Good information in this piece. I would go further to say that most individual investors without experience with private equity should stay away or hire someone with the requisite experience. I spent 15 years managing private equity Fund of Fund vehicles for large institutions and it is a very specialized business. I don't think anyone in the industry looks at IRR as the appropriate measure of return. Multiples of capital are a much better indication of value. Also, with over 2000 private equity firms out there, it is impossible for most investors to choose the good managers from the bad. There is no publicly available industry benchmark against which to measure performance, so it's almost impossible to tell how one manager stacks up against the rest. For most managers we reviewed and in which we eventually invested, we had built relationships for 3 or more years, undertook months of due diligence including visiting their portfolio companies and meeting management teams, and had tons of data from which to make a comparison. Also, beware, all managers will list their "top-quartile" performance in their fundraising documents. Be very suspicious and do your own due diligence. There are a lot of tricks to massage a track record to get the desired outcome.