What to do when your IC doesn’t Appreciate your investment ideas

If you tell me your Investment Committee "doesn't get it" and you're always having to push deals,
I'll say you have a problem in your "Sales Department"
..........
If your IC is slow to see it, or pushes back with low engagement,
You are failing to Build Consensus early in your process.

As a PE/GE Partner, you exist to source investment opportunities which fit the archetype of what your Investment Committee likes to invest in. You are no longer the model jockey or the deal captain whose pencil is the sharpest.

Your firm has an Investment Philosophy it has communicated to LPs. LPs expect to see capital consistently deployed to those themes. You exist as a highly paid investment banker, to spot appropriate deals for your committee, and orchestrate the process of getting the IC to write a check or move onto the next deal.

It's a numbers game: about consistently finding eligible targets, and then playing the game to sell committee on each idea, until they either fill or kill it.

So as you lay down your old identity of being the "always right" deal captain, here are some ways to Build Consensus throughout the deal process:

1. Overcommunicate: if you don't tell people what you're working on, they won't know the excellent work you are doing in identifying and filtering investment opportunities

2. Err on Early Sharing: our analyst egos like to know everything before sharing/presenting a new idea. Put the ego to rest -- share in a brief email or weekly committee meeting early and promising ideas. Draw on the collective intuition of your IC to find out early where the opportunities and risks are. Don't hide the ball.

3. Play the Game: your analyst brain was trained to look for risks and kill deals. For deals which align with the IC's general area of interest, put on your "possibility/solution" hat and find reasons to do the deal. Listen to objections and don't take them personally; with curiosity, help your IC reframe the risk to something which is manageable. Let them kill the deal, not you (before they ever even hear about it).

How can you Shift Your Mindset from Problem-finding, to Solutions and Consensus Building?

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