How I Find LP Investors (My Exact System)

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In this episode of Making Billions, Ryan Miller provides the exact tactical blueprint to scale from 0 to a $100 million fund without wasting five years of your life.

What is the 4-stage "LOOT" Framework for emerging managers to raise $100M?

Ryan  provides the definitive roadmap for The LOOT Framework: A step-by-step masterclass on scaling from the "Syndication Zone" to the "Fund Zone" by systematically moving through the Legitimize, Optimize, Operationalize, and "Titratize" stages.

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[THE HOST]: Ryan Miller is a fund manager, capital strategist, and former CFO turned angel investor in technology and energy. He is the founder of Fund Raise Capital and Aequor Capital Partners, and has mentored over 1,000 fund managers across private equity, private credit, venture capi

Transcript

Ryan Miller   

Trust times a transaction equals capital, that is universal law, and I'm about to prove it to you. Let's get into it. 

Ryan Miller  

Raising $100 million without wasting five years is achievable with the right strategy. So in the next few minutes, I'll give you the exact four stage roadmap that I call, The LOOT Framework. Three capital strategies that almost nobody is using, and one activity you're doing right now that's likely killing your raise. And at the end, if you stick in, I'm gonna show you how to get a free playbook with all that outlined. Now, before we dive in, just a quick disclaimer, this is education, not legal, tax or investment advice. Every raise is different. Work with qualified securities attorneys and compliance professionals before any capital raising activity. All right, let's go. 

Ryan Miller  

So there are two zones on this mountain knowing which one you're in now decides who will take the call. Today, the syndication zone runs from 0 to about $50 million raised. And then the LPs here are friends, family, founders, high net worth individuals and smaller family options. They write checks on relationship and belief. Then there's the fund zone that starts around $75 to $100 million and up, that's where you start dipping into large family offices, endowments, fund of funds, institutional allocators, all of it. They require audited track records and a serious fund infrastructure. So knowing which one you're in that'll help to determine where you go to find your LPs. So you raise your way up this mountain, you don't parachute in at the top. Try to start your raise in the fund zone before you've earned it, and they'll say no every time. And they're not being rude, they're protecting their fiduciary duty. Makes sense right? 

Ryan Miller  

Now, let's talk about the four stages. So stage one is legitimize. That's between 0 and about $2.5 million dollars. Imagine the exact moment your first LP says, yes. Can you imagine that? I thought about that when I started out, it's the best feeling ever, especially when it really happens. Your phone buzzes with the wire confirmation. Your chest relaxes for the first time in months. You did it. You have an LP that's the moment you unlock stage one. You feel that. Hold on to that feeling, because it is coming, my friends, sooner than you think, if you do this right. The pool here is what we call quadruple F, friends, family, fools and founders. It's kind of a silly term that some people use in this industry, but it's really people that you have a warm introduction and people that you have rapport with. This is your inner circle. These are people who've watched you operate, who've bet on you before they ever bet on your strategy. Don't be embarrassed about this stage. Every great manager has started here. Take Schwartzman, Dalio, Rubinstein, all of them. If you try to skip this stage and pitch institutional LPs with no proof, you lose. If you embrace this stage and earn your first LPs from people who already love you, you win. It's as simple as that. Picture, your Saturday morning cup of coffee, blank spreadsheet on the screen, column A, every person you've ever worked with, invested with or have had a real conversation about business. You want 50 names. Then there's column B, relationship strength. Label it one to five. Column C is estimated investable capital. And column D, who could warm intro you. That's all you want to know. And then column E, last time you spoke with them. 

Ryan Miller  

See this spreadsheet is scripture. It's the single most valuable document you'll build this year, and it's the easiest thing to set up, especially if you're at this stage, which we call base camp. See your activities at stage one are straightforward. Publish on every LinkedIn, every week, not sales pitches, just real thinking about your opinion and what you're viewing in the market. Start, you can start a newsletter and put it in front of your network, get on five podcasts into your niche. At least. Try to do that every week, if you can, but if you can get on that just total, however long it takes, just get on five, what that does is it gets you used to talking, and likely it costs you nothing. You can build a website that looks like a real fund manager made it. There's easy ones, like 10web.io that will help you whip up a website in no time you can establish a basic data room, get your legal doc squared away. Retain your securities attorney, spin up your CRM, cover your operating expenses from the fees you do raise. See every dollar at this stage has to stretch. Feel that pressure. That's the pressure that sharpens you. Steal sharpens steal, my friends, that pressure that makes you an operator LPs want to bet on. So the target at the end of this stage is around two and a half million dollars raised covering operating expenses with 5-10 LPs who now speak for you. Do this right in, stage two opens with momentum. Skip it and stage two feels like pitching strangers in a foreign language. This is not fun, so you know which path works. That brings us to the second stage, which is optimize. Now you've got proof, quadruple F capital is in, your returns are tracking, and it's time to expand to affinity groups. These are communities built around a shared profession, industry or interest. This stage is where most emerging managers get lost because they go into the wrong rooms. 

Ryan Miller  

Today I'm going to give you two strategies that will change how you think about capital access forever, plus one anti strategy that's probably eating your calendar and your capital right now. So the anti strategy is industry events typically are a waste of your life. Let me paint you a picture. You're at an event, and you walk into a ballroom of 1500 people, you feel important. You hand out business cards, you laugh at the right jokes, you take a photo next to a Ferrari in the valet line. You post it on LinkedIn. Three months later, you look back $0 raised. Does that sound familiar? Here's why it feels see that room is filled with 1500 takers pretending to be givers. This was the mistake I made in the early days. Is you think you're the only one that goes to these things that goes to these things that needs capital, and then you find out everyone you talk to is also looking for capital. And so this ends badly, is that everybody needs something, but nobody has the thing that everybody wants. And so you spend money to be at a place, and all you get is seen and maybe a few pictures for the Instagram where you're around the trappings of wealth rather than generating it itself. See every person there is as hungry as you are. Nobody comes to give capital. The allocators, who are there, are there to be seen, not to close, and if they do close, it's with managers they already knew before the conference even started. You're just noise, painful to hear, but true. 

Ryan Miller  

Now picture a completely different room, this is the one that you do want to get in. It's the board room, 7-12 board members around a table, everyone vetted, everyone with real capital or real influence, everyone in the room is there to contribute, not to extract. Can you feel the difference? That difference is in the air in the room, the conversations are different, the outcomes are different. That room is worth 100 times what any conference & Ferrari or yacht or jet picture on your Instagram could ever offer. Can you see the difference? I learned this the right way. See, I supported the board for the Canadian Home Builders Association early in my career, every other board member was a banker or a CEO of a multi-billion dollar land development firm. Then I was able to support the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra board. Every other board member was an executive of a major oil company, and I served on the board of a pharmaceutical company, brilliant medical minds with massive connections in healthcare investing. It was phenomenal for me and my network. And so going on boards is a killer strategy that you can start to deploy to start building your trust that comes before the transaction. 

Ryan Miller  

Every single board I've volunteered on has given me warm introductions, more capital access and more high trust relationships than any mega event combined. Easily, it's not even close. And here's the rule, large events where people are going to be seen, boards are where people go to build one of those produces results, the other produces receipts for hotel rooms. So here's your action: pick one board in the next 90 days, an industry association, maybe a nonprofit in your target asset class, the university advisory board, a Healthcare Foundation, could be anything, anywhere. The members are wealthy, connected, and are there to contribute. Then go apply, serve, show up, prepared for every meeting. One well chosen board seat will outraise 10 years of event networking. Are you still with me? This is a great strategy to flip. So if you want to get in the right rooms, then get in the right room. Board rooms are hands down, one of the best rooms beats any event attendance that I've ever been to. 

Ryan Miller  

Then there's the next strategy, speaking at universities now you want to target the professors. So this is the strategy that almost nobody talks about. Speak as often as you can, and here's the secret, you're not there for the students, you're there for the professors. So think about it. Professors spend their entire careers collecting expertise, credentials and citations. They're approached constantly for guest lectures, because they need real world knowledge to feed into their research. Their classes, their publications, they have relationships with alumni, endowments, board members and industry leaders that would blow your mind. And here's the key insight: they need something from you. You walk in with current tactical expertise they can't pull out of a textbook that's currency in the real world. So if you can speak at Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, Chicago Booth. Then do it if you can't start there, start at a local college and work your way up. Every university counts every lecture compounds your reputation and your network. Just imagine pitching in front of investors and saying, hey, I've served on this board. I spoke at Harvard, Yale, Wharton, whatever, right? So people are starting to get a sense to say, huh, that's pretty good. So you have a chance to co brand yourself. And there's an and this is not in a manipulative way. Make sure you're adding value, don't just do it for the accolades. Actually do it for the building of trust. 

Ryan Miller  

And I'll tell you what happened the first time I spoke at my alma mater when I started in this business. So I walked in as an emerging manager, if you want to call it that, and I gave a lecture on alternatives. The students took notes. The professor who hosted me walked me out of the building after, and in that 10 minute walk, he offered to introduce me to a few people in his personal network. Within three weeks, I was on a call with the VP of NASDAQ Wall Street, managing directors who actually remembered my name and wanted to stay in touch, not because I chased them, but because a trusted PhD professor vouched for me. That's what I call the professor multiplier. So you picture yourself in six months from now, you've given three University talks, three professors Now have you in their network. Each is offered a handful of warm introductions. You're in conversations with allocators who never would have taken your cold email, but happily took a call when a trusted professor. I made an intro. So I call them my bird dogs, or building an army of bird dogs. And to me, that's a compliment. That's the version of your life that's available if you take this action. So what is the action? Just identify three universities within driving distance, email the finance or entrepreneurs hip department this week. Offer a free guest lecture on your area of expertise. Deliver value. Stay in touch with the professors and let that network compound for you. 

Ryan Miller  

Then the next strategy is join two or three carefully chosen masterminds, where the entry fee filters for real capital, not free. Facebook groups, add one or two advisory board members with institutional credibility. Write two to four substantive white papers per year, host small curated investor dinners, 6-10 people, not 60. I remember I did this. We went to the Miami Yacht Show, and I got, I think it was about 15 people that collectively controlled around 4 or $5 billion as fund managers. They all came. We hung out on yachts. It was the coolest thing. And we went to amazing restaurants, and we just showed them a good time. And so you want to build your investor onboarding so the experience feels premium from the very first touch point, then you want to target the end of stage two. That puts you around $10 million raised, or roughly 30 to 50 LPs. Gives you a reputation that walks into every meeting before you do. You want that reputation that is code for trust. See, the alternative is showing up as a stranger every time and trying to move past the trust because you don't have time in a pitch, you just talk about the transaction, and it's very difficult to close if people don't know you, like you or trust you. So establishing that first, before you even get to what does this transaction looks like, that is absolutely vital. 

Ryan Miller  

That brings us to the third phase of my LOOT Framework, which is operationalize. That puts you in the $10 to $30 million range. So now the pool expands one more time. You've still got quadruple F you've got the affinity partners, and now you've added professional services. That's the referral network of accountants, attorneys, financial advisors, RIAs and all the other bird dogs who sit on top of serious wealth. You see, bird dog is a compliment picture. This a single CPA in your city has $200 high net worth clients, a wealth manager and an RIA has 50 accredited clients, each with $500 to $5 million available for alternative allocations. An estate attorney works with 30 family offices. Just imagine what one of those professionals can unlock for you when they trust your fund. More warm qualified capital in a single conversation than you could accumulate in two years of direct outreach. Can you see that? Can you feel how that changes your daily fundraising grind? That's the leverage of this stage. So the action, build a list of the 50 top professional service providers in your geography. Small to medium accounting, law firms, RIAs, investment banks, whatever that is. And you can use that and get tapped into that network. Meet each one for a coffee, ask about their practice. Listen more than you pitch. Just offer value. That's it. Just offer value. Be generous. Deal flow, tax, strategy, insights, client education, speaking at their events. Whatever you can do is just add value to build that relationship. Like I always say, you never start a relationship with an ask. Always do it with an offer, and that offer isn't the opportunity to get in on your deal. There's plenty of time to do that. But this is not that moment when starting out just say, how can I help you achieve your goals? That's where you want to be. So over 6-12 months, two or three of these relationships become one of your biggest capital channels. This strategy alone got me in the room where I was able to host a dinner with guys that controlled. I think it was something like, what was it? It was over a trillion dollars that these nine people collectively controlled, and they all came to see me. I think the steak dinner at  Al Biernat's  in Texas may have had something to do with it, but either way, we had a good time. I got to meet some serious capital allocators, and that led to a massive raise, which I'm in the middle of right now. One CPA alone can unlock $5-15 million over a single fund cycle. That's and I think that's the low end. But let's, let's move forward. 

Ryan Miller  

Hey, thanks for listening to Making Billions. If you liked this episode, could you do me a huge favor and go leave a review? This helps us to get the podcast to more ears, to help people raise capital, learn fund management strategies and serve our mission, to help fund managers and deal syndicators to gain greater hope and focus as they build their empire. All right, let's get back to the show now.

Ryan Miller  

Here's a bonus strategy. Let's talk about something that very few people understand. It's EB5. So echo, bravo, 5. EB5, investor visa capital. Here's a capital pool almost no emerging manager knows about, and it's hiding in plain sight, see. EB5, investor visas. This is a US immigration. Program where foreign investors place capital into qualifying US projects to earn the path to a green card. The funds that manage this capital are called regional centers, and here's why, this is a absolute game changer. These funds have way too much capital and not enough deals. Don't feel bad for them, but this is a real problem. We call that cash drag. There's a big problem for institutional investors, just let that sink in. Not enough deals and too much capital. Their foreign investor clients needs that capital deployed into qualifying structures, and the immigration process is blocked until a good deal gets placed. So can you see that they are urgently trying to get that place so that they can satisfy on the commitments that they. Made to their clients. I have a friend who recently retired from running an EB5 fund. I think they were the biggest one in America. He told me directly that they had more capital than they could place when they were starving for deal sponsors and fund managers who could absorb capital into solid projects. Just think about that for a second. Capital searching for you see you need the right strategy. That's a completely different emotional experience than cold pitching a family office who doesn't need you. 

Ryan Miller  

EB5 has specific rules, targeted employment areas, job creation requirements and specific structures. Not every strategy fits, but if you're doing real estate, infrastructure, hospitality, Senior Living, or certain operating businesses, this is a channel worth exploring. Research the Regional Centers near you, reach out, have a conversation. You may, in fact, find a pool of capital that's actively searching for someone exactly like you, and when that capital is searching for you, the dynamics completely flip. You're no longer the one begging for a meeting. Could you imagine that when capital comes to you? This is one of those great strategies. Then at the end of phase three, that's around $30 million raised. You have professional services, referral network coming international capital conversation starting the first real team hired controller, Investor Relations Manager, and maybe even a CFO at that point. 

Ryan Miller  

That brings us to the fourth stage of my LOOT Framework, which is "titratize" or comes from the word titrate. Now you're knocking on institutional doors at this point, the pool expands to family offices, under a billion single family offices, multifamily offices, these LPs write $5, $10, $25 million checks at minimum. One commitment here can transform your entire funds trajectory. Picture yourself 18 months from now, sitting across the table from a family office CIO, who's been watching your career unfold. She's read your white papers, she's seen your LinkedIn content, she's heard your name from three different sources in her network. She's reviewed your audited track record. She opens a meeting with six words, why didn't you come to us sooner? That's the moment your fund becomes inevitable. You feel that that's the moment you've been working toward for 3-5 years, and it's real and it's coming. And if you walk the roadmap, this could also be part of your future. 

Ryan Miller  

So here's how you build toward that meeting, quarterly trips to high potential cities, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Dallas, London, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, you name it. Hire an Economic Research Analyst so you can deliver institutional grade intelligence to family office CIOs. Attend family office, specific conferences, small, intimate, curated, high conversion unlike these mega events that we already killed off earlier. Consider registering for institutional products like ETFs, if your strategy warrants it, build relationships with placement professionals at this stage only now you have the trust go out and amplify it. So the target at the end of this final stage is $100 million raised from institutional relationships, and those relationships keep forming and getting stronger. Fund one ready to launch as a true institutional vehicle. The climb from 0 to $100 million now is complete. So at this phase, regardless of what stage you're in, one concept rules them all. It's your anchor investor. Your anchor is the first substantial commitment 10- 25% of your raise. Once you have an anchor, every subsequent conversation changes. You're no longer the emerging manager hoping for a shot, you're the manager who has momentum in his back. 

Ryan Miller  

Picture that exact moment your anchor says, yes, it's sometimes a family office CIO, sometimes as an entrepreneur you've known for 15 years, sometimes a fund of funds, they say the sentence you've been working towards, we're in. The weight of that lifts off of your shoulders in that moment, and it is impossible to describe. Once that happens, you sleep better at night than you've ever slept in your entire life and every LP who was hesitating before. The ones who said, come back when you have traction, they start returning calls within the week, feel that shift. That's the anchor effect. So here's the action, identify your top three anchor prospects today. Not the largest potential check, the most likely yes. Someone who knows you, trusts you and has the capital and authority to commit, and they've shown real interest. Focus 60% of your fundraising energy there, until at least one of them commits, then the rest of the raise accelerates dramatically. 

Ryan Miller  

Now let's talk about the three losing strategies, three more mistakes I see every week that burn emerging managers to hopes and dreams to the ground. Learn them here instead of from experience. So losing strategy number one is buying lists of investors. You pay $30,000 for a database of 2000 family offices. You email all of them, three meetings, zero commitments, and now 2000 of the most sophisticated allocators in the country know you're the kind of manager who cold emails from a list, your reputation takes months to recover. Warm introductions convert at 40 to 60%, cold emails at one to 3%, just do the math. Warm intros are 20 times more efficient. Spend that $30k on board positions, university speaking and curated dinners instead of that strategy. Then there's losing strategy number two, I call it the events fanboy trap. We already covered it, but it's worth hammering because it's the one most managers are committing this very month, rooms full of 1500 takers will never raise for your fund. Boards will universities will, professional services will. Family office networks at stage four, they will too. Not the mega events, not the Ferrari photos or someone's jet or yacht. Not the swag bags put your body in the rooms that compound your capital, not the rooms that compound your LinkedIn followers. Then there's losing strategy number three, hiring a broker dealer before you even have trust. See, a broker dealer charges $10-$30,000 or more per month, plus 2-4% of the capital raise. If the market doesn't already trust you, they'll take your retainer for 12 months and raise approximately nothing. Trust always comes before the transaction. A broker dealer can amplify existing trust, but they cannot manufacture it out of nothing. And if a broker dealer takes you on without trust established in the market, then ask yourself, why are they willing to do that? And the answer is, usually that your fees are the deal, not your capital raise. 

Ryan Miller  

So there are in the next 72 hours, five moves do them this week, not next month, this week. Move one, identify your current stage, legitimize, optimize, operationalize, or “titratize”. Write it on your wall. Move two, build your capital map 50 names, minimum. Treat this spreadsheet like gospel. Move three, identify one board you can serve on in the next six months and apply this week. And then move four is email three universities about guest lecturing. Target the professors. One email, that's it. Send it before you sleep tonight. And then move five, identify your top three anchor prospects. Focus 60% of your energy there until at least one of them commits and here's the truth that can close out this episode. Two versions of your life are both available right now. In version one, it's five years from now. You're still trying to raise your first fund. Same events, same cold emails, same allocator lists, same wondering why nothing's working. Same 2am staring at the ceiling. Can you feel that version, the quiet exhaustion, the doubt creeps in when nobody's watching. 

Ryan Miller  

Now, let's experience the other version. You walk the roadmap, legitimize, optimize, operationalize and "titratize". You earned your capital in the right rooms at the right time. You serve on a board where every other member has become your champion. You speak at universities and professors are introducing you to allocators who actually call you back. You have an anchor LP who told you their family office peers are about you. You're running a real fund with real LPs who trust you because you've earned that trust. Your family sees the different person looking at them. Your kids see it. Your spouse sees it. Can you feel that version, the confidence, the momentum, the pride, both versions are real. The one you live in depends on your choices you make this week, not this quarter, this week. So click the link in the description to download the free How to Find LP Investors Playbook: The 4 Stage Roadmap, the capital pool chart, the board strategy, the university playbook, the EB5 capital pool, the losing strategies, all of it. Print it out, put it on your desk, and you can use it as a compass. And if you're ready to surround yourself with fund managers walking in this exact path who are raising capital, these are real operators building in the right way, the right sequence, then you can check out, Fund Raise Capital. You can go to go.fundraisecapital.co/apply. Trust always comes before the transaction. Let us help you build that trust you do these things and you too will be well on your way in your pursuit of Making Billions.

Ryan Miller  

Wow, what a show, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now, if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes, plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guests even better, and make sure to come back for our next episode, where we dive even deeper into the people, the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then my friends, stay hungry, focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of Making Billions.