Institute benchmark cuts by fund size and investment stage

Benchmark cut one, average check size

• $5 million average check size: 14 percent higher IRR than the $10 million baseline.
• $10 million average check size: the baseline.
• $15 million average check size: 14 percent lower IRR than the baseline.
• $20 million average check size: 28 percent lower IRR than the baseline.
• $25 million average check size or more: 42 percent lower IRR than the baseline.

The relationship holds specifically for emerging managers. For established funds, check size has no meaningful relationship to IRR at all, since larger platforms have the diligence capacity, co-investor networks, and governance experience to deploy larger checks without a performance cost.

Benchmark cut two, investment stage

• Early stage: 17.21 percent IRR for emerging managers compared to 10.00 percent for established managers.
• General or multi-stage: 13.13 percent compared to 9.68 percent.
• Later stage: 12.30 percent compared to 14.71 percent, the one cut where established managers lead.

The later-stage reversal is a real part of the picture, not an outlier left out of the average. Later-stage deals reward large check-writing capacity, deep syndicate relationships, and board experience with scaling companies, exactly the resources emerging managers are least likely to have built yet.

What is not in this edition yet

Vintage year functions as a control variable in the underlying analysis, not as a reported benchmark cut, so it is not presented here as one. Geography is out of scope for a different reason: the sample is limited to U.S.-based funds, and the research's own limitations note that generalizing to other geographies requires further study. Both are candidates for a future edition as the underlying research expands, and this page will be updated in place as that happens, rather than treated as a one-time publication.