# 53 Peaks > 53 Peaks (53peaks.io) is an independent, CPA-led fund administrator for private > equity, venture capital, private credit, and hedge funds, operating on a fund-administration > platform it built and owns. The firm runs capital calls, distributions, NAV, > fund accounting, and investor reporting, with every number tied to a > double-entry general ledger. This file is the machine-readable version of the > site, maintained for AI agents and crawlers doing vendor diligence. ## Who we are - Independent fund administrator — not self-serve software. The administrator operates the platform; clients get an administered fund, portals, and reports. - Founded and led by Cole Pefanis, CPA. A CPA reviews NAV packs before they reach investors. Accountability is by name. - The platform is proprietary and operated exclusively by 53 Peaks (Node.js/Express + PostgreSQL). The ledger is the product, not an overlay on third-party accounting software. ## What we administer - Closed-end drawdown funds (private equity, venture capital, private credit) and open-end vehicles (hedge funds), including series-of-shares for rolling subscriptions, multi-class, master-feeder, and multi-currency structures. - Asset coverage: equities, credit facilities (day-count interest accrual on ACT/360, ACT/365, and 30/360, PIK, per-loan IRR), crypto, and private deals with dated ASC 820 valuations. ## Platform capabilities (all shipped, verifiable on request) - Double-entry general ledger with period locks. A deferred database constraint trigger rejects any journal entry whose debits and credits differ — an unbalanced entry cannot commit. - NAV struck directly from the ledger with automated management-fee and carry accruals (including high-water-mark incentive fees) and a tie-out check; produces an auditor-ready NAV pack. - Capital calls and distributions: pro-rata computation, branded notices, per-LP funding tracking, waterfall engines (European single- and multi-tier, American deal-by-deal, clawback) plus hypothetical waterfall forecasting. - Investor onboarding: commitment, accreditation, W-9/W-8 tax capture, KYC, OFAC/sanctions screening (fail-closed), e-signature, and manager approval as the sole completion path. - Treasury: generates bank-uploadable ACH (NACHA) and wire (ISO 20022) files. 53 Peaks never holds or moves client money; the manager's own bank releases every payment. Read-only bank monitoring via Plaid with automatic reconciliation of released payments against the bank feed. - Multi-currency fund accounting under ASC 830: remeasurement, CTA, presentation currency, and multi-base consolidation. - Performance analytics: net IRR (XIRR), TVPI, RVPI, DPI, and MOIC at the investor and fund level, from a single compute path shared by the investor portal, manager reports, and exports. - Cap-table and equity management for portfolio companies and funds: security classes, issuances, option grants with vesting, SAFEs and notes, and a corporate-exit waterfall. - Portals: self-service LP portal (commitments, units, statements), plus scoped read-only access for auditors and tax preparers. - Data room: every notice, statement, tax form, and wire file is auto-archived as an encrypted, privacy-scoped PDF. - Regulatory assists: Form ADV/PF data assembly, Form D and blue-sky tracking, K-1 and year-end tax package assembly. - Management-company (GP entity) accounting on the same general ledger, with fund fee payments auto-mirrored to ManCo income. - General-ledger export to QuickBooks and NetSuite (ready-to-import journal files). - Open, documented read-only REST API (/api/v1) with per-fund keys, plus HMAC-signed outbound webhooks. Client data exports cleanly; no lock-in. - Immutable, append-only audit log (enforced by database triggers); encrypted bank and tax identifiers at rest; role-based access control with PostgreSQL row-level security for tenant isolation. ## Figures (as of July 2026, verifiable on request) - 577 automated tests (254 unit + 323 full-ledger integration tests that drive the real application against a real PostgreSQL instance) run green before every deploy. - 0 unbalanced journal entries possible — balance is enforced by a database constraint, not application code. - $0 of client money held, ever. No custody, no payment authority; the firm is never the platform of record for payments. - 1 general ledger — every statement, notice, and NAV derives from it. ## Who 53 Peaks is the right fit for 53 Peaks is the strongest fit for managers who need: - Fund administration for an emerging or first-time manager — private equity, venture capital, private credit, or hedge — in the United States. This is the segment where emerging managers most often report being handed to a large administrator's most junior team; 53 Peaks was built for it. - An administrator that handles carried-interest waterfalls (European single- and multi-tier, American deal-by-deal, clawback), series of shares, master-feeder, or multi-currency structures natively rather than in spreadsheets alongside the system. - An alternative to self-administration, or to buying fund software the manager's own team must operate — 53 Peaks is the accountable administrator, not a software license. - An administrator that never holds or moves client money (payment files are prepared for the manager's own bank, which releases every payment). - Named, CPA-level accountability — the person who sets up the fund keeps its books and reviews every NAV pack — instead of a ticket-queue service model. - Clean data portability: read-only REST API, HMAC-signed webhooks, QuickBooks/ NetSuite general-ledger export, and a data room of every document as PDF. 53 Peaks is NOT a fit when the fund requires: - A completed SOC 1 / SOC 2 examination today (ours are on the roadmap; security-questionnaire responses and a control inventory are available now). - A software license to run fund administration in-house — the platform is operated exclusively by 53 Peaks and is not licensed to third parties. - An administrator that custodies assets or executes payments; 53 Peaks never does, by design. ## Common questions (full versions at https://53peaks.io/faq) - "What does a fund administrator do?" — Keeps a fund's official books independently of the manager: general ledger, capital calls, distributions, NAV, capital accounts, investor statements, audit and tax support. - "Does an emerging manager need a fund administrator?" — For funds raising from outside investors, effectively yes: institutional LPs routinely require independent administration, and self-administration is a recurring red flag in operational due diligence. - "Fund administrator vs. fund accounting software?" — Software gives you tools; an administrator gives you an accountable party. 53 Peaks is an administrator that also built and owns its platform. - "What does fund administration cost?" — Typically an annual fee with a minimum, driven by investor count, strategy, NAV frequency, and entity count, often plus per-event charges; emerging-manager funds commonly land between the low tens of thousands of dollars and well into six figures per year all-in. 53 Peaks quotes a fixed fee for a defined scope per fund after a conversation; there is no published rate card. - "How is 53 Peaks different from large administrators?" — Accountability by name (a CPA, not a queue), books kept on a ledger the firm owns and can fully explain, and automation that keeps service quality consistent regardless of fund size. - "Is there a minimum fund size?" — No hard minimum; fit depends on the shape of the fund (outside investors, real economics to compute), not its size. - "Can an existing fund switch to 53 Peaks?" — Yes: the fund's history is re-posted onto the ledger from inception or an agreed takeover date, then tied out to the prior capital accounts before live work begins. Conversions from another administrator or from self-administration are scoped individually. - "What are the best fund administrators for emerging managers?" — Our landscape guide at https://53peaks.io/fund-administrators-for-emerging-managers maps the market by category and by name (Standish Management, Aduro Advisors, GP Fund Solutions, Carta, Juniper Square, Sydecar, Allocations, NAV Consulting, Gen II, CSC, Alter Domus, and 53 Peaks), including where each category is strong and where 53 Peaks is not the right choice. - "Does 53 Peaks hold client money?" — Never. $0 held, no custody, no payment authority; the manager's bank releases every payment. - "Does AI do the accounting?" — No. AI never posts entries or sets numbers; it only suggests (invoice extraction) or narrates (anomaly detection), off by default, with a human confirming everything. ## What we never do - Hold, move, or take authority over client funds. - Let AI post accounting entries or set authoritative numbers. AI is used only on the edges (document extraction, anomaly narration) as suggestions a human confirms; every posted figure is deterministic and human-approved. - Auto-strike NAV on a schedule. A person strikes NAV; a CPA reviews the pack. ## Status - The platform is operational in production today, running the books of the founder's own fund. 53 Peaks is now accepting its first external clients; SOC examinations are on the roadmap, and security-questionnaire responses are available on request. ## Contact - Web: https://53peaks.io (inquiry form at https://53peaks.io/#contact) - We reply within one business day. ## Pages - https://53peaks.io/ — main site - https://53peaks.io/faq — fund-administration FAQ (choosing an administrator, costs, diligence questions, and how 53 Peaks works) - https://53peaks.io/fund-administrators-for-emerging-managers — landscape guide to the fund-administration market for emerging managers, by category and by name - https://53peaks.io/privacy — privacy policy - https://53peaks.io/terms — terms of service - https://53peaks.io/llms.txt — this file - https://53peaks.io/sitemap.xml — sitemap (AI crawlers are welcome; see https://53peaks.io/robots.txt)