
Direct Co-Investing: Powering Evergreens with Selectivity at Scale
In today’s private equity environment, ever-widening manager and company outcomes means that simply allocating to private equity is not sufficient. Returns are driven by what you own, why you own it, and how it fits together over time.
Direct co-investing has emerged as a powerful way for investors to navigate such an environment. When embedded within a multi-manager platform, direct co-investments combine asset-level transparency with sourcing scale – enabling investors to deploy capital efficiently, access structural growth tailwinds, and intentionally build portfolios designed to compound through market cycles. These attributes are particularly critical in evergreen structures, where durability, pacing, and selectivity matter as much as headline returns.
Three strategic advantages of direct co-investments
Direct co-investments are investments made alongside private equity managers into specific operating companies, typically on a low‑fee or no‑fee basis, early in their value-creation journey.
Three core structural advantages make them a compelling way to access private equity, especially within an evergreen framework.
1. Scalable selectivity
Core to consistently compounding capital is the potential to back long-term winners and avoid losers. Co-investments enable selectivity at scale by providing full visibility into the underlying business at the point of investment.
This transparency allows investors to underwrite each opportunity on its own merits, conducting deep, company-specific diligence rather than relying on blind pool exposure. Experienced teams equipped with proprietary data, pattern recognition, and sector expertise can:
- Assess a company’s operational health, management quality, and financial profile
- Evaluate the durability and potential downside risk of the business model
- Ensure alignment between the opportunity and the operating private equity manager’s historical value creation “sweet spot”
At scale, access to a broad, global network of top-tier, trusted, specialized private equity managers can generate a continuous pipeline of high-quality deal opportunities. That breadth is what enables discipline: the ability to say “no” to the vast majority of deals while still deploying capital efficiently and consistently.
To see this in action, HarbourVest’s multi-manager direct co-investment deal flow is shown below. Our selectivity at scale – we see 1,000+ deals per year and decline more than 90% of them – is especially important when used to power evergreen funds, which require a high level of ongoing capital deployments and realizations.
HarbourVest Direct co-investments - Annual deals sourced, with selectivity rate
Source: HarbourVest; as of 31 December 2025 | Annual deal funnel statistics based on all equity co-investment deals evaluated for a HarbourVest fund/account between January 1 and December 31 of each year, including buyout, growth equity, and venture capital. Deal selectivity represents the rate for closed initial investments only and excludes client-sourced deal flow opportunities. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
2. Cost efficiency
One of the most effective ways to enhance returns is to reduce investment costs. This is particularly true for long-duration strategies where small differences can compound meaningfully over time.
Direct co-investments typically involve little-to-no management fee or carried interest. This offers a cost-efficient pathway to private market exposure, with savings flowing directly to net returns, which can be on the order of 1.5-2.0% of return annually, compounding over time within an evergreen structure.
3. Intentional portfolio construction
Direct co‑investments give investors the ability to intentionally construct portfolios expressing investment convictions while avoiding unintended exposures.
With deal-by-deal transparency, investors can select across multiple dimensions to build portfolios tuned to the following potential focus areas:
- Industry and theme
- Geography
- Company size and stage
- Deal type and capital structure
- Value-creation strategy
- Manager specialization
Aggregating these three differentiated sources of alpha within a single portfolio not only enhances return potential but can also improve diversification – an essential attribute for evergreen durability.
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Navigating AI uncertainty through direct co-investing
In a competitive market with widening dispersion of outcomes, simply “being in private equity” is no longer a strategy. Owning the right companies is.
Nowhere is this more evident today than in software, where AI is creating clear winners and losers. Dispersion – not collapse – is the defining feature of this cycle. In our view, investors increasingly need to target businesses that are structurally AI-aligned, such as companies with mission-critical use cases, high switching costs, proprietary data, and deep domain complexity, where AI serves as a value-creation tool rather than a margin-eroder.
The deal-by-deal transparency of direct co-investing enables investors to purchase software businesses that fit this description intentionally – rather than investing with the hope that they’ll get the exposure they want.
For investors navigating this environment, selectivity and intentionality are critical. We believe direct co‑investing is distinctly positioned to meet today’s moment.
Disclosure: Diversification does not ensure a profit or protect against a loss.
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Direct Co-Invest Investing Risks. Direct co-investments result in HarbourVest holding a minority equity interest in portfolio companies where HarbourVest does not expect to be able to protect its portfolio investments or to control or influence effectively the business or affairs of such entities. In such investments, HarbourVest will rely on the existing management and board of directors of such companies, which could include representatives of other financial investors with whom HarbourVest is not affiliated and whose interests could at times conflict with HarbourVest’s interests. Such investments involve additional risks not present in investments where HarbourVest has control, including the possibility that such other investors have financial difficulties resulting in a negative impact on such investments or take actions contrary to the investment objectives of HarbourVest. A portion of HarbourVest’s assets are expected to be invested outside of the United States. Non-US securities involve certain factors not typically associated with investing in US securities, including risks related to greater price volatility in and less liquidity of some non-US securities markets. This risk could be greater for investments made in developing or emerging markets.
Evergreen Investing Risk. An evergreen fund is an alternative investment fund that has an indefinite life span and continuously raises capital rather than having a predetermined fundraising period and lifecycle, as do traditional private equity or venture capital funds. Prospective investors should be aware that an investment in an alternative investment is speculative and involves a high degree of risk. Alternative Investments often engage in leveraging and other speculative investment practices that may increase the risk of investment loss; can be highly illiquid; may not be required to provide periodic pricing or valuation information to investors; may involve complex tax structures and delays in distributing important tax information; are not subject to the same regulatory requirements as mutual funds; and often charge high fees. There is no guarantee that an alternative investment will implement its investment strategy and/ or achieve its objectives, generate profits, or avoid loss. An investment should only be considered by sophisticated investors who can afford to lose all or a substantial amount of their investment.
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