Pillar
Lifecycle Stages
A firm’s needs change as its people and investment practice develop. The lifecycle framework helps put those changes in context, without treating a newer firm as a weaker one.
4 pages
The three stages
- ConvictionThe Conviction stage: connecting a clear investment view to fund design, understanding concentration and assessing an early track record.
- CadenceThe Cadence stage: building a repeatable investment practice, reviewing team capacity and beginning the succession work.
- ContinuityThe Continuity stage: succession, shared authority and the evidence needed to assess a firm beyond its current partners.
What changes across the three
The stages describe different ways a firm operates. They are not rankings of quality or risk. The framework moves from the partners’ investment judgment, through a repeatable practice, to an institution designed to continue across partner generations.
Industry scope
The framework moves from narrower scope at Conviction toward broader scope at Continuity. This is a model expectation, not a requirement for every firm to expand.
Portfolio count and ownership
The reference points move from fewer companies at higher ownership toward more companies at moderate ownership. Read these choices together with capital and check size.
Fund size
Typically below $150M at Conviction, $150M to $750M at Cadence, and $400M to $1.5B and above at Continuity. The bands overlap deliberately, because the stages are not defined by size alone.
Concentration
The model accepts more concentration at Conviction and applies different reference points later. A flag calls for review; its absence does not establish that an exposure is safe.
Succession
The succession check expects less formal structure at Conviction, work underway at Cadence and formal arrangements at Continuity. Key-person and continuity planning can matter at every stage.
Use the comparison to ask what has changed at your firm. Has the team grown? Are several funds deploying at once? Can investment authority move beyond the founders? The answers are more useful than treating any stage as a badge.
A General Partner declares the firm's stage and confirms it. The platform never transitions a firm on its own, in either direction. What it does is watch for accumulated structural change and surface a suggestion, against published triggers: fund sequence, reaching Fund III for the move from Conviction to Cadence and Fund V for Cadence to Continuity; aggregate firm capital; team size; deployment maturity; and, for the move to Continuity, the presence of a formal succession structure. The Cadence suggestion fires on partial evidence. The Continuity suggestion requires every trigger, so that the suggestion rests on several signs of institutional development, including succession.
Revisit the declaration when the firm changes. It affects stage- sensitive checks, while other checks remain independent of lifecycle. An outdated declaration can make those comparisons less useful even when the underlying investment plan is sound.