributes of a successful VC capital raising team.

Scaleable processes

Whilst it may not be suitable for boutiques, the ideal team has scaleable processes, which allow an actual team to capital raise rather than just one person. A key risk for firms is having one salesperson, who holds all of the client relationships and who raises all of the assets. They may be fabulous during their tenure, but what happens if they leave, are unfortunately unable to work, or simply stop performing? The potential for disruption to the business is huge. Therefore, building a team and investing in training and development is often the best route forwards for many businesses.

Inch wide mile deep coverage

Whether you raise money directly from HNWI, or via the intermediary channel, deep knowledge, focus, and coverage, will often outperform a generalist. It’s well known that larger firms have BDM’s focusing on specific regions. This is more efficient for the salesperson, and allows them to build a network quicker, but it also provides the client with a local informed point of contact. Regardless of this, sales professionals need deep product expertise, a strong understanding of the client’s investment aims, and an excellent reputation amongst their target investor base. Focus leads to more high-quality referrals and again wastes less of all parties’ time.

They don’t really sell

The best capital raisers we meet often feel they don’t sell at all. They identify the client’s problem and they find an appropriate solution. If they don’t have a solution, they take a long-term view and try and build rapport for the future. However, good salespeople are diligent about keeping in regular contact and systemise this process.

Resilience

Capital raising is hard and sales processes have become elongated - investors are far more cautious. After the post-pandemic boom, this can be hard for BDMs to deal with. It’s easy to become demotivated, to question your own ability, and blame yourself. However, great salespeople are resilient. They keep perspective, check in on others, stay motivated, and know that the good times will come back. In the interim, they keep on building those all important relationships.

They have collaborative and diverse teams

Strong teams work together, celebrate together, share best practice, and are different. Leaders understand that different perspectives lead to better outcomes both internally and externally. We don’t feel that full time office working helps attract talent, but equally sales teams need to meet regularly and to ensure more junior colleagues have good training opportunities.

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About Fram Search

Established in 2010 by Simon Roderick, a recruiter with 20 years City recruitment experience, Fram Search is a specialist financial services recruitment consultancy. We focus on permanent and interim recruitment in the UK & internationally.

Our Private Equity & VC practice works with firms operating in private equity, venture capital, private equity real estate, secondaries, and fund of funds markets. Covering investment professionals, IR & marketing, finance, operations, and legal & compliance.

We provide high quality contingent and retained recruitment services to boutiques and global brands. We have long established relationships and access to deep talent pools. Fram takes a highly consultative approach, and we have a quality over quantity ethos. We are proud that our contingent fill rate is nearly three the industry average and we augment our retained search methodology with rigorous psychometric testing. Champions of diversity & inclusion, all staff have undertaken unconscious bias training.

Please contact us on 01525 864 372 / [email protected] to learn more.