How do I present deals from a prior firm?

The twelve things a diligence team will ask about each deal

Assemble these per deal before you present any of them. A record that answers eight of twelve invites the other four as questions, and questions asked in diligence cost more than facts offered in a deck.

• Permission. Written consent from the prior firm covering what may be used, in what form, and with whom it may be shared.
• Attribution. Your specific role, stated in the same words the prior firm would use.
• Role in the decision. Whether you sourced, recommended, decided, or voted, which are four different claims.
• Decision rights. Whether you could have said no on your own, which is the distinction allocators press hardest.
• Dates. Entry date, subsequent round dates, and exit or write-off date. A record without dates cannot be reconciled with anything.
• Ownership. The stake at entry and what happened to it, since ownership is what converts a good company into a good investment.
• Follow-on decisions. What you did at the next round, which is often more revealing about judgment than the initial cheque.
• Outcome. Realized, partially realized, unrealized, or written off, labelled rather than implied.
• Documentation. What exists to support each claim: an investment memo, a board deck, a signed consent, a co-investor who will confirm it.
• Employer restrictions. What your agreements permit, which is not the same question as what feels reasonable.
• Confidentiality. What remains confidential to the firm or the company regardless of permission, which usually includes valuations, cap tables, and board material.
• Team continuity. Who else from that seat is coming with you, since a record produced by a team you no longer have is a different proposition.

The role matrix, by what you could actually decide

Blueprint's own judgment about what each role supports in a diligence conversation, not a legal test. Use it to decide what to claim; use counsel to decide what you may claim.

• Lead investor. You sourced or led, negotiated terms, and typically held the board or observer seat. Supports the strongest claim, including follow-on decisions, with permission and documentation.
• Co-lead. Real and shared. Name the other decision maker rather than leaving it to be discovered, because a co-investor reference will surface it anyway.
• Investment committee member. You participated in the decision and did not own it. Supports a stated role in the decision and not authorship of the outcome. Where votes are recorded, the record is worth more than any description.
• Sourcing role. You found the company and somebody else decided. This is evidence of access, which is genuinely valuable, and it is not evidence of selection.
• Operating support. You helped after the investment. Supports a contribution claim, best evidenced by the founder rather than by you, and it says nothing about entry judgment.
• Advisory role. Weakest of the substantive roles. State the relationship precisely, because an allocator who discovers you were an adviser after reading you as an investor discounts everything else.
• Observer role. Attendance is not authorship. If the only claim available is that you were in the room, say that, and let the deals where you decided carry the weight.

The public summary and the data-room version

These are two documents with two audiences and two risk profiles, and collapsing them into one is the most common way a manager either says too much publicly or too little in diligence.

SVB's emerging manager guidance is a useful frame here: it treats the deck as one component of a data room that also holds the quantitative track record, investment memos, the questionnaire, fund documents, the model, and a reference list. The deck argues; the room proves.

• Public summary, in the deck or on a website: company name where permitted, your role, the year, the stage at entry, and the outcome status. No valuations, no ownership percentages, no confidential detail, and nothing the prior firm has not agreed to.
• Data-room version: the full twelve fields above, per deal, with documentation attached and the permission letter included so the allocator can see the basis rather than take your word for it.
• Conversation only: anything a company treats as confidential, anything about a live process, and any figure you cannot substantiate on demand.
• Neither: a prior firm's fund-level performance presented as yours, and any performance figure the firm has not agreed you may use.

The United States conditions, quoted as written

For advisers subject to United States adviser marketing rules, presenting predecessor performance in an advertisement is permitted only where four conditions are met, and each removes a common shortcut.

• The person or persons primarily responsible for achieving the prior performance must manage accounts at the advertising adviser. Responsibility travels with people, not with a story.
• The accounts managed at the predecessor adviser must be sufficiently similar to those now managed, so the prior performance is relevant to what is being offered.
• All accounts managed in a substantially similar manner must be included, unless excluding them does not result in materially higher performance. This is the condition that forbids showing only the deals that worked.
• The advertisement must clearly and prominently include the relevant disclosures, including that the results were achieved at a prior entity.

Two related provisions bind alongside them. Extracted performance, meaning results pulled from a larger portfolio, requires that the total portfolio's performance be provided or promptly offered. And any gross figure requires net shown with at least equal prominence, in a format designed to facilitate comparison, over the same period.

This is United States adviser law. Managers marketing elsewhere face their own regulators' requirements, and a presentation that satisfies one does not automatically satisfy another.

What limited partners are testing

This section of diligence is mostly about character, and allocators know it.

• Does the manager's account of their role match what former colleagues say, including ones not on the reference list?
• Is the permission real and documented, or assumed?
• Are the deals shown the whole relevant set, or a selection?
• Does the manager distinguish sourcing from deciding without being pushed to?
• What did the manager do at the follow-on, which is where judgment shows more clearly than at entry?

What a prior-firm record does not prove

It proves what you did inside another firm's brand, capital base, and deal flow. It does not prove the same results are reproducible with your own cheque size, your own sourcing, and your own reserves, and an allocator will say so directly.

Permission is not verification either. Consent to use a record makes the use lawful; it does not make the record accurate, which is why documentation and corroboration sit beside it.

This page is educational and general. It is not legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice. What may be used, in what form, and with what disclosure is a question for counsel qualified where you market, and for the firm that holds the record.