What questions should a GP ask a prospective LP?

Mandate, ticket, and fit

These decide whether anything else is worth discussing, and they belong in the first conversation.

• Which pool of capital would a commitment to my fund come from, and what is that pool for?
• What does a typical commitment from that pool look like, and is there a minimum you cannot go below?
• What share of a fund are you willing to represent, and is there a cap?
• Does the mandate cover my stage, my sector, and my geography, or would any of those need an exception?
• Is there anything in my structure, domicile, currency, or strategy that your policy excludes outright?

Timing, process, and decision authority

The answers here are what turn a name into a dated pipeline entry rather than an aspiration.

• How many new manager commitments do you make in a year, and how many are left this year?
• What is the process from here, in steps and in weeks?
• Who else is involved in the decision, and are you one of the decision makers or the person who brings it forward?
• What are the approval gates, and when do the relevant committees meet?
• What would you need from me to reach the next gate?
• What has made you pass on managers like me before?

Portfolio construction, reserves, and how they read a fund

These questions do two jobs. They tell you how your fund will be evaluated, and they tell the allocator that you understand their side of the problem.

• How do you think about portfolio construction in a fund like mine, and what do you consider under-reserved?
• How do you weigh ownership against position count at my stage?
• How do you handle a fund whose realisations arrive late relative to your pacing model?
• What is your view on fund size for this strategy, and would you have a concern at my target?
• Do you take co-investment, and if so, on what terms and with what decision speed?

After the commitment, which is where the relationship actually lives

Everything below is much easier to ask before a subscription than to renegotiate after one.

• What reporting do you require, in what format, and on what timetable?
• Do you require any reporting my administrator does not currently produce?
• Are you subject to public disclosure obligations that would make my fund's terms or performance public?
• Do you expect an advisory committee seat, and what governance rights come with the commitment?
• What do you typically negotiate in a side letter, and what is non-negotiable for you?
• Do you take most-favoured-nation elections, and how do you handle them across a fund?
• How do you handle a manager who misses, either on a deployment plan or on a report?

References, re-up behaviour, and value beyond capital

A limited partner is a counterparty you are choosing, and diligence runs both ways.

• Which of your managers can I speak to, including one where the relationship was difficult?
• What proportion of your managers do you re-up with, and what makes you not re-up?
• Have you backed a first or second fund before, and when was the most recent?
• Beyond capital, what do you bring: introductions, sector expertise, reference weight with other allocators, or co-investment appetite? The TechCrunch guest column on selecting limited partners makes this its fifth question, arguing that networks, partnerships, and warm leads matter disproportionately to a resource-constrained emerging manager, which is one practitioner's framing rather than a research finding.
• How do you prefer to be communicated with between reports, and how often is too often?
• Are there conflicts I should know about, including funds in your portfolio that compete with mine?

Why bad capital is expensive, and what makes capital bad

A limited partner relationship runs the life of the fund and usually longer. The Signature Block collection of general partner accounts puts the asymmetry memorably, observing that it is easier to get a divorce than to exit a limited partner, which is a practitioner's line rather than a legal statement and is directionally right about how hard the relationship is to unwind.

Capital is bad for structural reasons rather than personal ones, and each of the following is knowable before a subscription.

• It cannot fund the capital calls it committed to, which turns a default into your problem and your other investors' problem.
• It expects liquidity a venture fund cannot produce, which becomes pressure on your investment decisions in year four.
• It requires reporting or governance you cannot deliver at your size, which consumes the operating budget you sized for investing.
• It carries disclosure obligations you did not price, making terms or performance public in ways that affect your next raise.
• It brings expectations beyond the financial return, particularly with strategic and corporate capital, which need settling in writing before the close.
• It is too large a share of a small fund, which turns one relationship into a governance dependency.
• It does not re-up, which is a fund-two problem you can see coming from fund one if you ask.

How to tell a polite pass from a real opportunity

Allocators rarely say no plainly, and a manager who cannot read the difference spends months on relationships that ended weeks ago. These questions produce answers that are hard to give vaguely.

• What is the next step, and what date should we hold for it? A real opportunity produces a date; a polite pass produces a sentiment.
• Who else would need to be in the next conversation? A real opportunity names people.
• What would you need to see to bring this forward internally? A real opportunity names documents or evidence.
• Is there anything that would rule this out regardless of how the diligence goes? A polite pass often answers this one honestly, which is a gift.
• If the timing is wrong, when would be right, and what should I send in between? This converts a no now into a dated relationship rather than a fade.

Ask directly for a no when the signals are ambiguous. An allocator who says no in month one has given you back a quarter, and almost none of them think less of the manager who asked.

What these questions do not do

Asking well does not make a mandate fit, and it does not compensate for materials that cannot survive diligence. It does prevent the two failures that are entirely inside a manager's control: spending a quarter on a counterparty who was never able to commit, and accepting capital whose consequences arrive after the close.

The bank above is Blueprint's own, assembled from the questions that change what a manager does next rather than from any published standard.

This page is educational and general. It is not legal, tax, securities, or investment advice, and any commitment terms discussed should be reviewed by counsel.