Interactive tool
Distribution waterfall
Set the terms of a fund, then watch its proceeds work down the tiers to the investors and the manager.
| Deal | Cost | Exit value | Multiple | Remove |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fund size | $M |
Ledger
| Tier | Limited partners | General partner | Total |
|---|
The terms
The model
The model starts as a $100M fund with five $20M deals, all drawn at close and returned at one exit after the hold period. The deals range from a full write-off to a 5× winner. Rename a deal, type its cost or exit value, add or remove deals (up to ten), or change the fund size to scale every deal at once. The gross multiple slider rescales all exit values together and keeps their proportions.
In European mode the exits are pooled and run through one waterfall on the whole fund. In American mode each deal runs its own waterfall on its own cost, and the results are added up. The model leaves out management fees, the GP's own commitment and the timing of individual exits, so the GP's share here is carry alone.
The Sankey is drawn by hand in SVG. Every frame it recomputes the layout from values that ease toward their targets, so ribbons grow, shrink and reroute between structures instead of jumping. The moving dots run along each ribbon at a fixed speed; wider ribbons carry more lanes.
Simulation
One fund is one roll of the dice. Here are 3,000.
Pick an asset class and turn the dials. Every dot is a simulated $100M fund run through the same waterfall as the calculator, and the two tabs share their terms. Changing a term reruns the same funds, so what moves is the effect of that term alone. New draw rolls a fresh set.
Asset class
Terms
Preferred return, compounded yearly
GP share of profit
Deals
Median multiple of a deal that isn't written off
The most a written-off deal can return
Fund
Equal-sized, on $100M
Shared market conditions within one fund
Years the hurdle compounds
Selected fund
Its deals, best to worst, on a log scale. Dark bars returned at least their cost.
The model
Each simulated fund is $100M split evenly across its deals. A deal is either written off, recovering anywhere from nothing up to the recovery ceiling (0.3× by default), or returns a multiple drawn from a lognormal distribution around the typical deal, with the spread dial setting how far results stray from it. The low end of that distribution falls below 1×, so funds also hold partial losses: companies that survive but sell for less than they cost. Write-offs are modeled on their own because real deal results pile up near zero in a way one smooth curve can't produce. A shared shock for each fund makes its deals rise and fall together, and in a bad fund the same shock makes write-offs more likely.
Every fund runs through the same waterfall as the calculator, once pooled for European terms and once deal by deal for American, so each dot carries both results and the two tabs share their terms. The presets are calibrated to plausible gross outcomes for each asset class, not fitted to a dataset. The model leaves out management fees, the GP's own commitment and exit timing: every deal is held for the full hold period, so the hurdle compounds over the same years for every deal.
It all runs in your browser in plain JavaScript, with no server and no libraries. The random draws are made once per set from a seeded generator, and every dial reshapes those same draws, so rerunning all 3,000 funds takes a few milliseconds and the dots glide instead of reshuffling. New draw makes a fresh set.