Warm paths, gatekeepers and consultants

Cold outreach to institutional allocators rarely works. Most commitments travel a warm path: a prior relationship, a co-investment history, a board-level introduction, or an investment consultant who controls the shortlist.

Warm paths are the relationships that bypass the initial screening layer. If an allocator has committed to your previous fund, the next conversation starts at a different place. If a board member or senior executive can introduce you, you skip the gatekeeper. If you have co-invested successfully with an allocator on a prior deal, they already know how you behave when things go wrong.

Gatekeepers are the people who control access. They can be investment consultants who run manager searches for pensions, CIOs who maintain approved-manager lists, or placement agents who route deals to their network. Understanding who the gatekeeper is for each target allocator changes how you approach them. A consultant-managed search requires a formal RFP response; a direct relationship with the CIO requires a tailored pitch.

GPX maps 42,000 relationships between allocators, managers, intermediaries and decision-makers. That means for any target allocator, you can see the warm paths that exist — the prior commitments, the shared deals, the common board members — and design your approach around the route most likely to get you to a conversation.