How we helped propel PFA Solutions to the forefront of GP solutions for private capital
Private capital firms tightened their belts in 2023 as the number of deals plunged, interest rates rose, and uncertainty grew. In the same year, however, PFA Solutions welcomed a growing number of private equity and other investment firms, also known as General Partner entities (GPs), to their SaaS platform, FirmView, to manage carried interest and compensation plans.
Total assets managed by PFA Solution’s customers passed $1 trillion last year. This success helped make FirmView’s automation and transparency the new gold standard for carried interest and compensation management in the industry.
We worked hand in hand with PFA Solutions to develop a plan that moved their marketing program to a new level by studying and listening to their customers with a focus on far-sighted firms whose leaders wanted to retain the best talent; combining PFA Solutions’ multifaceted appeal into a streamlined marketing plan; and building a corpus of thought leadership through multiple channels to showcase how PFA Solutions solved pressing challenges in private capital today.
The heart of private capital
Carried interest and compensation plans are at the heart of aligning private capital talent with overarching firm goals and investment objectives. They are the primary reward when a firm’s partners have invested and managed investor capital wisely. However, they are also notoriously complicated. Allocating rewards, managing vesting schedules for joiners and leavers, publishing documents timely, delivering participant-friendly data, generating distributions, and other related tasks absorb valuable resources and can be prone to “key person” risk and placing responsibility for vital functions in the hands of too few professionals. FirmView simplifies these tasks, delivering transparent management for the myriad carried interest and compensation plans offered at different firms and funds.
PFA Solutions Co-Founder and Managing Partner Richard Change knew that private capital needed cutting-edge tools to better manage carried interest and compensation. While many financial firms were making advances in automated and digitizing fund reporting for their investors, or limited partners (LPs), GP operations weren’t getting the same attention.
He and his colleagues wanted to reach prospective customers who relied on in-house financial technology solutions or used generic tools not built for purpose. PFA Solutions approached us in late 2021 after seeing LinkedIn marketing associated with our fund administration clients. Following discussions, PFA decided to amplify their sales team’s efforts through thought leadership that included a more robust LinkedIn presence and a new marketing push that could help forge connections with a wider community of chief financial officers, finance directors, chief operations officers, chief people officers and heads of human resources.
A roundtable
Together with the PFA team, we planned new LinkedIn content and a series of webcasts that catered to decision-makers at private capital firms who oversee carried interest and compensation. This focused stream of LinkedIn posts articulated the industry problems that needed solving, and how FirmView’s automation steps up to address many of the challenges that these decision-makers face – a playbook our team has refined and followed repeatedly to achieve success across clients.
The webcasts featuring top-tier professionals like former private capital CFO Kwame Lewis, PKF O’Connor Davies’ Michael Stellwagen, and Drive Capital’s Isabel Walch attracted attentive audiences, including prospects and allies. This content, in turn, led to more grist for LinkedIn as well as bylines like Richard Change’s “A digital transformation is sweeping through compensation and carried interest” in Private Funds CFO, which is essential reading in the industry.
In January 2023 we helped PFA Solutions organize a roundtable with 40 participants, including private capital CFOs and others, in New York City. The roundtable was an opportunity for networking, intelligence gathering on all sides, and, most importantly, cultivating new relationships. We especially focused on helping forge a key outcome during the event’s discussions: empowering attendees to identify and discuss their challenges with carried interest and compensation while introducing them to new solutions like FirmView that would help them fix these problems.
Importantly, too, the follow-through didn’t end there. During the roundtable, PFA Solutions surveyed participants to hone their messaging still further. More than 70 percent of survey respondents said that carry and compensation in private capital firms were becoming too complicated for traditional professional services to manage. Almost a third said that their incentive programs frequently added new compensation plan types, too. The climate was perfect for a solution like FirmView, which addressed this pain point through automation and transparency that could scale.
More customer success
In the months after the roundtable, staying on course while other parts of the market foundered, PFA Solutions earned the business of eight private equity firms, two venture capital firms, five real estate investment firms, and two credit firms.
The survey in part predicted these wins. Pivotally, it informed our LinkedIn campaigns and topics of discussion for webcasts. It gave rise to more bylines, too, like Richard Change’s piece, “Here’s what workflow innovation looks like for private capital fund operations” in Global Custodian and other publications on how automation and transparency can overcome CFO’s challenges in comp and carry. The resulting foundation was a springboard for the Definitive Guide to Carry and Compensation Management, a comprehensive text that encapsulates themes discussed at PFA Solutions’ second roundtable in 2024.
The new business that grew out of these interactions put PFA Solutions at the forefront of the companies meeting the unmet needs of private capital with new solutions for comprehensive carry and compensation management. New partners and more growth have been the pattern ever since.
Want to learn more? Are you facing similar challenges in amplifying your message in your industry? We’d love to hear from you.
