The best private equity talent often leaves large firms encumbered by non-competes, forcing them to operate as independent, deal-by-deal sponsors. LPs who engage at this stage gain access to proven investors years before they have a marketable track record.

To source proprietary hybrid capital deals, avoid the capital markets teams at PE firms, as their job is to minimize cost of capital. Instead, build relationships directly with individual deal partners in specific industries. This allows you to become a trusted, go-to provider for complex, time-sensitive situations where speed and certainty are valued over price.

To win highly sought-after deals, growth investors must build relationships years in advance. This involves providing tangible help with hiring, customer introductions, and strategic advice, effectively acting as an investor long before deploying capital.

The firm’s core belief is being a fund *for* founders, trusting them to run their companies without heavy operational input. This hands-off approach gives partners the bandwidth and "permission" to go deep on their own projects, leading to spinouts like Anduril and Varda.

Large, contrarian investments feel like career risk to partners in a traditional VC firm, leading to bureaucracy and diluted conviction. Founder-led firms with small, centralized decision-making teams can operate with more decisiveness, enabling them to make the bold, potentially firm-defining bets that consensus-driven partnerships would avoid.

Temasek's partnership philosophy is not about risk diversification. Instead, it prioritizes collaborating with partners who can augment its internal capabilities and provide specific skill sets it lacks for a given opportunity. This makes partnership a strategic tool for capability building, not just capital sharing.

Julian Robertson's investment in other hedge funds, like the Polar Fund, served a dual purpose. Beyond diversification, it provided proprietary access to the fund's short positions, which Tiger could then clone for its own portfolio, effectively outsourcing specialized research.

TA's extensive deal sourcing operation, which contacts 40,000 businesses annually, isn't just for new platform investments. The firm systematically identifies smaller companies within this funnel that are perfect add-on acquisitions for its existing portfolio companies, creating a proprietary M&A pipeline that has resulted in over 1,500 deals.