Raising Private Markets Capital from Wealth Managers
Julian R. Sterling
These are the companion files of The Private Wealth Fundraiser by Julian R. Sterling.The book on Amazon →
One Excel workbook that runs the forecast the book describes in full and never performs, now corrected. Around it, a blank version and a coverage and readiness model for your own channel, thirteen working documents to print, forty questions that mark themselves, and three cases the book does not work. All free. Nothing is gated behind a sign-up, and no email address is asked for.
Six workbooks, the printable documents and the read-me. Each group below can also be
downloaded on its own. Last revised 24 September 2026.
Get an email if these files are corrected
Optional. When a workbook on this page is corrected or a new worked case goes up, readers on the list get one email, plus a short note when a new book comes out. The downloads do not need it.
Chapter 15 gives the method in enough detail to build it — in-scope
advisors, a conversion curve by month since launch, tickets per producing advisor,
average ticket, and a redemption rate on aged tranches — then states the
Thornbury conclusion without showing the numbers. This workbook is the model:
eighty-four months, four platforms, one page of inputs. Revised: the redemption-free
period now drives the model (it was connected to nothing), and the diagnostic sheet is live.
The conclusion holds. Gross flows never fall — they are zero until the first
platform goes live in month 7, then rise in every one of the seventy-eight months
after — while the organic growth rate peaks and falls by 72 per cent. But the
finding worth having is the one the chapter does not make.
There are three peaks and they are years apart. Gross flows never
turn down. Net flows peak at month 44. The organic growth rate peaks at
month 29.
Fifty-five months separate them. The head of distribution reports gross flows and
sees seven years of growth; the chief executive reports the organic growth rate and
sees a business that stopped improving in month twenty-nine. Both are right, and
the gap is four and a half years — long enough for a
distribution team to be praised, promoted and replaced before anyone reconciles them.
Redemption drag is U-shaped, and the middle years lie
The chapter says drag grows with the age of the book. Over seven years it does. Month
by month it does not: 38.7 per cent of gross flow at month 18,
falling to 14.2 per cent at month 36, then climbing to
41.5 per cent by month 84.
Year three is the bottom of the U. It is also, precisely, when a distribution team
first has enough history to build a credible multi-year forecast — and the two
years it can see show drag improving. A team that extrapolates what it can see
will forecast an improvement at the exact moment it is about to reverse. The
remedy is in the model, not in judgement: redemptions modelled as a rate on aged
tranches produce the U-shape by themselves.
A miss has a signature
The chapter promises that a forecast miss tells you whether conversion, ticket size or
timing was wrong. It does. Measured at month 36: a two-point fall in the conversion
ceiling costs 11.1 per cent of flow but only 6.6 per cent of assets; a
ten per cent smaller ticket, 10.0 and 6.0. A three-month launch slip costs the
least flow — 5.5 per cent — and the most assets,
11.6 per cent.
So flows and assets short in proportion points at conversion or ticket size; flows near
plan with assets well short points at timing, and at a problem that happened earlier
than the month being read.
What it would take to hold the line
Holding a 30 per cent organic growth rate at month 60 needs 24 per cent more gross
flow than the model produces. That cannot come from working saturated platforms harder;
it has to come from new ones, which take nine to twelve months from approval to
production. So the decision had to be taken around month 48 —
a year before anyone was looking at the shortfall. The cohort model does not merely
forecast. It dates the decision.
The same models, for your own channel
Two workbooks with every input emptied. The checks sheets count what is still missing and test what holds for any inputs.
Chapters 2, 6, 15 and 16 · Appendix F
A blank cohort forecast, and the coverage arithmetic
The book’s forecast with its inputs emptied: your seed, your conversion curve, your ticket economics, your redemption terms and up to four platforms, with the three peaks, the U of redemption drag, the gross flow a growth target needs and the signature of a miss recomputed. And a new file for the arithmetic Chapters 2, 6 and 16 ask for: the triage of a target list against what a salesperson can hold, the coverage model of a platform tier by tier, and the readiness self-assessment with the book’s thresholds.
The book’s figures are listed in a text file inside the archive. Type Aldergate’s platform back in and the file shows what Chapter 6 leaves out: each external must deliver 700 to 1,050 touches a year, and the book never says how many one person can. Enter yours and the sheet says whether the plan is designed or merely asserted.
Thirteen pages to print and use. A4, with margins wide enough for US Letter.
Chapters 2 to 16 · Appendices B and C
Thirteen working documents
The channel map and coverage triage. The vehicle’s engineering questions and the liquidity sentence, word for word. The narrative ladder and the retelling test. The coverage and operating model. The platform due diligence tracker and gaps register. The Appendix B readiness checklist. The six moments of advisor work in the plumbing. The fee stack, the total-cost sheet and the new-class test. Advisor meeting preparation. The objection inventory and the event scorecard. The family office decision map. Servicing, the bad-news notice and the day the gate binds. The funnel, the metric set and the readiness score.
A workbook that marks itself. Answer in the yellow cells; the marking fills in as you go.
All parts of the book
Forty questions on the book
Seven on the channel and the decision, seven on product, narrative and the operating model, seven on approval, plumbing and fees, six on the field, family offices, servicing and compliance, seven on Chapters 15, 16 and Appendix F, and six on the three cases below. Numbers are marked to a tolerance, multiple choice to the letter, and the score sheet counts your errors part by part: that is your revision list.
New material, not a restatement. Three situations the chapters name and never take to a number. Each case is one workbook: the note is the first sheet, the model is the rest, and a checks sheet closes it. Type your own figures in and every finding recomputes.
Chapters 4 and 13 · Case one
The quarter the gate binds
Chapter 13’s advisor who “delivers sixty percent”, at Chapter 4’s five per cent cap, on Thornbury’s 536 million: requests of 8.33 per cent of NAV, 3.8 times what the Appendix F model redeems in that quarter. If the rush lasts one quarter the client is whole in the next. If it persists, the rolling queue lowers every later fill rate, she has 88.4 per cent back after a year, and once the sleeve and the facility are spent each quarter at the cap costs the holders who stay 0.84 per cent of NAV.
Chapters 6 and 9 · Case two
When the channel pays for itself
The book gives two clocks, “two to three years” and “three to five”, and they measure different things. On Appendix F’s flows at a 0.75 per cent margin, the first holds only if the channel costs at most 1.20 million a year, the second at most 1.09 million. At 1.5 million, revenue covers the cost from month 40 and the channel has paid for itself in month 71. With net flow at half of gross, Chapter 9’s own question, it has not paid back within seven years.
Chapter 9 · Case three
The share class for one distributor
Chapter 9 says to put the minimum committed volume in the agreement and never computes it. For a class twenty basis points cheaper, it is 16.6 million, and the class still pays at 30 of the 100 million promised: its own cost is small. The side letters are not. If the institutional MFN clauses pass the discount on, the minimum becomes 193 million, 1.9 times the promise.
forty-four controls in the book’s workbook, each stating its own verdict; every other workbook ends with its own
ADDED
a figure the book does not give, used in the cases and marked wherever it appears
Every firm and figure is illustrative, as everything in the book is. What is not
illustrative is the shape of the result, which holds for any plausible set of inputs.
The three peak months on sheet 4 are computed, not typed — change an assumption
and they move.
Opening the files
The workbooks open in Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Sheets and Numbers; the
PDF prints on A4 or US Letter. They use no macros and no add-ins, so nothing needs to be enabled or trusted. If your
spreadsheet asks to update links on opening, decline — there are none.
What changed, and when
24 Sep 2026
The book’s workbook corrected: the redemption-free period was connected to nothing (the twelve-month lag was typed into the formulas), so the suggestion to set it to zero described a result the file could not produce; it now drives the model, and at zero the U-shape of redemption drag remains (22.5 per cent at month 36). The miss scenarios on sheet 5, typed values before, are recomputed live. Gross flow is zero until month 7 and rises in 78 of the 84 months, not all 84. Forty-four checks, all passing. Added: a blank version, a coverage and readiness model, thirteen working documents, forty questions and three cases.
Closing the DealTwo defensible bridges 20.70 million apart, a peg worth 7.00 million, and the six choices that remove 6.60 of a 12.00 earn-out.
CMBS and CRE CLOsWhere the loss actually lands, from appraisal reduction to realised severity, and what the B-piece is really being paid for.
How to Read a Commercial LeaseThe three refinements chapter 19 names and never performs, and the renewal rate below which the mark-to-market is worth nothing.
How to Read a Credit AgreementWhere the default actually comes from, the cure that costs 5.5 times the other, and the capacity nobody adds up.
How to Read a Real Estate Loan AgreementThe cure ratio in closed form, the four-point window in which the cheap cure works, and the cure sized to the wrong threshold.
Office Real EstateA six per cent yield that returns 3.2 per cent once the re-letting cycle is paid for, and the headline-to-net-effective rent arithmetic.
Private Equity Real EstateBoth worked waterfalls to the dollar, the two capital stacks, and the arithmetic of the promote made changeable.
Private Markets PerformanceThirty-one of the thirty-three figures chapter 19 publishes reproduce exactly — and the two that do not are named rather than quietly adopted.
Raising a Real Estate FundThe chapter 17 funnel run on a calendar — when the first close actually lands, and why more travel does not help.
Real Estate FinanceFour people look at one building and reach four numbers; the lender is whole only above 105,109,489, twelve per cent below today’s value rather than forty.
Real Estate Financial ModelingProperty, development and fund models built line by line, and the modelling test worked end to end.
Real Estate Fund ManagementThe waterfall of 6.11, the build-to-core of 8.7 and the proceeds gap, reproduced as live formulas rather than asserted.
REIT Analysis and ValuationFFO of 532.0, AFFO of 381.0, net asset value and dividend safety — every figure a formula you can change.
Retail Real EstateThe occupancy cost of every unit in a centre, the sixteen per cent of the rent roll no tenant can sustain, and the right-size-convert-or-hold decision priced.
Sale and LeasebackA €179.5 million transaction end to end, with rent cover measured on the entity that actually signs the lease.
Self-Storage Real EstateThe cohort engine behind a 590-unit store, and the rate increase on existing customers priced against the move-outs it causes.
The Fund Finance ProfessionalChapter 8 builds the reported-to-eligible NAV bridge; chapter 9 computes every ratio without it. Two points at every state — and what a subscription line does to the IRR.
The Growth Equity InvestorWhat a pro rata cheque really costs, and the band where defending your ownership loses money.
The Private Credit InvestorThe two coverage ratios are not measured on the same thing: the erosion is 47.7 per cent, not the 28.7 the headline implies.
The Private Equity Fund Controller PlaybookThe book defines IRR, DPI, RVPI and TVPI, tells you to update them at the exit, and prints not one value. Computed: a 1.833× deal inside a fund at 0.892 TVPI.
The Venture Capital AssociateWhat defending a position costs, and how many companies a reserve pool actually defends.
Financial Risk ManagementA fund inside every limit that cannot meet a redemption — and the number that decides it is the one with no currency attached.
Business ValuationThree advisers land 26.8 per cent apart on one company, and the whole gap turns out to be 1.96 points of perpetual growth.
Quantitative FinanceThree models agree to a quarter of one per cent about a number that one unobservable input moves a hundred and three times as much.
Asset ManagementFour people quote four returns for one mandate, all correct and 2.7017 points apart — forty-eight times the manager’s net skill.
Alternative InvestmentsA manager reports 13.29 per cent and the endowment earns 6.26 — both correct, and only a third of the advertised advantage arrives.
Credit AnalysisFour defensible EBITDAs on one borrower give leverage from 3.19x to 6.47x — and the add-back argument is fifty times the covenant headroom.
Venture CapitalOne company out of twenty-eight returns 56.7 per cent of the fund, and half the capital goes in after the decision — at half the return.
Machine Learning for FinanceFive people quote the accuracy of one credit model, all five are right, and the number that decides how much money it makes is none of them.
Commercial Real Estate InvestingThe equity earned 8.6647 per cent and the investor received exactly 8.0000 — the preferred return, and nothing above it.
Mergers and AcquisitionsThe board paper says the deal creates 13,436,667 of value. The arithmetic says it destroys 17,530,855. Nobody is lying.
DerivativesThe treasury report says the hedge cost 1,233,698. That is the interest differential, not a cost.
Treasury ManagementFive cash balances for one company, all correct and 145,600,000 apart — and the revolver that is two-thirds of the liquidity leaves at a revenue fall of 8.4127 per cent.
Financial Planning and AnalysisRevenue 3.0190 per cent above budget and operating profit 16.3209 per cent below it, in the same quarter, with every figure correctly stated.
Energy TradingA position report that is 91.7031 per cent hedged and correctly computed, on a book that is short 2,542,000 MWh — and a margin call of 198,400,000 the next morning.
Construction Cost ControlA contract sum of 26,301,102 became a final account of 29,153,363 on the building that was drawn — and 85.8 per cent of what was lost was knowable on the day it was signed.
Trade FinanceSix routes to payment on one 4,200,000 export order cost between 178,040 and 223,268, a spread worth 14.8 per cent of the margin, and a day of buyer credit costs 1,031.76.
Cost AccountingOne factory costed twice on the same 13,440,000 of overhead, and 4,053,091 moves between four product families.
Pricing StrategyA list price of 148.00, a pocket price of 112.51, and the nine deductions in between — with what one point of price is actually worth.
Contract ManagementA bid 5.50 a unit cheaper, signed on paper worth 9.81 a unit more — and 94.68 per cent of it was knowable on the day of signature.
Capital MarketsFour defensible readings of one bond, the cost of an issue under each convention, and the placement discount computed at a constant discount.
Financial RegulationThree ratios pass and the fourth is in breach by 1,956.0 million: the output floor, the liquidity buffer after encumbrance, and the loan split.
Bank ManagementFour defensible readings of one balance sheet, the deposit beta measured two ways, and the liquidity that lasts 3.9 days.
The Real Estate WorkoutFour ways out of one broken loan, discounted to today, and the 58.7 cents at which a payoff beats enforcement.
Go beyond the companion files
The Private Wealth Fundraiser develops the complete framework behind these models, with the assumptions, trade-offs and worked examples tied together.
If this book helped — or didn’t — a few lines on Amazon are worth more than they look: they are what the next reader goes on. Write a review. The workbook stays free either way.