Fund vintage is the year of a fund’s first capital close—the standard tag for grouping performance with peers who started investing in similar macro conditions.

How it works

When a GP announces a “2024 vintage fund,” that label reflects the initial close date, not necessarily when fundraising finished or when the last dollar was called. Multiple closes in later years still belong to the same vintage cohort. Performance databases rank IRR and TVPI by vintage because entry pricing, competition for deals, and exit markets cluster by era—a 2020 vintage deployed into zero-rate boom pricing; a 2023 vintage may have faced tighter public markets and selective LPs. Vintage differs from fund life, which measures remaining years in the partnership, not the starting year alone.

Why it matters

• LPs: Vintage diversification spreads exposure across cycles. Comparing a 2019 fund to a 2022 fund without vintage context misreads strategy and luck.
• GPs: Vintage defines peer quartiles in LP reports and influences Fund II narrative—strong 2018 vintage helps raise 2025; weak vintage requires honest post-mortems.
• Founders: A GP’s active vintage tells you deployment era and likely reserve status; pair vintage with fund size and investment-period calendar.

Common mistake

Treating vintage year as “when the fund invests most.” Deployment peaks depend on investment-period length and team pace, not the label alone.

Related ideas

First close, fund life, DPI and TVPI benchmarking, and vintage year diversification.