Gaurav Shah

A modern illustration of capital stack diagnostics — aligning institutional capital with fund architecture, tranche design, and payout priorities. A GP once walked us through a 41% IRR. The arithmetic held and was also largely a function of a NAV credit line (once you traced it) that had deferred capital calls long enough to squeeze the denominator, sitting on top of exits that were paper mark-ups with no cash behind them. Nothing in the deck was false and perhaps that was the problem. The...

Institutional diligence in frontier sectors like agentic AI and quantum relies on decoding technical claims, execution deltas, and capital stack risk We advised a client against a growth round in enterprise AI. The product worked and te demo was genuinely impressive. What stopped us was a slide, a wall of forty-odd enterprise logos under the heading "Customers." So we asked a boring question: how many of these are paid production contracts rather than pilots? The number came back in single...

Contrasting lenses: Consultant-led strategy vs. operator-led execution in dynamic fund environments. A US climate fund came to us struggling to raise its third vintage. The strategy document was thorough. It had been produced by a well-regarded firm, it was internally consistent, and LPs were not buying it. The problem sat somewhere that document never looked. Capital was being deployed on a pacing model that assumed exit windows the fund had not seen in three years. Carry triggers rewarded...