Happy Friday!

Over the past few years I’ve intentionally built an audience on both LinkedIn and X by writing about real estate investing, GP-LP relationships, and how Limited Partners evaluate deals.

Being the Excel nerd that I am, I even tracked my follower base daily (feel free to laugh, I can take it 😊) and wrote about this publicly back in 2023.

Daily follower growth on X, with some holidays in between :)

What this post didn’t touch on, though, are the benefits that I’ve seen through this exercise and how this could be valuable to both GPs and LPs.

So today we’ll tackle two topics after some brief context:

• Posting on LinkedIn/X as a Limited Partner

• Posting on Linkedin/X as a General Partner

First, some context

Originally me posting on both channels wasn’t a “marketing strategy.”

I started writing because LPs were asking the same questions over and over again. Instead of answering them one at a time, I began writing publicly. This actually led me to starting this newsletter as well - LPs were (literally) asking me for Lessons from other LPs and “LP Lessons” was born from that idea.

Over time that content turned into a community of GPs and LPs who follow the same discussions about deals, risk, due diligence, and capital raising.

Being public has been incredibly valuable, but it also has downsides that people don’t always think about to both sides of the capital aisle. Overall I think the pros outweigh the cons, and there’s still tremendous value to be gained that’s currently more or less untapped.

Below are a few observations about how I use these platforms and how they could help you as a GP/LP.

Posting on LinkedIn/X as an LP

Most of the content I write is aimed at LPs.

LPs face a difficult problem: they’re constantly evaluating opportunities from sponsors they may not know very well.

That’s why a lot of my posts focus on how LPs should think, rather than telling them what to invest in.

Typical topics include:

• How to evaluate a GP track record

• What questions actually matter in due diligence

• How to think about alignment of interests between GPs and LPs

• Why deal flow matters more than most LPs realize

• Mistakes LPs commonly make when evaluating deals

The goal is to give LPs better frameworks so they can evaluate opportunities more efficiently.

But the truth is this: many LPs could produce similar (or even better!) content.

Pros

• Regardless of whether you sit at an institutional seat or investing personal capital, these posts would attract other LPs that will inevitably either:

• Invest alongside you

• Challenge the way you think in a positive way - which will help you move alongside the due diligence experience curve (worthwhile to mention LP principles here as well)

• Tell you about some of their experiences with other GPs

• GPs will start reaching out also - and the GPs who appreciate what you’re putting out are likely the people who you should be meeting … instead of looking for deals, they’ll start coming to you

• This is what every institutional manager has by the way, and let’s not forget that deal flow rules the world

Cons

• You might give away your “trade secrets” (aka "isn’t private investing supposed to be private?”)

• Candidly, I think this is an overblown concept in the space - there are so many opportunities and you’d likely gain from others just as much as you’d give (probably more in most cases actually)

• To be clear, nobody is asking you to post a GPs deck or your model - there are so many topics to discuss and you’d be surprised at how many of your ideas are interesting (or even novel) to others

• Time - it takes time

• There’s not much of a substitute here, but assuming you appreciate (1) meeting other investors to invest together or understanding how they allocate capital and (2) want deals to come to you … then I’d say this is a worthwhile risk-adjusted return 😊

Posting on Linkedin/X as a GP

GPs tend to use these platforms differently.

For operators raising capital, LinkedIn and X can become powerful tools for building credibility and relationships with investors - at an incredible scale.

I personally hear from people all the time with one of the following comments:

• “I’ve been following you for a year and thought I’d finally reach out”

• “I’ve learned so much from you posts and just wanted to say thank you”

What might not be obvious about the comments above is that I have literally never met these people - I post, somewhat consistently, and (in a sense) make relationships at scale based on my thoughts.

This same concept works phenomenally well for GPs.

By the way, I know what you’re going to say - “I don’t have time for that - serious GPs don’t do that.” I’m glad you’re still with me, because now I humbly present to you:

• Blackstone’s CEO posting during a run - this is a $1+ trillion dollar firm

• In case you’re still not convinced, here’s Norges’ CEO posting about making burgers (who has also been building a podcast for years btw) - this is a $2+ trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund

Now - these two CEOs don’t have something better to do, right?! Surely there’s a higher “ROI” on their time!

I actually think there isn’t - they’re just ahead of the crowd in realizing that having an audience as a person and a company leads to better investment opportunities and investor leads.

Posting thoughtful content allows LPs to understand how you think long before a deal is presented.

Some of the most effective GP content tends to include:

• Lessons learned from running deals

• Honest discussions about what went wrong in projects

• Market observations from being active in the field

• Educational explanations of how deals are structured

This type of content builds trust because it shows how you think and (super important and valuable prior to talking about investments!) shows the LP the person behind the operation.

Pros

• You build trust before asking for capital

• I’m not sure how to explain the value of this to be honest - it’s ~infinitely valuable since you’re building a brand and when an LP reaches out they already feel like they trust you to an extent you wouldn’t believe

• You build LP relationships at scale

• This one’s also hard to explain - retail LPs will follow you, allocators will start showing up in your DMs … and the beauty of it all is that it comes to you as opposed to you reaching out to people cold

• Deal flow rules the world guys and guess what? Brokers, banks, and other people who you absolutely want in your life for the best deals and terms will starting reaching out as well - all pulled to you from posts

• Pro tip - most of them will never like a post or comment for months, and then suddenly email you saying they’ve been watching you for months!

Cons

• Being public takes time and consistency

• The key insight here is that most LPs don’t invest immediately when they first meet a GP. They watch for a while - see my comments above about the comments I get … some of these come 1-2 years in, but I can’t describe the value of those connections once they come in.

• There’s not much of a substitute here, but assuming you appreciate (1) having LPs come to you, (2) shortening the “sales cycle” since these LPs know better, and (3) having brokers/bankers in your DMs … then I’d say this is a worthwhile risk-adjusted return 😊

• Poorly thought-out posts can damage credibility

• So don’t post it! It’s really that simple… you don’t have to post every day, and by the way it’s ok to go off the “real estate” script once in a while and post about being a parent, your vacation, or whatever is on your mind - you are just sharing a peace of yourself and our lives aren’t purely work.

• Some operators overshare deals or focus too much on promotion - if you do this, it simply won’t work at scale

As always, I hope this was valuable and I look forward to your feedback!

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

• Limited Partners:

• ***GP-LP Match - ***a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. Join here in under a minute.

• Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments

• ***LP Education ***- self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments

• ***LP Community - ***free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter

• ***Find GPs ***in unique property types, markets, all filtered by their experience level - takes 1 minute to register.

• General Partners:

• ***GP-LP Match - ***a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.

• Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market