June 30, 2026
Adapted from a Thelander webinar with Jodie Thelander (J. Thelander Consulting) and Rachel, a fund-formation partner at Cooley.
Investment firm compensation is shaped by forces that look a lot like the private markets themselves right now: capital concentrating in fewer, larger funds, liquidity taking longer to arrive, and carry structures stretching out to match. In this 30-minute session, Thelander and Cooley walked through real-time survey data on how venture, private equity, and corporate venture firms actually pay their people. Here are the highlights.
The Mega-Funds Are Winning
The dominant story is concentration. In Q1, roughly $48B was raised in venture funds — close to all of the prior full year — but two firms, a16z and Thrive, accounted for about half of it. The PE side looked similar, with names like Blackstone and Greenbriar taking an outsized share. With institutional investors pulling back and waiting for liquidity, the mega-funds keep getting bigger. It mirrors the portfolio-company world, where a small number of private companies absorb the bulk of the dry powder — and the two are linked, because writing the checks to be in those deals requires a mega-fund behind you.
Firm Structure Changes Everything About Pay
Compensation tracks closely with assets under management and firm structure. Early on, an emerging manager (funds one through three) may have one or two partners and outsource fund administration entirely — no CFO, no finance team. A firm that has been operating for 15–20 years might have a couple hundred employees, billions under management, and everything in-house.
That shows up in the org chart. Under $500M in AUM, partners and senior investment professionals can make up ~41% of the firm — the people making all the decisions. Past $1B, that share drops sharply to around 27%, and at the largest firms it is smaller still, because they are simply bigger organizations. AUM here means the fair market value of the assets being managed and reported to the SEC — including funds still being managed even after management fees stop being drawn, until the fund is wound down.
The Venture Partner Question
One role comes up constantly, especially among emerging managers: the venture partner. Stretched thin in the early years, firms bring on venture partners, consultants, and domain experts to help source and win deals. The recurring question is how much carry to grant them. The data and market view: venture partners typically land below 1% up to about 2.5–3% carry; grants in the 5–8% range look rich and read more like an employee grant than a consultant/venture-partner grant. As always, it depends on how much the person is actually doing for the firm.
A note on reading the numbers: Thelander tends to publish median, 75th percentile, and maximum (rather than the 25th), since most participants think of themselves as at least at median, with high flyers at the 75th.
Venture vs. Private Equity
PE pays somewhat more than venture, for a structural reason: PE firms raise and deploy larger dollar amounts to acquire majority stakes in businesses, which means larger fees flowing into the firm. Venture typically takes minority positions without controlling the company. Across most firms the carried-interest split is the familiar 80/20 — 80% to LPs, 20% to the GPs — with 20–25% being the most typical carry track. Corporate venture firms often need a different structure, using shadow, phantom, or synthetic carry, or a long-term incentive program.
Vesting Is Getting Longer — and Clawbacks Differ
Because liquidity is taking longer, venture vesting schedules have stretched well past 10 years. Funds that once wound down in 10–12 years now often take 12–15, and some run 18–20 years to exit their last positions. A 6–10 year vesting schedule (even a 10-year vest) has become more market — it lets a firm retain carry from people who leave and redirect it to new hires who manage out the fund’s long tail.
PE behaves differently. There you more often see a bonus or phantom-carry structure and deal-by-deal carry, where you must be present to win and can receive carry earlier in the fund’s life. Deal-by-deal carry pays out on individual winners before all capital is returned — which ties into hurdle rates and, crucially, clawback provisions. Because clawback risk is higher in PE, you may see both a mid-fund-life and an end-of-fund-life clawback. In venture, the typical model returns all contributed capital to investors first, so carry comes later in the cycle and end-of-life clawbacks are rare.
Fees, Capital Contributions, and “Skin in the Game”
The classic “2 and 20” still anchors expectations — around 2% management fee is typical in PE, while venture funds often charge ~2.5% during the investment period and step it down afterward. It varies by sector and fund type. GPs generally contribute 1–3% of committed capital themselves; that figure rises when managing directors are personally wealthy (think fund 10 or 15) and investors want to see more skin in the game.
Sector Matters Less Than You’d Think
A common question is whether pay differs for life-sciences vs. tech investing. Largely, it does not — AUM and firm structure drive compensation far more than sector. An MD/PhD might sit at the higher end of a range, but the roles and pay bands stay consistent. The underlying logic is incentive alignment: within a large firm, no one sector wants to be seen as outsized versus everyone else — the goal is one team, everybody wins.
Carry Dollars at Work, Bonuses, and Gifting into Trusts
“Carried interest” as a percentage exists in every fund. “Carry dollars at work” — the amount of carry you would receive if the fund hits, say, a 2x gross multiple — shows up more in phantom-equity plans, where an annual bonus taxed as ordinary income approximates that theoretical carry. As carry takes longer to pay out, firms are formalizing bonuses, especially for mid-level and number-two/three roles who want additional cash; when performance-based, these tend to be 100% individual and deal-oriented (deal sourcing, investment valuation).
One increasingly common ask: gifting vertical slices of carry into a trust, driven by QSBS and estate-planning benefits. Partners with family trusts frequently want equity held there and out of their personal name — and firms can permit it if they choose.
On the Horizon
The hope for the rest of the year is simple: liquidity. Get the IPOs rolling, ease the geopolitical uncertainty, and keep things “up and to the right.” The bigger point is that investing has become a genuine career track — people are staying in it longer — which makes building real compensation infrastructure inside firms paramount.
This article is adapted from a Thelander webinar and is intended as general educational information, not legal, tax, or investment advice. For guidance specific to your firm, consult qualified compensation and legal advisors.