Capital raising looks like a pitch. It is really a relationship game that starts years before anyone asks for money, and most people learn that the expensive way. Sam Tidswell-Norrish has raised close to $10 billion across private equity funds, and he has sat on every side of the table: As an operator building a firm from scratch, as an investor sourcing deals, and as a founder raising for his own venture. Few people have run the full capital raising loop at his level. On this episode of Deal Makers (& Fakers), Sam joined Niclas Schlopsna, partner at spectup, to walk through what moves money from an investor’s account into yours. Whether you are a founder raising your first round, a fund manager raising your first vehicle, or an investor learning to source better, the same patterns keep showing up. Here is the full breakdown. Thanks for reading Deal Makers (& Fakers)! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Capital Raising is a Relationship Game (Not a Pitch Deck one) The single lesson under everything Sam said: money follows trust, and trust is built long before the ask. The founders and managers who close fast are almost never the ones with the best-looking deck. They are the ones who were in the room, useful and consistent, months or years earlier. By the time the raise opens, the investor already knows them, already trusts the work, and the meeting is a formality more than a decision. That reframes the whole exercise. If capital raising is relationship-led, then the real work happens between raises, not during them. It is the quiet, unglamorous months of staying in touch, being helpful with nothing on the table, and letting people watch you deliver. From a Barclays trading floor to raising $10B Sam did not start in private equity. He started on the trading floor at Barclays, where he learned to read markets, price risk, and move quickly under pressure. That grounding shaped how he later approached fundraising, as a numbers-first discipline rather than a charm exercise. The bigger chapter came at Motive Partners, where he was a founding team member and helped build the firm and raise roughly $10 billion. Building a firm from zero taught him the part of capital raising nobody advertises: how hard it is to earn the first believers when you have no track record to point to Your product is performance: Here is the line worth writing down. In private equity, your product is not your fund. Your product is performance. Investors are not buying a legal structure or a slide. They are buying your ability to turn their capital into more capital, repeatedly and predictably. That distinction changes how you present. Instead of talking up the vehicle, you show the machine that produces results: how you source, how you decide, how you improve companies, and why that process holds up across cycles. Founders can borrow the same move. Do not sell the round. Sell the evidence that you can turn money into outcomes. Private equity fundraising vs startup fundraising Sam has done both, so his comparison carries weight. The mechanics differ, but the spine is identical. Startup fundraising sells a future that mostly does not exist yet. You are raising on vision, team, and early signal, and investors price the story. Private equity fundraising sells a repeatable engine backed by a track record, and investors price the proof. One leans on belief, the other on evidence. What carries over both ways: relationships open the door, clarity keeps you in the room, and consistency closes. A founder who understands how LPs scrutinize a fund manager will pitch VCs more sharply, because the underlying question is the same. Can I trust this person with my money, and will I get it back with more. Thanks for reading Deal Makers (& Fakers)! It would mean a lot if you share this post The 7 Ps every investor checks before they wire a dollar Here is the checklist an investor runs before committing. They map closely to what most LPs actually screen for, so use this as the frame and listen to the full episode for his exact phrasing. * People: The team, the track record together, and whether they will stay in the seat. Investors back people first. * Performance: Real, verifiable results. Not projections, not one lucky deal, but a pattern. * Philosophy: A clear, honest view of how you make money and why that edge lasts. * Process: The repeatable system behind the results. Sourcing, diligence, decisions, and value creation. * Portfolio: What you already own or have built, and how it holds up under a hard look. * Price and terms: Fees, structure, and alignment. Investors want to know your incentives point the same way theirs do. * Pipeline: What comes next? A credible line of sight to the deals that will drive the returns you are promising. Miss one, and the smart money hesitates. Nail all seven, and the conversation moves to when, not whether. There are More private equity funds than McDonald’s Sam points to a stat that reframes the whole difficulty of raising today. There are now more private equity funds in the US than there are McDonald’s locations, roughly 19,000 funds against about 14,000 restaurants. Capital is not scarce. Attention and differentiation are. Standing out in that crowd does not come from a louder pitch. It comes from a sharper strategy, a track record you can defend, and relationships that were built before the raise. When thousands of funds all say a version of the same thing, the ones that win are the ones an investor already knows and already trusts. Keeping investor relationships warm: the pen, and one LinkedIn message This is where Sam gets tactical, and where founders can copy him directly. He runs a physical system to keep relationships warm. He writes names on his hand, an old-fashioned pen-on-hand prompt, so he follows up with the people he met before the day’s noise buries them. Low tech, high consistency. Then the story that ties it together. A single, well-judged LinkedIn message to one of the minds behind General Magic, a legendary figure in tech, eventually led to that person joining his board. One message, sent with genuine respect and a clear reason, opened a door most people assume is permanently closed. The lesson is not “spam your dream contacts.” It is that a specific, human, well-timed outreach still works, and most people never send it. Key takeaways * Capital raising is relationship-led. The real work happens between raises, not during them. * In private equity, your product is performance, not your fund. Sell the machine that produces results. * There are more US private equity funds than McDonald’s locations, so differentiation and trust beat volume and noise. * A serious raise takes around 24 months. Plan for the timeline, and let real scarcity do the closing. * Keep relationships warm with simple, consistent systems. One specific, human outreach still opens doors most people never try. * The weekend call test reveals founder quality faster than any deck. Guest: Sam Tidswell-Norrish, Partner at Access Holdings, Chair of OPUS, and founding team member at Motive Partners. Host: Niclas Schlopsna, partner at spectup. About spectup: Capital advisory for companies raising from institutional investors (family office, VC, private equity) and for GPs raising a new fund and need intros to Limited partners This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dealmakersandfakers.substack.com
