What LP Backchannel Checks Really Reveal About A Fund Manager

The most high-stakes part of private markets fundraising is not your pitch. It is the quiet conversation that happens right after you leave the room.

We unpack how serious LPs actually run due diligence on fund managers through reference calls, backchannel checks, and candid conversations with your existing investors and portfolio company founders. A deck can look flawless, but these calls cut through polish and get to lived experience: how you communicate when performance is choppy, whether you do what you say you will do, and what you are like in the hard moments that never show up in a quarterly update.

We also get honest about the unnerving part: you have almost no control over what gets said. That is exactly why it matters. Over time, every respectful founder interaction, every clear investor update, and every tough conversation handled with integrity becomes the reference someone else will eventually give on your behalf. You are writing those calls in advance through your behavior, not through your branding.

If you work in private equity, venture capital, or any corner of private markets and you care about LP trust, fund manager reputation, and long-term investor relationships, this is a mindset shift worth making. Subscribe, share this with a partner who is fundraising, and leave a review with the one behavior you think earns trust fastest.

Transcript

The Conversations Without You

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, welcome back to Private Markets Uncapped. Nilesh, I want to talk about something today that genuinely makes me a little nervous just thinking about it, which is all the conversations about you that happen when you are not in the room.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Now that is a great way to open because it points at something real.

Where Real Diligence Happens

SPEAKER_00 0:17

When a serious investor is considering a fund, a lot of the most important diligence does not happen in the meetings with the manager. It happens in the conversations the investor has about the manager with other people. Reference calls, back channel checks, quiet conversations with your existing LPs and the founders of your portfolio companies.

Why You Cannot Control References

SPEAKER_01 0:42

And the unnerving part is that you have almost no control over those conversations. They are happening based on how you have actually behaved over years.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

That is exactly why they are so revealing and so valuable to investors. A manager can present beautifully in a pitch. But when an LP calls three of your existing investors and asks what it is really like to work with you, the answers come from lived experience, not from a deck. Those conversations cut straight through any polish to the actual substance of how you operate.

Behavior Turns Into Fundraising Proof

SPEAKER_01 1:22

So what are investors actually trying to learn when they make those calls?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

A few things and they are telling. They want to know whether you communicate well, especially when things are not going perfectly. They want to know whether you do what you say you will do. They want to know how you behaved in a difficult moment, because anyone can be great when everything is going up and to the right. And they want to know whether the people who have worked with you would do it again.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Which means the way you treat people over time literally becomes your fundraising material later, whether you meant it to or not.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

That is the whole point. And it is why so much of what we have talked about on this show matters beyond the immediate moment. Every time you communicate clearly with an LP, handle a hard conversation with honesty, or treat a portfolio company founder with respect. You are building the reference that someone will eventually

You Cannot Cram For Trust

SPEAKER_00 2:24

give on your behalf. You are writing those calls in advance through your behavior.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

There is something kind of poetic in that, honestly. You cannot cram for a reference call. You can only have already been the kind of person people speak well of.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

You cannot fake years of conduct in a single conversation. And the managers who understand this stop thinking of their reputation as a marketing problem and start treating it as the natural result of how they actually operate day to day. The good references take care of themselves when the underlying behavior is genuine. That is the entire lesson.

Fassport Demo And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 3:14

And if you want to build the kind of investor relationships that generate those references naturally, that is what Fassport is designed to help you do. Book a demo at fastport.co and the link is in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Such a good one. See you in the next episode. See you then.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Thanks for listening. See you next time.