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Knowing your fund’s Net IRR is one thing. Knowing whether that number is top quartile for its vintage and strategy is what actually moves an LP conversation forward.
The Peer Performance Calculator in Dakota Private Markets gives you that answer in seconds. But like any benchmark, the output is only as good as the inputs. Pick the wrong vintage or leave your peer group too broad, and the result stops telling you anything useful.
In this article, we’ll walk through every step of the Peer Performance Calculator, from choosing your filters to exporting your peer funds and downloading a PDF. By the end, you’ll know how to run a clean peer group and read the results with confidence.
7 Steps To Use the Peer Performance Calculator
Step 1: Open the Peer Performance Calculator
In Dakota Private Markets, go to the Private Fund & Comparison tab and select Peer Performance Calculator. You’ll see a short set of fields: Vintage Year, Asset Class, Sub-Asset Class, Net IRR, and TVPI.
Before you start, have your fund’s latest reported Net IRR and TVPI on hand, along with the as-of date. Comparing a Q2 number against a Q4 peer set can make your fund look better or worse than it really is.
Step 2: Select Your Vintage Year
Vintage year is the most important filter in the calculator. Funds that start investing in the same year face the same entry valuations, rate environment, and exit window, which is why vintage year performance matters more than the fund’s name.
Tip: Use the vintage your LPs use. Most allocators define vintage by the year of first capital call or first investment, not the year the fund was announced or held its first close. If your fund documents use a different convention, note it when you share results.
Step 3: Choose Your Asset Class and Sub-Asset Class
Select your asset class, such as private equity, venture capital, private credit, private real estate, or infrastructure and real assets.
Then decide whether to add a sub-asset class. This optional step is where most of the precision comes from. A mid-market buyout fund compared against all of private equity is sharing a peer group with venture-adjacent growth funds and mega-cap buyout vehicles. That is comparing apples to oranges, and allocators will notice.
Tip: Run the comparison both ways. The asset-class result shows how you stack up against the broad market, while the sub-asset class result shows how you compare against the managers LPs will actually weigh you against.
Dakota Private Markets compares your Net IRR and TVPI against same-vintage, same-strategy peers and shows you every fund in the comparison. Request access to run your comparison.
Step 4: Enter Your Net IRR and/or TVPI
Enter one metric or both. Each tells a different part of the story:
- Net IRR reflects the speed of returns, net of fees and carry.
- TVPI reflects the total multiple on paid-in capital, realized and unrealized.
Tip: Enter both whenever you can. A fund can rank top quartile on IRR thanks to fast early exits and land closer to the median on TVPI, or the reverse. Seeing both rankings side by side gives you the full picture, and it prepares you for the follow-up question before an LP asks it.
Step 5: Click Calculate and Read Your Results
Click Calculate, and the calculator returns four results for each metric you entered:
- Rank: Where your fund sits among its peers.
- Quartile: Top, second, third, or bottom quartile placement.
- Dakota peer group median: The midpoint of your peer group.
- Difference from the median: How far above or below the median your fund lands.
Illustrative example: Say a 2019 vintage buyout fund enters a 16.2% Net IRR and a 1.7x TVPI. If the peer median comes back at 13.5% and 1.5x, the fund is 2.7 points above the median on IRR and 0.2x above on TVPI. The quartile result then tells you whether that gap is enough to claim top quartile, or whether you’re solidly second quartile.
(These figures are hypothetical and used only to show how the results read.)
Step 6: View the Peer Funds in Your Peer Group
This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that makes your results defensible. Click “View the peer funds in this comparison” to see every fund used in the calculation.
From here you can:
- Search for specific managers you compete with for capital.
- Filter the list to check that the peer group fits your strategy.
- Export to Excel to run your own analysis or share the peer set with your team.
Tip: Check how many funds are in the peer group. A narrow sub-asset class in a thin vintage may only include a handful of funds, so it’s worth understanding how many funds is enough for a reliable peer group. If the group is small, run the broader asset-class comparison alongside it.
Step 7: Print Your Results to PDF
Once your results look right, use Print to PDF to download them for pitch decks, data rooms, quarterly LP updates, and investment committee memos.
Start Comparing Your Fund in Dakota Private Markets
Dakota Private Markets replaces hours of manual peer comparisons with a single tool backed by 18,000+ private funds and 159,000+ performance records across 7 asset classes, with Net IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI on every fund record.
The Peer Performance Calculator turns that data into instant, transparent answers: your rank, your quartile, your distance from the median, and the exact peers behind every result. Peer group data refreshes quarterly, so your comparisons stay current every reporting cycle.
Ready to see where your fund stands? Request access here.
