Raising a debut private equity fund is tough even in the good times, so for a 29-year-old attempting it during the financial crisis was always going to be difficult. However, this is what David Menton, one of the Rising Stars of Private Equity in Financial News’s most recent list, managed to do when he set up Synova Capital with University of Oxford friend Philip Shapiro in 2007.

The pair raised £50 million - a size barely worthy of the buyout fund label. For Menton, who left his job at Scandinavian multifamily investment office TCCL to launch Synova, the "challenging" early years taught him valuable skills and hard lessons.