Data sourced from Dakota Private Markets, the private fund performance platform powered by Dakota. Learn More | Request Access
Most benchmark slides quote a fund count as if a bigger number automatically means a more reliable comparison. It doesn't. A forty-fund peer group means nothing if half those funds are sized, structured, or accessed in ways the investor reading the slide could never replicate. The right question isn't "how many funds is enough." It's "enough for whom."
Why “Enough” Depends on Who’s Asking
Public market benchmarks work because every investor competes in roughly the same investable universe. Private markets don't work that way. A pension fund with a large allocation and a small deal team is often forced into fewer, larger commitments simply because it can't diligence forty relationships at once. An endowment with more flexibility spreads capital across dozens of smaller funds to hit diversification targets a pension never needs. Both are benchmarking the same vintage year and the same strategy, but "enough funds" means something different for each of them, because their actual competitive set isn't the same.
That's the gap Dakota Private Market’s custom benchmarking dataset is built to close: allocators and GPs can cut peer groups by fund size, strategy, and geography instead of relying on a generic blended universe.
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Allocator Archetype
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Typical Ticket Size
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What a Matched Peer Group Looks Like
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Where Generic Benchmarks Mislead Them
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Large Pension/ OCIO
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Large, concentrated
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Fewer, larger funds sized to actual check size
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A broad blended universe pads the “n” with funds they’d never be allocated into
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Endowment/ Foundation
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Smaller, diversified
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Broader count of smaller and mid-sized funds
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A mega-fund weighted benchmark understates what’s achievable at their check size
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Family Office
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Variable, opportunistic
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Peer group flexed by strategy and geography, not just size
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Rigid size bands miss the cross-strategy comparisons they actually care about
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Insurance/ Conservative mandates
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Structured, risk-constrained
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Narrower cut on risk and structure, not just vintage
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Standard vintage-year cuts ignore the risk constraints driving their selection
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Fund Count Isn't The Only Measure That Matters
A peer group can maximize fund count while covering only a sliver of the capital actually deployed in that vintage, or maximize capital coverage while including only a handful of mega-funds. Both can claim a defensible n, and both mislead depending on which allocator is reading the slide. A benchmark that hits a respectable fund count but skews toward one size band isn’t broad, it’s concentrated with extra steps. The count on the slide and the coverage behind it are two different claims, and allocators should ask for both.
Dakota Private Markets tracks 57,000+ private funds, with verified Net IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI on 14,000+ of them, enough breadth to build a peer group sized to a specific investor's opportunity set rather than a generic blended universe. Dakota Private Markets' custom benchmarking dataset lets allocators and GPs construct that cut by fund size, strategy, and geography together, not vintage year alone.
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