Median Years Between an Adviser's Private Equity Fund Launches (Form ADV, Form D)

## What this measures

The median time, in years, between one private equity fund launch and the same adviser's next one, for launches in the year shown.

## Why it matters

How often managers come back to raise: gaps shorten when raising is easy and lengthen when investors hold back.

## How it is made

Advisers list every private fund they manage on Form ADV Schedule D, with the fund's Form D file number. Palanor joins each venture capital or private equity fund to its Form D offering, and takes the date of the offering's first notice as the fund's launch. An adviser's launches of one fund type less than 180 days apart are one fund family (parallel, feeder and offshore vehicles); deal vehicles, feeders, parallel, offshore, annex, sidecar, continuation, blocker and holding vehicles are left out by name. The gap is the time between the starts of an adviser's successive fund families, by the year of the later one. The series starts in 2015, the first year in which a six-year gap fits inside the Form D record (electronic since 2009).

## How to read it

The series starts in 2015 at 1.70 years. The latest reading, for 2025, is 1.73 years. The high is 1.98 years (2017) and the low 1.67 years (2023).

## What it does not say

It counts any next fund of the type, not only flagship funds: a firm with a seed fund and a growth fund launches often, which is why the typical gap is about two years rather than the three to four years usually quoted for flagship funds. Advisers that do not report to the SEC, and funds without a Form D, are missing. Schedule D covers filings through 2025; later launches arrive when the next Form ADV files are loaded.

## Source

Palanor calculation from SEC Form ADV data (from 2025 BrokerCheck, adviserinfo.sec.gov; subject to the BrokerCheck Terms of Use) and SEC Form D data sets (public domain).