Private markets, explained from both sides of the tableEducation only. Not investment advice.

Interactive|GP economics

Who funds the GP commitment?

A headline “2%” can hide very different amounts of the team’s own money. Set a hypothetical fund, split the commitment between cash, a fee waiver and a loan, and see what’s left.

Kai the tapir, arms crossed

Your hypothetical fund

How the commitment is funded % of the commitment
Partners’ own cash20%

Own cash is whatever isn’t waived or borrowed. Moving one slider past 100% in total trims the other.

Try:

The result

Headline commitment$6.0m2.00% of the fund
Paid in as cash$3.0m1.00% of the fund
Own, unborrowed money$1.2m0.40% of the fund
  • Partners’ own cash
  • Borrowed: a lender’s money
  • Fee waiver: fees the LPs would otherwise have paid
Breakdown of the GP commitment by source
SourceUS$% of fundWho really puts it up
Own cash$1.2m0.40%The partners
GP loan$1.8m0.60%A lender, repaid by the GP
Fee waiver$3.0m1.00%Fees the GP gave up for a share of future profits

For every US$100 the LPs commit, the partners put in about $0.41 of their own, unborrowed money.

Education only. This calculator uses hypothetical inputs to illustrate the arithmetic in our GP commitment briefing. It is not investment, tax or legal advice and says nothing about any real fund. Real fee waivers and GP financing carry tax, legal and timing features it ignores, and practice differs between the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

How it works: paid in as cash = headline minus the fee waiver. Own money = cash paid in minus the borrowed amount. The “per US$100” figure assumes the fund size includes the GP’s commitment. Carta measures commitments against total fund size; ILPA’s model terms and Proskauer measure against LP commitments, so the same fund can show two different percentages. It all runs in your browser: nothing is stored or sent.