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Now, let’s get to it.

When Barca lost Neymar to PSG, everyone knew it made Barca weaker. The news cycle ran for weeks. Pundits debated what it meant for their formation, their chemistry, their Champions League hopes.

But when a Principal leaves a GP, you don’t get that clarity.

The DDQ says someone departed. The GP says it was mutual and they wish them well. You're left wondering: was this the next star in the making, or someone who wasn't on a path to Partner anyway?

The standard GP answer is always the same: "They weren't on a promotion track. We'll be fine without them."

And sometimes that's true. Some turnover is actually healthy. It shows that promotion isn't automatic - that there's real selection happening internally. You want to see a GP where not everyone makes it to Partner.

The problem is distinguishing healthy turnover from talent bleed.

The obvious place to start is the attribution sheet. Which deals did this person work on? How did those deals perform?

But here's the issue: attribution is messy. Was this person the lead, or were they supporting someone else? Did they source the deal, or just execute? Did they drive the value creation, or show up to board meetings?

And at the Principal level, there's almost always a Partner in front of them who gets the deal attribution anyway. You can't tell from the outside Principal was actually leading the work or operating under the Partner’s umbrella. The sheet doesn't tell you what would have happened without them.

So you're left with a number that's technically accurate but lacking in nuance.

Of course, you can try to get signal from reference calls. Talk to co-investors. Talk to former portfolio company executives. Ask around.

But this puts a lot of pressure on your reference network. You need people who actually worked with this person, who'll be candid, and who have enough context to judge. That's three filters that don't always line up.

There’s also luck and interpretation risk involved - sometimes you reach the right person at the right time, sometimes you don’t.

You could also just call the person who left. We rarely got much out of that.

Problem is, most people won't be candid about why they really left - especially if it wasn't their choice. And if it was their choice, they're not going to tell you their former GP was falling apart or had succession issues. They want to preserve relationships.

So you get the same diplomatic answer: “Great experience, learned a lot, excited for the next chapter.”

Which tells you nothing.

Over the years, we developed a different approach. Instead of trying to assess someone's internal contribution - which we couldn't verify - we looked at where they went.

We weren’t trying to judge individual talent or play armchair HR. We were trying to underwrite team durability and succession risk with imperfect information.

The logic is simple: the economics of PE are basically the same everywhere. It's 2 and 20 at most funds. So if someone leaves, their next move tells you something about their options.

Here's how we read it:

They moved to a smaller GP, similar or junior role.

This usually meant they weren't getting promoted anyway. If you're a rising star at a $5B fund, why would you leave for a $500M fund with the same economics and less carry potential? You wouldn't - unless you had to.

We generally assumed this person was probably on their way out, and the GP won't miss them much.

They left to start their own fund.

This is the opposite signal. Someone raising their own fund typically had options. They could have stayed. They chose to bet on themselves instead.

When we saw this, we assumed the GP probably wanted to retain them - and lost. This weakens the team, at least temporarily.

They moved to a larger fund in a similar role.

This was also a yellow flag. If a VP at a mid-market fund moves to a VP role at a mega-fund, they probably could have been promoted where they were. They chose to leave for a bigger platform.

The GP will tell you this was lateral. But, in most cases, people with a clear path to promotion don’t leave for a lateral title elsewhere.

They left PE entirely - went to a portfolio company, operating role, or something outside the industry.

We generally didn't weight these heavily. If someone decides they don't want to do GP work anymore, that's a personal choice. It doesn't mean they were pushed out, but it also doesn't mean the GP lost someone who would have been a future partner.

The GP probably wouldn't have retained them anyway.

A few years ago, a mid-market fund we tracked lost a Principal. Standard messaging - mutual decision, strong bench, business as usual. A few months later, we saw he'd joined a new mid-cap strategy being launched by a large-cap manager. Co-lead role. He'd been headhunted to build it. That told us what we needed to know. The GP lost someone another firm was willing to build around.

Does this suddenly change it from an A to a B? Probably not. But it heightens our focus before going into full DD.

And by the way. We're building this into FundFrame Navigator - tracking where people go when they leave a GP, so you can see the pattern over time without digging through LinkedIn manually.

Sign up for the waitlist

One more layer that matters: timing. A departure six months before a promotion or carry allocation decision tells a very different story than one three years out. When someone leaves close to an inflection point, it’s usually because clarity arrived - one way or another.

This framework isn't foolproof. People leave for personal reasons. Geographic moves. Family situations. Compensation disputes that have nothing to do with talent.

And sometimes the small-fund move is actually the smart bet - they saw something you didn't.

But as a systematic way to build a picture? It was far better than accepting the GP's default answer at face value.

Because "they weren't on a promotion track anyway" is what every GP says.

The question is whether you can verify it.

When Neymar left, there was no ambiguity. Everyone knew what Barcelona lost.

But LPs don’t have a highlight reel when a GP loses talent. You get a footnote in a DDQ. The rest is up to you.

I'm just going to be straight with you: AI writes most of this newsletter.

Well, sort of.

I keep a running list of newsletter ideas on my phone. Once a week, usually when I'm walking to pick up my son from nursery, I'll voice-record one to three of these ideas. Stream of consciousness, however it comes out.

Then I hand it to an AI trained on my writing style. It cleans up my rambling into actual sentences.

And here's the thing: that first draft is always full of obvious mistakes. Things that would make any LP reading it go "wait, that doesn't make sense." Basically, the AI can mimic my writing style, but it doesn't understand LP operations.

After that comes back-and-forth with several AI agents. They suggest structures, question logic, point out unclear sections. I add, remove, and rewrite. I fix all the things that only an LP would catch. Takes one to two hours.

That's it. That's the newsletter.

Three years ago, this would have taken me a full day and been maybe half as good. The AI handles structure and flow so I can focus on whether the insights are actually useful.

The ideas are mine. The experiences are mine. The curation is mine. And yes, as an FC Barcelona supporter, the Neymar ordeal was definitely my lived experience.