Data sourced from Dakota Private Markets, the private fund performance platform powered by Dakota. Learn More | Request Access
The investment committee memo is due Friday, and the recommendation covers one manager. The only performance data on the table is the manager’s own deck, which claims top-quartile returns without naming the peer set. You don’t need a platform seat to underwrite one fund, but you do need to know which inputs can be verified and which ones can’t.
In this article, we’ll walk through what to verify in public filings, how to benchmark a fund against the right peer set, how to read a track record, and where Dakota Private Markets fits.
Start With What the Manager Can’t Edit
Public filings and the data room give you the first layer of verification at no cost. Form ADV shows AUM, ownership, affiliations, and disciplinary history. Form D shows how much of the current raise has actually been sold. The prior fund’s audited financials and LPA terms show what the manager did, as opposed to what the deck says it did. Use this layer to confirm the story is internally consistent before you spend time on performance.
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Source
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What it confirms
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What it can’t tell you
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Form ADV
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AUM, ownership, disciplinary history
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Whether returns were good
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Form D
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Raise size and amount sold
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Fund quality
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Prior fund financials and LPA
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Fees, carry, realized activity
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How results compare to peers
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A Fund’s Numbers Need a Peer Set
Net IRR, TVPI, and DPI only become useful when they sit next to funds of the same vintage and strategy. Dakota Private Markets carries performance metrics on every fund record across 14,000+ funds. Take 2024 vintage private equity as of 2Q26. Dakota’s peer group dataset shows a TVPI median of 1.10x for the full vintage. A fund reporting 1.25x clears that median but sits below the 1.35x top-quartile cutoff, so a deck that calls it top quartile is stretching.
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2024 vintage PE, as of 2Q26
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Bottom quartile
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Median
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Top quartile
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TVPI
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1.00x
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1.10x
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1.35x
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Net IRR
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0.0%
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10.8%
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25.5%
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DPI
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0.02x
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0.05x
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0.17x
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Source: Dakota Private Markets peer group dataset, 2Q26.
The DPI row is the one to read twice. A 0.05x median DPI against a 1.10x median TVPI means most of the value at this vintage still sits on the manager’s marks. DPI is reported on a thinner set of funds than TVPI, so treat the comparison as directional.
Want to see how the fund you’re evaluating stacks up against its real peers? Request Access →
Read the Track Record, Not the Headline
Look at dispersion across the manager’s prior funds, the split between realized and unrealized value, and the spread between gross and net returns. A strong TVPI on a young fund is a forecast. DPI is a receipt. If most of the multiple sits in RVPI, you’re underwriting the manager’s marks, not their record.
The One Input Filings Can’t Give You
Fund filings and data rooms can confirm a fund’s performance, but they don’t show how that performance compares with similar funds. The peer group matters. Dakota divides 2024 vintage funds into nine comparison groups, with median TVPIs ranging from 1.00x to 1.25x. A fund reporting a 1.25x TVPI would be above the median for the overall vintage, but its relative standing changes depending on the peer group.
This highlights why selecting the right peer group is critical. Investors need the flexibility to compare funds by vintage, strategy, geography, fund size, and portfolio company sector to understand how a manager is performing against relevant peers.
The Bottom Line
Filings establish what happened. Benchmarks establish whether it was good.
Underwrite Your Next Fund With Dakota Private Markets
Dakota Private Markets is built for this exact job: named, fund-level performance on one or two specific funds, without a broad institutional data subscription just to answer a narrow question.
Pull the fund’s history, compare it against a peer group you construct, and export the cut to Excel or CSV for the IC memo. See the Underwrite a Fund use case for a worked example.
Request Access to run it on the fund you’re evaluating now.
