Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
Access to top decile private markets managers through aligned, single purpose vehicles.
Magellan Equity Partners identifies managers whose funds land in the top decile with consistency, using a proprietary database built from a composite of commercial and private sources. We earn allocations through strong, long lasting relationships, in funds that have historically been challenging to obtain. A single purpose vehicle is formed around each allocation, allowing a limited number of family offices and ultra high net worth individuals to co invest with us. Everyone sees each investment before deciding, and we invest our own capital in every deal on identical terms. Years of work go into each commitment, allowing us to generate higher and more consistent returns than those typically obtained.
In brief
Magellan in about three minutes.
What we do, how a vehicle works, how we choose managers, and how we are paid.
Why we exist
The best private markets managers are worth the illiquidity. Getting in is the hard part.
Returns in private equity and venture capital are heavily skewed. A small number of managers deliver the results that justify a ten year lockup, and those managers rarely need new investors. Magellan exists to close that gap.
01 / Dispersion
Only the top decile earns the lockup
Median private funds do not compensate investors for a decade of illiquidity. The managers at the top do, and the evidence from Harris, Jenkinson, Kaplan and Stucke is that those with consistent top quartile records tend to repeat. We spend our time finding the ones that repeat.
02 / Access
The best funds are closed
Existing investors typically take the whole of a successful manager’s next fund. What remains goes to people the manager already knows, at institutional minimums. A family office can often meet one of those. Meeting them across several managers and several successive funds is another matter, and that is the model: even the best managers have a distribution of outcomes, and a one off commitment is a Hail Mary, not a strategy. Pooling capital through a dedicated vehicle is what makes vintage investing possible, in most of the funds, so the good ones carry the occasional weak one.
03 / Alignment
Carry only for genuine outperformance
The data, the analytics, the interviews, and the vetting are done once and shared among the partners in each vehicle. We are not paid for that work as it happens, and we invest our own money on the same terms as everyone else. We are compensated only if the fund’s investments pay off, and only after a high hurdle rate, set above the underlying fund’s own.
How we select managers
Verified by data. Earned through relationships.
Private fund performance is private by design. We rebuild it from the outside with our own proprietary database, which holds more of a manager’s record than the commercial services do, so that every manager we pursue has a record we can verify rather than a story we were told.
01
Screen
Commercial databases advertise fund level performance, at subscriptions upwards of $100,000 a year, yet by our count they hold returns for only about a quarter of a manager’s funds, too few to judge consistency. So we maintain our own proprietary database, built from public pension and endowment disclosures, commercial sources, and our network, across thousands of vehicles and vintages.
02
Verify
We only consider managers whose results sit in the top decile with consistency, fund after fund. The research agrees: Harris, Jenkinson, Kaplan and Stucke found that managers with consistently top quartile records show persistence in the funds that follow. One great vintage does not mean consistency.
03
Access
We collect the data, run the analytics, and find the promising firms, then interview, vet, and down select. We build relationships with the senior team, understand the strategy and its capacity, and earn an allocation in funds that are otherwise closed.
04
Structure
We form a single purpose vehicle for that one commitment, invest our own capital alongside yours on the same terms, and administer it with institutional grade reporting on IRRs, allocations, and capital accounts.
The Magellan name
Thirty five years of building, then investing.
Magellan Equity Partners was founded out of the Childers family office. The name goes back to the company that started it all.
1991
Magellan Laboratories
Founded in Research Triangle Park and built into one of the fastest growing private companies in the region.
2002
Cardinal Health
Magellan Laboratories is acquired by Cardinal Health, at the time one of the largest acquisitions in North Carolina.
2017
Magellan Partners
The Childers family office begins investing directly in private equity funds, venture funds, and operating companies.
2024
Magellan Equity Partners
Formed to open access to top decile managers for family offices and ultra high net worth individuals through aligned single purpose vehicles.
Get in touch
Investors and managers, we would like to hear from you.
Whether you are a family office or individual looking for disciplined access to private markets, or a manager who values a long term, entrepreneurial investor on the register, start with a conversation.
Contact the partners