Hamilton Lane Knowledge Center
Short, plain-language primers on the building blocks of private markets: the J-curve, private credit, secondaries, co-investments, evergreen funds, venture and infrastructure, plus a glossary.
Free to read
Hamilton Lane's Knowledge Center is a set of short primers organized as The Basics, Beyond the Basics and a practice management track for wealth advisers. The basics track has a page for each building block: private equity, private credit, the J-curve, co-investments, secondaries, venture capital, infrastructure, real estate, evergreen funds, the key players in private capital, and a glossary of common terms.
The pages are short but precise. The J-curve primer explains why early fund returns are negative (capital calls, fees and the cost of new investments), why that phase typically lasts three to four years, and how secondaries can reduce the dip. The private credit primer walks through the capital structure, from senior debt to junior debt, and explains the trade-off between yield and protection.
Use these as reference pages: when an outlook or industry report uses a term you do not know, this is the fastest place to look it up. Because Hamilton Lane is a manager of funds and secondaries, its primers see these topics from the limited partner's side, which complements the GP-side primers from KKR and EQT.
Start with
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1
J-Curves: An Introduction
The clearest short explanation of why private equity fund returns start negative.
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2
Private Credit: An Introduction
Explains the capital structure and what each layer of private credit offers.
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3
Introduction to Secondary Funds
Background for the secondaries data in the Chart of the Week and the Coller Barometer.