Specific Fund Vetting Report

Overview

A Specific Fund Vetting Report is a paginated, twelve-section due-diligence document on a single fund vintage being evaluated by a Limited Partner for a commitment decision. Subjects include named fund vintages such as Sequoia Capital U.S. Venture Fund XVII, a16z Crypto Fund III, KKR Asia Fund IV, or Blackstone Real Estate Partners X. Where the firm-level PE Firm and VC Firm reports cover GP-level posture across all vintages, this report drills down to a single named vintage — the most actionable level for an LP making an actual capital-commit decision.

It is generated on demand from SEC EDGAR Form D filings (every U.S. private-fund offering files Form D within 15 days of first sale), parent-firm Form ADV (where the GP is registered or files as ERA), public LP commitment news from CalPERS / CalSTRS / Yale / MIT / Texas TRS investment-committee minutes, ILPA published GP standards, and reputable financial-press search via Serper. It takes three to five minutes to produce, costs 50 credits (about $20 USD), and is delivered as a shareable HTML report with a printable PDF view.

It is intended for a pension fund, university endowment, sovereign wealth fund, family office, fund-of-funds, or qualified-purchaser high-net-worth backer evaluating a commitment to a specific named fund vintage — primarily during the active raising / first-close window.

The Seven Frameworks We Adopt

ICD 203 — Analytic Standards (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Directive 203 defines nine tradecraft standards. We treat these as binding for every Specific Fund Vetting Report. The discipline of expressing uncertainty explicitly is non-negotiable when reasoning about fund-vintage outcomes that take 10+ years to crystallise.

ICD 206 — Sourcing Requirements (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

Every URL cited above is aggregated in Section 12 and classified by source class (Primary / Authoritative Secondary / Tier-1 Press / Trade Press / Other) so the LP Due Diligence team can see source-class distribution at a glance.

UK PHIA Probability Yardstick (UK Defence Intelligence)

Every probabilistic claim — GP-team continuity, deployment-pace signals, sector-thesis overcrowding, vintage-cohort positioning, terms-vs-market drift — is expressed using the seven-band PHIA yardstick paired with an analytical-confidence rating.

ILPA Principles 3.0 (Institutional Limited Partners Association)

ILPA Principles 3.0 defines the LP-side standard for evaluating fund governance, fee transparency, key-person provisions, LPAC composition, and fund-level reporting. Section 7 (Fund Terms Dissection) and Section 11 (Red Flags) explicitly map evaluation criteria to ILPA-aligned signals.

ILPA Performance Reporting Standards

The ILPA Performance Reporting Standards define the LP-side benchmark for fund-level performance metrics: DPI (distributions to paid-in), TVPI (total value to paid-in), MOIC (multiple on invested capital), and net IRR. Section 6 (Comparable Vintage Analysis) applies these definitions consistently across peer-vintage funds where public LP minutes disclose them.

Counterparty Due Diligence Framework (MentionFox)

Section 3 (Parent Firm Context) applies the Counterparty Due Diligence framework that anchors the firm-level PE/VC Firm reports: parent firm legal name, jurisdiction of incorporation (Delaware LP/LLC standard), regulatory enforcement history, and named-officer-by-association exposure that bears on the specific vintage's GP team.

AML/KYC + SEC Form ADV / ERA Compliance Framework

The parent firm's SEC EDGAR Form ADV Items 11.A-11.J (disciplinary history) and SEC litigation releases are cross-referenced for any enforcement actions. Where the parent operates as an Exempt Reporting Adviser under the Dodd-Frank VC adviser exemption (Investment Advisers Act §203(l)), the abbreviated Form ADV is cited directly; where it operates as a Registered Investment Adviser, the full Form ADV is cited.

The Twelve Sections of a Specific Fund Vetting Report

Scoring Methodology

The Fund-Specific LP-Suitability Score is a 0-100 composite of four equally-weighted sub-scores:

1. GP team for THIS fund (0-25) — depth of named investment professionals committed to this vintage, tenure on the firm's prior funds, key-person provision under THIS fund's LPA, continuity vs predecessor fund. Higher score = more durable, more experienced team for this specific raise.
2. Strategy fit for this vintage (0-25) — does this fund's stated thesis fit the current market environment? Is this the right time to deploy this strategy at this size? Higher score = strong thesis-environment alignment.
3. Fund terms (0-25) — management fee, carry, hurdle, GP commit, LPAC structure where disclosed. ILPA-alignment. Higher score = more LP-friendly terms relative to peer-vintage funds. Lower score = higher LP risk; this direction is spelled out explicitly.
4. Pacing-vs-target (0-25) — committed vs target fund-size; raise speed vs predecessor; LP demand signals from press. Higher score = strong LP demand signal (oversubscribed first close); lower score = under-target pacing or slow raise relative to firm history.

Headline recommendation is one of: commit / commit with terms negotiation / additional Due Diligence required / pass. The choice is anchored in the composite score and red-flag aggregation, not in cohort-following or marketing tone.

Data Sources — Free Public Only

• SEC EDGAR Form D filings — every U.S. Reg D private-fund offering. Discloses fund name, target size, total-amount-sold-to-date, named selling commission recipients, parent firm CRD/CIK linkage. Free + immediate.
• SEC EDGAR Form ADV (parent firm) — disciplinary history (Items 11.A-11.J), Schedule A (named investment professionals), custody arrangements. Free.
• Public LP investment-committee minutes — CalPERS, CalSTRS, NY State Common, Texas TRS, Florida SBA, Washington State, Yale, MIT, Notre Dame, Princeton (where disclosed). Public board materials regularly disclose fund-level commitments + occasional fee terms.
• Reputable financial / tech-finance press — Bloomberg, Reuters, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Pensions & Investments, Private Equity International (free articles), Institutional Investor, TechCrunch, The Information, Forbes, Axios, PitchBook News.
• Crunchbase fund pages — public data on fund names, vintages, portfolio companies, exits.
• Conference and podcast appearances — partner-thesis specialization is often stated in conference talks and podcasts (Lex Fridman, Tim Ferriss, Acquired, 20VC, Logan Bartlett, All-In) — public signal of GP posture.
• SEC enforcement actions database — for any prior enforcement against named officers, the parent firm, or affiliated entities.
• Serper — for general press / news search across the above sources.

What we do NOT use: PitchBook full subscription data, Preqin full subscription data, Cambridge Associates Benchmarks, Bison data, Bloomberg Terminal LP due diligence modules, or any subscription-gated LP database.

Honest Limits — what we do not do

Corrections Policy

Three commitments modeled on the BBC editorial corrections process:

1. Identification window. Errors flagged within thirty days of report generation are corrected on the canonical view URL within five business days.
2. Re-publication, not silent edit. Corrections preserve a redline diff between the original and corrected text, time-stamped, with a one-line explanation.
3. Subject right of reply. The fund (via its parent firm) named in any Vetting Report may submit a one-paragraph factual rebuttal to corrections@mentionfox.com. Verifiable rebuttals attach to the report alongside the original section.

Data integrity floor — ALCOA. Every Specific Fund Vetting Report carries an ALCOA Methodology footer (Attributable / Legible / Contemporaneously / Original / Accurately) — the FDA's data-integrity framework, applied to LP due diligence analytic products.