Work record / Capital / Aycre Capital

Aycre Capital: I wrote sources and uses before the deck

The operators thought the offering would sell itself. I started by writing down where the money would come from, what order it would arrive in, and what it would buy.

The seat

I joined AYCRE Capital Partners in late October 2022 as Managing Director on the capital side. My lane was how we raised: the strategy, the way investors moved through the process, the private placement memorandum, and every document supporting the ask. I stayed fourteen months and left in December 2023.

What I was brought in to decide

AYCRE Capital Partners was raising a fund whose plan was to acquire lots and build custom homes in the Las Vegas area, the Ascaya community among them. Prince Capital ran the raise as the licensed placement advisor, and the Common Ground brand team owned the brand and the deck.

When I got there, the operators assumed the offering would sell itself. The deck and the financials were made for an earlier stage. We had warm relationships but no pipeline, and whatever followed a conversation depended on whoever remembered to follow up.

What we did

• Before we asked anyone for money, I wrote sources and uses: what comes in, from whom, in what order, and what it pays for. An ask with a stated use is underwriting. An ask without one is a story.
• I built a staged investor pipeline with these stages: sourced, engaged, diligence, soft commit and closed. Each had an entry trigger, a required next step and a window for the follow-up.
• I flipped the usual cadence so the follow-up window got shortest as the signature got closer. In private capital the alternative to yes is silence, so one missed touch near the signature turns into a quiet no.
• We rebuilt the deck to follow the order a diligence-stage investor asks questions. The financial model tied construction draws to where each project stood in its deal, not to the calendar.
• The private placement memorandum was drafted and then revised so that subscription documents went out at the pipeline's soft-commit stage. Outside counsel held the document.
• We pointed the marketing at giving every prospect a name and a warm path before the first touch, instead of treating it as a brand exercise running next to the raise.
• The rebuilt deck, version 3G, is eleven pages under a single line, the Aycre Way: building success simply. It puts the method first, the ask second and the money last.
• The team and I also built a 55-plus community concept for the fund and took it around Las Vegas and then Phoenix. Phoenix is where I first met Jon Armstrong of Armstrong Construction Group, a relationship that carried into LÏEF Development.

Results

• Over fourteen months we collected $25M in commitments against a $50M target. Commitments are not funded capital, and this money never funded. The fund did not close anywhere near the target, and I left in December 2023.
• During the raise, four custom-home projects got to term sheet. They were the Winston Court joint venture, Plaka Del Rey, Modena Court and Sanctuary Peak. That showed the fund had somewhere to deploy capital, though none closed with Aycre.
• Two things outlasted the fund. One is the follow-up cadence, which I have used ever since. The other is the relationship with Jon Armstrong, which grew out of the concept, not the raise.
• The seat fixed the order I now use on development: site control and a proven model first, capital last.

The lesson

Put sources and uses on paper before anyone is asked for money, and make the follow-up window shortest nearest the signature.

Public record

• AYCRE Capital Partners on LinkedIn

Stories from this work

Questions about Aycre Capital, answered

Firm record

Common Ground keeps its own account of this engagement: Aycre Capital on the Common Ground wiki.

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