At the 19th Independent Sponsor Summit on Sept 29th, 2025, Lazard’s Matt Marrone moderated a sharp, candid conversation between Peter Altschuler (Valera Capital) and Kevin Meyers (First Haven). Their discussion revealed how family offices are positioning themselves in a challenging private markets cycle—and how independent sponsors can better engage them.
Marrone opened with an inquiry that is on the mind of every independent sponsor; how many deals are you looking at on a yearly basis, and is there some metric that you adhere to? Altschuler laid out Valera’s balance: “We have general targets in mind across directs and funds—typically two to three independent-sponsor deals and two to three fund commitments per year—but we’ll flex up or down depending on what we’re seeing in the market and also factor in distributions, but our mindset is to stay patient. .”
Meyers echoed this flexibility: “We’re managing cadence out of a defined vehicle—thinking through when and how we deploy—because other parts of the portfolio aren’t distributing capital like they did in prior cycles.”
That dynamic is emblematic of today’s landscape. PE’s investments-to-exits gap reached a decade high in 2025, underscoring capital that’s been deployed but not yet returned.
Flowing through the discussion was a theme of disciplined decision making over emotion.
When a sponsor seeks additional capital, both family offices have guardrails.
During the conversation, Matt from Lazard became curious about how Family Offices tend to source their deals: “We rely heavily on our family-office network. Quality over quantity—reduce the number of sponsors, increase our check size with those sponsors who have been successful with us and develop long-term relationships.”
Meyers quantified it: “About 60% of our deal flow is direct from sponsors (relationships or inbound); ~15% comes from intermediaries, and the rest from peer capital providers. In closed transactions, it's roughly split thirds.”
That warm-intro engine is essential. As the Citrin Cooperman Independent Sponsor 2025 Report highlights, sponsors that establish relationships early tend to win more capital commitment.
The sentiment hit home with many independent sponsors in the room – the time to first engage with a capital provider, especially a Family Office, is well before you have your deal under LOI.
Institutional LPs are hampered by constrained exit windows and overhang. Family offices experience this too—but in a different light.
Altschuler: “We haven’t seen the same liquidity crunch in the lower-middle-market independent sponsor deals as we have with our larger funds. Great assets are still commanding interest and exit opportunities and there are just more buyers for assets of this size.”
Meyers often prefers to hold winners longer: “We like to see our winners run… We’re patient and long-term by nature.” Altschuler nodded to alignment dynamics: “The challenge is who else is in the capital stack and may have put rights or fund timelines—but I agree with Kevin, once you’ve got a compounding company, we’re happy to hold.”
On underwriting horizon: “We underwrite to five years because you have to underwrite to some time frame,” Meyers said. Altschuler echoed: “Five years is our base case…six or seven is fine if the company’s compounding.
Altschuler: “It’s all about the warm intro. Ask your existing LPs to introduce you to other family offices. And meet before an LOI—walk through your track record and the kinds of deals you like so we can move fast when something real appears.”
Meyers: “For us, every deal has two components to underwrite—the opportunity and the sponsor. When around 70% of what we see is post-LOI, we like to see clarity early: why you should own this asset? How will you drive value creation? Make the plan explicit.”
On first-time sponsors, Altschuler was frank: “We’re much more likely to back sponsors with a track record. If it’s your first deal, make sure it’s right down the middle of your strike zone. We’ve seen first deals way outside a sponsor’s domain—that’s hard to green-light.” Meyers added: “We’re usually a passive minority—we want a sponsor partner with prior experience and strong references from executives, lenders, and prior partners.”
As Altschuler put it:
“Great business plus great sponsor—you need both.”