If you work in manager selection, you know the pattern. A placement agent sends a deck, you take the meeting, and the manager is interesting but not a fit right now. The deck goes into a folder. Two years later the same manager comes back with the next fund, and you start from scratch.
Meanwhile the real analysis happens late. By the time a fund reaches due diligence, you have already decided it is worth the effort. And the peer group you judge it against is the handful of managers you backed before, not the far larger group you have actually met.
01The first meeting holds more data than you keep
Every pitch deck carries the basics, from strategy and fund size to the track record of every prior fund. On its own, each deck is a marketing document. Together they show what the market is offering and on what terms.
Most teams never build that picture for a simple reason. Typing the numbers in by hand is slow, and nobody wants to do it for a manager they are about to pass on. So of all the managers you meet in a year, the only ones that leave data behind are the few you commit to.
02Screening is where your benchmark gets built
A benchmark is only as good as the peer group behind it. If the only funds you have numbers for are the ones you backed, every new fund is measured against a group of three or four. Next to your best fund a strong manager can look second rate, and the verdict says more about those few funds than about the new one.
Drag more peers into the line below and watch the same fund change verdict.
When every meeting adds data, a no is no longer wasted time. The next time a mid-market buyout manager pitches, you can see how their track record compares with the forty similar funds you screened before, not just the three you backed.
03From deck to data
In FundFrame, you upload the investor presentation or PPM from a manager meeting. Every fund the document reports on is read out of it and added to your screening database, with the manager, vintage, fund size, net TVPI, net IRR and DPI, next to every other manager you have logged.
You can filter, sort and group the table the way you would a spreadsheet, and chart the numbers to see where a fund ranks in its vintage. Every number links back to the page in the deck it came from, so anyone on the team can check it before it goes into an IC memo.
Here is how it looks in FundFrame, from upload to benchmark.
04Screen broadly and go deep where it counts
Screening does not replace diligence. It changes where you spend it. With a first view on almost everyone who pitches, the managers who reach full due diligence get there on evidence rather than on who happened to be in the room.
When a fund earns that closer look, it moves into Due Diligence on the same record, so the track record analysis, the deals behind it and the comparison with public markets start from everything screening already read.
In short
Most managers you meet will never get a commitment from you. They can still make every future decision better, if what you learn from them is kept in a form you can compare. That is what screening in FundFrame is for.
If you want to see it run on the decks from your own meetings, we would be glad to show you. And if you run manager selection today, we would like to hear how you keep track of the managers you pass on.
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