Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode is with Alex Chaloff, the CIO of a large and sophisticated private wealth management firm that is very active in private markets.

Alex is Chief Investment Officer of Bernstein’s $125B+ private wealth management unit within $725B AUM AllianceBernstein. He was previously the Head of Alternative Asset Strategies. Prior to joining Bernstein in 2005, he was a MD for Wilshire Associates, serving on the firm’s investment committee. Prior to that, he worked in fund accounting operations at a global custodian in Boston.

Alex and I had a fascinating conversation about: 

• How to approach private markets asset allocation.
• Why he’s doing the job that he always wanted to do.
• How to think about portfolio construction.
• The importance of patience.
• The questions about liquidity.
• Why structure matters.

Thanks Alex for coming on the show to share your wisdom and views.

A word from AGM podcast sponsor, Ultimus Fund Solutions

This episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus Fund Solutions, a leading full-service fund administrator for asset managers in private and public markets. As private markets continue to move into the mainstream, the industry requires infrastructure solutions that help funds and investors keep pace. In an increasingly sophisticated financial marketplace, investment managers must navigate a growing array of challenges: elaborate fund structures, specialized strategies, evolving compliance requirements, a growing need for sophisticated reporting, and intensifying demands for transparency. 

To assist with these challenging opportunities, more and more fund sponsors and asset managers are turning to Ultimus, a leading service provider that blends high tech and high touch in unique and customized fund administration and middle office solutions for a diverse and growing universe of over 450 clients and 1,800 funds, representing $500 billion assets under administration, all handled by a team of over 1,000 professionals. Ultimus offers a wide range of capabilities across registered funds, private funds and public plans, as well as outsourced middle office services. Delivering operational excellence, Ultimus helps firms manage the ever-changing regulatory environment while meeting the needs of their institutional and retail investors. Ultimus provides comprehensive operational support and fund governance services to help managers successfully launch retail alternative products. 

Visit www.ultimusfundsolutions.com to learn more about Ultimus’ technology enhanced services and solutions or contact Ultimus Executive Vice President of Business Development Gary Harris on email at gharris@ultimusfundsolutions.com.

We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.

Show Notes
00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Message

01:18 Podcast Theme Song

01:35 Welcome to the Podcast

01:59 Introducing Alex Chaloff

03:01 Alex Chaloff's Career Jurney

03:49 Transition to Bernstein

04:16 Current Role and Responsibilities

05:26 Investment Strategy and Market Insights

06:58 Active vs Passive Investment

11:35 Middle Market Focus

14:26 Evaluating Fund Managers

18:28 Lessons Learned in Fund Management

20:51 Allocating to Private Markets

22:38 Liquidity and Risk Management

27:01 Current Market Opportunities

31:01 The Perception of Infrequent Reporting

31:38 Private Wealth and Market Fluctuations

32:21 Understanding Liquidity Concerns

32:54 The Future of Private Market Investments

33:38 Challenges in Public Market Benchmarks

34:45 GP and LP Dynamics in Private Markets

36:58 Product Innovation in Private Markets

38:30 Evergreen Structures and Asset Allocation

39:20 Vintage Diversification Strategy

42:07 Lessons from the Current Market Cycle

42:30 Next Generation Investors and Impact Investing

46:13 Double Bottom Line Investing

48:24 Concerns in Private Debt Markets

51:33 Opportunities in Venture Capital

54:36 Favorite Alternative Investments and Future Trends

I went into The Compound and came out alive.

Recently, I joined Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson of Ritholtz Wealth Management on their Animal Spirits podcast by The Compound. It is a fantastic show that produces frank and thoughtful conversations on markets and the wealth management world. They invited me on their show to discuss why alts are going mainstream.

We had a great conversation on the animal spirits of alts and we unpacked the opportunities and challenges ahead for private markets, wealth managers, and the alternative asset managers looking to work with the wealth channel.

We covered:

• Why I don’t like the term “downstreaming of alts.”
• The size and scale of the opportunity with the wealth channel.
• Why and how it can make sense for the wealth channel to allocate to alts.
• The changing nature of asset allocation from slices of a pie to buckets and spectrums.
• The concept of liquidity.
• The attractiveness of evergreen funds for both GPs and LPs.
• Are private markets in a bubble?
• Why GP stakes are a compelling investment opportunity given structural trends in private markets.
• Can private markets be indexed (and should they be)?

Thanks Michael and Ben for having me on the show. Really enjoyed the conversation and it was a pleasure to join you.

Michael and Ben are fantastic and thoughtful asset allocators and commentators in investing and wealth management. If you don’t already listen to their podcast or read their commentary on markets, you can check out their blogs below:

Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor.

Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s show, we turned the tables. We welcomed famed podcast co-host of Animal Spirits and The Compound and Friends and writer at The Irrelevant Investor, and Managing Partner and Director of Research at $4B AUM Ritholtz Wealth Management Michael Batnick to come on the show to share a wealth manager’s perspective on private markets.

Michael’s career has taken a number of fascinating turns. He started selling insurance, before a chance meeting on the platform of the subway station with Josh Brown of Ritholtz Wealth Management after a New York Knicks loss led to a job offer to work with Josh at RWM. At Ritholtz, Michael has been an integral part of the team that has helped to drive the firm’s growth, leading with content and education. Each of the firm’s Partners have built impressive content platforms across blogs, books, and podcasts. Their thoughtful approaches to investing come through in their work — and it’s translated to how they think about private markets. Michael provided interesting viewpoints on why alternatives have yet to be adopted by many advisors and the challenges with adopting alternatives products.

Michael and I had a fascinating discussion at the intersection of wealth and alts. Michael and I covered:

• His journey into wealth management and the lessons he has learned along the way.
• The importance of education and networking in the wealth management industry.
• How he thinks about risk in public and private markets.
• The evolution of wealth management as a business.
• Why alternatives products are still sold and not bought.
• The importance of staying focused on fundamentals and long-term investing.
• The workflow challenges that alternative investments have for a wealth management firm.
• How and why content can develop views, educate, and build brand in wealth management and private markets.

Thanks Michael for coming on the show to share your thoughts and wisdom on investing.

Show Notes

02:03 Introduction to Alt Goes Mainstream 

02:43 Guest Introduction: Michael Batnick 

03:00 Michael's Early Career and Challenges 

07:26 Meeting Josh Brown and Career Breakthrough 

08:35 Lessons from the Insurance World 

09:20 Creating Content and Building a Brand 

10:58 Investing Philosophy and Market Insights 

14:27 Young Investors and Market Psychology 

19:13 Public vs. Private Markets 

29:25 Advisors and Private Investments 

34:21 Customization and Differentiation in Private Markets 

34:50 Challenges in Pitching Investments to Clients 

35:09 Operational Hurdles in Alternative Investments 

35:34 The Role of Relationship Managers 

36:16 Building and Managing Alts Portfolios 

43:04 Market Dynamics and Investment Strategies 

53:43 Content Creation in Wealth Management 

58:53 The Future of Wealth Management with AI 

01:01:46 Quick Fire Round: Market Predictions and Insights 

01:05:19 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

A word from AGM podcast sponsor, Ultimus Fund Solutions

This episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus Fund Solutions, a leading full-service fund administrator for asset managers in private and public markets. As private markets continue to move into the mainstream, the industry requires infrastructure solutions that help funds and investors keep pace. In an increasingly sophisticated financial marketplace, investment managers must navigate a growing array of challenges: elaborate fund structures, specialized strategies, evolving compliance requirements, a growing need for sophisticated reporting, and intensifying demands for transparency. 

To assist with these challenging opportunities, more and more fund sponsors and asset managers are turning to Ultimus, a leading service provider that blends high tech and high touch in unique and customized fund administration and middle office solutions for a diverse and growing universe of over 450 clients and 1,800 funds, representing $500 billion assets under administration, all handled by a team of over 1,000 professionals. Ultimus offers a wide range of capabilities across registered funds, private funds and public plans, as well as outsourced middle office services. Delivering operational excellence, Ultimus helps firms manage the ever-changing regulatory environment while meeting the needs of their institutional and retail investors. Ultimus provides comprehensive operational support and fund governance services to help managers successfully launch retail alternative products. 

Visit www.ultimusfundsolutions.com to learn more about Ultimus’ technology enhanced services and solutions or contact Ultimus Executive Vice President of Business Development Gary Harris on email at gharris@ultimusfundsolutions.com.

We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have a guest who may be young in age, but has already done more and lived through more than many people twice his age.

Anthony Zhang recently turned 26 but has already successfully built and sold two companies, secured funding from Mark Cuban, and received a Thiel Fellowship grant before starting Vinovest, his third company, which is making it easier to access fine wine as an investment product.

He also has an admirable and awe-inspiring personal story, working hard to come back from a devastating accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He was in the middle of running his second company, EnvoyNow, when this accident happened and, despite the tremendous adversity he faced, was able to continue to build the business and achieve a successful sale.

Anthony recently founded Vinovest, a platform that has been described as the Robinhood of wine investing. He’s built an investment platform that is unlocking wine investing to the masses. 

We had a fascinating conversation. We talked about: 

• Anthony’s background as an entrepreneur.
• Some of the lessons learned from starting 3 companies by the ripe old age of 26.
• How fine wine can be a compelling investment during periods of volatility.
• How to identify an investment-grade wine
• Some of his favorite wines (that he drinks and invests into!).

Wine as an investment has been largely inaccessible to the individual investor due to high account minimums, a lack of wine expertise, concerns about fraud, and the excessive costs associated with storing and insuring wine. Vinovest is abstracting away many of these issues with their automated investment platform that helps investors invest into fine wine as an asset class.

Thanks Anthony for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have one of the OGs of the crowdfunding space on to talk about how he’s built platforms that have evolved in tandem with the alts ecosystem.

Slava Rubin is the founder of both Indiegogo, one of the first crowdfunding platforms, and Vincent, a platform that is making discovery and alternative investments easier for investors. He is also the founder of humbition, an early-stage investment firm.

We had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of the alts space – from the early days of equity crowdfunding to now wading through all the different options of investment platforms in the alts space today. We talk about:

• The evolution of the alts space.
• The alts portfolio of the future.
• The need for an aggregator – and how once other industries, like travel, had an aggregator, the space took off.

Slava founded Indiegogo in 2006. He grew Indiegogo from an idea to over 500,000 campaigns and more than $1 billion distributed around the world. While at Indiegogo, Slava represented the crowdfunding industry at the White House during the signing of the JOBS Act and helped navigate bringing equity crowdfunding to the American public.

Slava also pioneered security tokens in the US. He created a way to sell fractionalized ownership of the St. Regis hotel in Aspen, Colorado using blockchain technology.

Slava’s latest work in the alts space is to bring transparency, discovery, and diligence to investors. He’s founded Vincent, which he’s likened to Kayak for alternatives, to enable investors to easily search, discover, and invest into all sorts of alternative assets.

Thanks Slava for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. We hope you enjoy.

Today we have a special episode of Alt Goes Mainstream – the co-founders of Rally on to discuss how people can now invest into defining cultural moments and assets that are aligned with their passions.

Chris Bruno and Rob Petrozzo grew up together – and they have combined their respective talents to form what has become one of the symbols for the financialization of all sorts of assets.

Rally, which started as a platform to enable investors to invest into shares of classic cars that would be unattainable to many investors, has become a multi-asset investment platform that allows individual investors to invest into all sorts of exotic, rare assets at low minimums.

Chris, Rob, and I had a fascinating conversation about how Rally built and evolved their concept from classic cars to all sorts of rare, grail assets. We discuss:

• How they got into collectibles themselves.
• How they’ve waded through complex regulatory structures to figure out how to offer these assets to the masses.
• How they grew up together and have now built a company that aligns with their passions.
• And how on earth they were able to IPO a triceratops skull and IPO a rookie card of the United States (hint: the Declaration of Independence).

Chris, Rob, and team have created a leading fractional investing platform for the alternatives space. They recently raised a $30 million round led by Accel, who invested in GOAT, to help propel their marketplace further.

Rally has already achieved an active, engaged, and passionate userbase of over 200,000 investors who have invested in everything from Pele rookie cards to classic cars to dinosaur heads to, soon, the Declaration of Independence, or a rookie card of the United States of America as Rally investor and Upfront Ventures Partner Greg Bettinelli has called it.

Chris, the Co-Founder and President, comes from the VC and startup worlds. 

He was an Associate at Village Ventures before co-founding two companies, Health Guru Media and Spotter. He’s a classic car enthusiast, which ignited his interest in unlocking the asset class to individual investors.

Rob, the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, has been the creative inspiration behind Rally.

He has brought his background as the in-house lead designer and creative consultant for Sony BMG, where he worked on the likes of Kanye West’s GOOD music imprint, and as the creative director for a few startups to bring Rally’s brand to life in person and in the digital world. 

Rally has also done some really interesting things with their brand, opening up a showroom to their investors, creating and offering stock certificates to their investors, and creating exclusive merch drops (including the limited edition Michael Jordan rookie card sweatshirt that I wore for today’s podcast). 

Thanks Chris and Rob for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy today’s episode.

Today, we have an expert in lending and capital markets on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to discuss how his company, Pipe, is building a new asset class.

Michal Cieplinski is the Chief Business Officer for Pipe, a fast growing fintech company.
 

Pipe has seen a rapid rise over the past year. They are one of the fastest fintech companies to reach a $2 billion valuation – and it’s in large part because investors see the potential to build a platform that unlocks recurring revenue as an investable asset class for the world’s largest institutional investors.

Michal deeply understands the inner workings of credit and lending on both the borrower and lender side from his experiences helping to build Fundbox, LendingClub, and now Pipe.

Pipe was born from the idea that entrepreneurs and companies should be able to grow their businesses on their terms – without taking debt or dilution. 

This was a fascinating discussion with someone who has seen the evolution of a number of lending platforms. Michal and I discussed:

• Lessons learned from building marketplace fintech businesses.
• How Pipe is empowering founders to adopt a trader mentality by unlocking recurring revenue as an asset class. 
• How Pipe is creating an efficient way for companies to turn their predictable revenue streams into a way to access capital without sacrificing dilution.
• How Pipe is building out both the buy side and sell side of their marketplace.
• How Pipe handles churn on SaaS contracts of their sell side borrowers.
• How he thinks about the evolution of Pipe as a platform in terms of the types of assets you would "pipe" and how any sort of recurring revenue stream - like ISPs, streaming services, even PE / VC fund management fees could be "piped."

Thanks Michal for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy.

Today, we have our first LatAm guest on the AGM podcast. And it was a special one.

Bitso, LatAm’s leading crypto exchange, is fresh off of raising a $250M round led by Tiger Global months after raising a $62M round led by QED and Kaszek - and has been minted as one of LatAm’s newest unicorns.

We had Bitso’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Vogel on to talk about what it has been like to build a leading FinTech company in the region and provide access to investments and financial services.

This was such a fun conversation. We could have gone on for hours. Daniel is such a compelling and fascinating storyteller. We discussed a number of things including:

• How Daniel has dedicated his life to unlocking monetary freedom for people through crypto.
• How a talk with his friend, a janitor at his company in Silicon Valley, opened his eyes to the need for real applications of crypto to help people send money cross-border.
• The origins of Bitso and how Bitso was a pioneer of an online brokerage account in Mexico.
• How Bitso has become the on-ramp for financial services for many consumers across LatAm.
• The meaning behind Bitso’s slogan #makecryptouseful.
• The power of stablecoins and how it’s enabling people in countries with inflation and currency fluctuations to save money.
• How Bitso balances being a centralized company in a decentralized world.
• How religion and community play a unique role in crypto.

Daniel is an early crypto pioneer and a thought leader in the space. He became intrigued by the idea of bitcoin well before many other people had heard of it and really thought of crypto as a way to unlock monetary freedom and access to financial services for the underserved.

After founding the Bitcoin Club at Harvard in 2013 while he was doing his MBA, Daniel founded Bitso with co-founders Pablo Gonzalez and Ben Peters soon after he left Harvard Square. 

In Bitso, Daniel and his co-founders Pablo and Ben have created the on-ramp for financial services to many consumers in Mexico and across LatAm.

As Daniel said in a recent TechCrunch interview, the growth of the crypto ecosystem in LatAm has been nothing short of remarkable. It took Bitso six years to get their first 1 million clients. And over the course of 2020, Bitso has surpassed the 2 million client mark. They have also doubled their assets on the platform. And their transaction volume during the first quarter of 2021 exceeded transaction volume for all of 2020.

It is clear that Daniel has a passion for building out the cryptoeconomy and for making a difference in people’s lives, so much so that Bitso has made their tagline #makecryptouseful.

Thanks Daniel for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have a domain expert in the world of VC – and someone who has been a visionary when it has come to one of the biggest movements in VC over the past 8 years: emerging managers.

Samir Kaji, the Founder & CEO of Allocate, is a well-respected industry leader in the VC world. He has spent over 20 years partnering with VCs at First Republic Bank and Silicon Valley Bank, where he led the Venture Capital and Private Equity banking efforts. At First Republic, he built out the infrastructure and client base that served the VC and PE community. He’s evaluated over 800 VC fund managers and worked with thousands of LPs at First Republic.

Samir and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of venture capital and what's to come for the industry. He’s seen a lot in his career in Silicon Valley that has spanned multiple market cycles. He shared his perspective on:

• The challenges that GPs and LPs face during fundraising.
• Why the structural inefficiencies of allocating to funds - and perceived risks with emerging managers - led so many LPs to miss out on the Fund I’s of now legendary emerging managers Lowercase Capital, K9, and Initialized Capital.
• The case for emerging managers in a venture portfolio and why emerging managers are the future of venture capital.
• The trend of non-institutional capital coming into the venture world.
• How LPs will be able to better discover and allocate to fund managers in the future.

In his time in Silicon Valley, he’s become an unquestioned thought leader in the world of VC, particularly in the emerging manager space. 

He has consistently written seminal thought pieces and instructional guides on the topic – and now talks about the space with his podcast, Venture Unlocked.

His experiences working with many of the top VC funds and LPs globally has culminated in a journey that he’s now starting by founding Allocate.

He has observed a number of inefficiencies with emerging managers when it comes to firm building and capital raising. 

He’s seen many emerging managers struggle with fundraising due to the difficulties finding the right LPs. 

He’s seen the challenges that LPs have with being able to locate and allocate to new emerging managers, many of whom have gone on to outperform benchmarks and become the next generation of brand name firms.

He believes that the ecosystem is ready for a decentralized, democratized, and diverse ecosystem of fund managers. And Allocate is the connective tissue that will solve these challenges for both GPs and LPs alike. 

Thanks Samir for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom about the world of venture. 

Today we have a guest who is bringing farmland investing to the masses. 

After working for one of Canada’s largest pension plans, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and running Operations and as the CFO at a platform for buying and selling produce, Artem Milinchuk founded FarmTogether to bring an asset that has largely been the domain of institutional investors to individuals. 

Artem and I had a fascinating conversation. We discussed: 

• How farmland deserves a place in all investors’ portfolios – in large part due to its features as a hedge against inflation and a passive income generating investment.
• How to underwrite a farmland asset.
• How he one day envisions the ability to invest into farmland embedded directly into one’s brokerage account.
• He also made a great case for how we can eat our way into supporting farmland investments, like hazelnut farms, which happen to be some of the types of farms that Artem likes to invest into.

FarmTogether is a technology-enabled farmland investment platform that provides investors with direct access to US farmland as an asset class. They have developed an end-to-end investment platform that allows investors to review carefully vetted farmland investments and invest in properties.

Artem has over 10 years of finance experience in food, agriculture, and farmland. Prior to founding FarmTogether, Artem was the first employee and CFO / VP of Operations at Full Harvest Technologies, a post-Series A b2b platform for buying and selling produce.

In addition to working at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, he also worked at Sprott Resource Holdings, E&Y, and PwC. 

Thanks Artem for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Artem.

Today we have one of the pioneers of the European tech ecosystem on to discuss how the European early-stage VC landscape has changed since its early days – and how their fund, Passion Capital, has unlocked access to investors with their latest fundraise.

Eileen Burbidge, a Founding Partner of Passion Capital, and I had a fascinating conversation about all things VC, opening up access to the asset class to individual investors, what it means for the future of venture capital, and Eileen’s love of Arsenal and why she’s not a fan of the European Super League.

Eileen has built a reputation as the go-to VC for seed stage companies in the UK and Europe – and for good reason.

Her aptly named fund, Passion Capital, has built a name for itself as one of the top early-stage funds in the UK because of her passion for rolling up her sleeves, much like she did in her days as an operator at Skype, Apple, Yahoo!, and Sun Microsystems.

I won’t forget when we met last year at her office – she had just stepped out of non-stop meetings with one of her growth-stage companies, where she was helping them figure out team and talent questions.

Not every seed stage VC has the ability to stay involved as their companies grow nor does this type of work, but that’s what separates Passion from the pack.

Eileen is just as much at home in her office, which doubles as a co-working space for Passion portfolio companies, as she is in 10 Downing Street, where she has been named the UK Treasury’s Special Envoy for FinTech, has been appointed by the Chancellor as the Chair of Tech Nation, and was awarded an MBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honors for her services to businesses.

So maybe it’s no surprise why she’s been described as “The Queen of British VCs” by Fortune Magazine.

She’s certainly backed many of the British startup royalty at early-stage, being a Seed investor in Monzo Bank, where she still serves on the board, Tide Bank, GoCardless, Digital Shadows, Marshmallow, Butternut Box, and a number of others.

Eileen has also had an illustrious career as an operator, working for Apple, Yahoo, and Sun Microsystems in the early days of the internet before moving to London in 2004 to become one of Skype’s earliest employees and Head of Product. 

She then founded Passion in 2011 as one of the first Seed funds in London, serving a critical market need for the entrepreneurial ecosystem in London. 

She’s now trailblazing once again by being one of the first funds to open up their LP base to the crowd, where they have partnered with Seedrs to allow individuals to invest into Passion’s latest fund.

She’s also an independent non-executive board director at Dixons Carphone, a 10B pound revenue electrical and telecoms retailer and on the Transformation & Innovation Advisory Board at UniCredit.

Thanks Eileen for being a pioneer in the European VC ecosystem and bringing innovative structures in venture capital to LPs.

I hope you enjoy.

Today we have a special guest who is one of the foremost leaders in the alternatives industry.

Bill Kelly is the CEO of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association (CAIA), the leading global educational and professional credentialing body dedicated to delivering greater knowledge and alignment for investors in the alternative investments space.

Bill and I had a fascinating conversation. His thoughtful and eloquent views on the evolution of the alternatives space led us to talk about:

• How the Retirement Promise has impacted consumers and investors and what it means for alternative investments.
• The importance of being a fiduciary.
• How CAIA consistently evolves their educational program to cover emerging trends like crypto and DeFi.
• How partnerships with leading investment platforms in the alts space like iCapital help to move the industry forward.

Bill brings an operator’s perspective to CAIA. Prior to joining CAIA in 2014, Bill was the CEO of Boston Partners and one of seven founding partners of the predecessor firm, Boston Partners Asset Management, which was sold to $215 billion global asset manager Robeco in 2002. He then led Robeco’s US operations as CEO.

Bill’s illustrious career in institutional asset management spans over 30 years, where he’s been in CEO, COO, and CFO roles across a number of firms. He is also currently the Chairman and Lead Independent Director for the Boston Partners Trust Company, which has over $2 billion in AUM. 

Bill has been an independent board member at Salient Partners, a $16 billion investment advisory firm, and an Independent Trustee at Bank of America’s $50 billion mutual fund complex business. 

He’s also an Advisory Board Member of the Certified Investment Fund Director Institute, which strives to bring the highest levels of professionalism and governance to independent fund directors around the world.

Bill is a lifelong learner and a tireless advocate for shareholder protection and investor education, which led him to his current role at CAIA, which he has helped grow the membership to over 11,000 members and 31 chapters across 95 countries.

CAIA serves a critical role in the alternative investments industry – they educate industry stakeholders and fiduciaries on the most current knowledge and best practices across the evolving landscape of alts. 

They have a sophisticated credentialing and thought leadership program that equips everyone from fund managers to distributors of alternative investment products to individuals who want to learn about alts with the tools they need to understand the industry as CAIA looks to consistently raise the standards across the industry.

Thanks Bill for sharing such important and interesting thoughts on the alts space and for providing critical education to the space through CAIA.

I hope you enjoy.

Today, we have a special guest who is changing the mechanics of private company stock ownership and investing for the better for employees, companies, and investors alike.

Kelly Rodriques is the CEO of Forge, the leading private company stock exchange and investment platform.

On today’s podcast, Kelly and I discuss:

• How private markets are the new public markets.
• How companies like Forge are unlocking a huge wealth management opportunity hidden in plain sight.
• How Forge is creating new accredited investors directly on their platform thanks to secondary market liquidity - and what that means for the alts space.
• How the private markets can innovate with structured products like index funds that provide diversified exposure to blue-chip private company stocks. 
• How and why strategics like Deutsche Borse and BNP Paribas see Forge as critical to the private markets ecosystem.

Kelly has helped build out the private market investment ecosystem at scale for Forge, bringing together a trading business, a private markets exchange with data, and managed liquidity solutions for late-stage private companies. Kelly and Forge also acquired and operate IRA Services, a self-directed IRA custodian with over $13 billion in assets across 1.5 million accounts.

Forge has transacted on over $10 billion in deal volume and counts many of the top private companies as customers. They’ve also received meaningful investment from strategic investors like Deutsche Borse, BNP Paribas, TD Ameritrade, and Munich Re.

Kelly has a great background to be building Forge. He combines a background as a successful serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, the deep marketing acumen, and the expertise from leading one of the largest self-directed IRA businesses, Pensco, to a successful sale. Prior to joining Forge as CEO, Kelly was the CEO of Pensco, one of the nation’s leading alternative asset custodians, which had over $16 billion of assets under custody and was sold to Opus Bank for $104 million in 2017. 

Kelly was also a founding investor of mFoundry, the leading provider of mobile banking services, which was acquired by FIS in 2013. He also built Totality, which he sold to Verizon in 2006, and has run an early-stage FinTech VC fund, Operative Capital, that has made 26 early-stage FinTech investments.

Thank you Kelly for providing such an insightful and fascinating look into the transformation happening in the private company stock market space. Your passion for innovating in private markets is palpable and such a welcome addition to the industry.

I hope you enjoy.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode features a masterclass in private markets from a guest who has seen it all.

Jim Strang is a deeply experienced private equity professional who has been part of the industry as a GP, LP, investor, consultant, and now a teacher, board member, and advisor to a number of firms.

I’d probably have to spend a good few pages going through everything that Jim has done and is currently doing in private markets. He’s a practitioner and a teacher, an expert and an operator. After an illustrious career that was punctuated as Chairman EMEA of Hamilton Lane, one of the largest LPs in private markets globally, he now serves in a number of board and advisor roles, which include Chairman of the Board at HgCapital Trust plc, Senior Advisor to CVC Capital Partners, Advisor at Bain & Company, and Director at Pictet Alternative Advisors.

Jim and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of private markets and what the future holds for large and small funds alike, as well as LPs. We discussed:

• The step function changes that take private markets from $15T to $30T of AUM.
• Why traditional asset managers may struggle to replicate the capabilities of alternative asset managers in private markets.
• The importance of partnerships having a clear ambition and alignment if they want to build a scaled platform.
• The challenges that managers in the middle face as large platforms and specialist managers are the differentiated firms in the eyes of LPs.
• Why GPs need to find innovative solutions to address the needs of different types of investors.
• Why building a strong brand is crucial to success in the wealth channel.

Thanks Jim for coming on the show to share your wisdom and experience on private markets.

This episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus Fund Solutions, a leading full-service fund administrator for asset managers in private and public markets. As private markets continue to move into the mainstream, the industry requires infrastructure solutions that help funds and investors keep pace. In an increasingly sophisticated financial marketplace, investment managers must navigate a growing array of challenges: elaborate fund structures, specialized strategies, evolving compliance requirements, a growing need for sophisticated reporting, and intensifying demands for transparency. 

To assist with these challenging opportunities, more and more fund sponsors and asset managers are turning to Ultimus, a leading service provider that blends high tech and high touch in unique and customized fund administration and middle office solutions for a diverse and growing universe of over 450 clients and 1,800 funds, representing $500 billion assets under administration, all handled by a team of over 1,000 professionals. Ultimus offers a wide range of capabilities across registered funds, private funds and public plans, as well as outsourced middle office services. Delivering operational excellence, Ultimus helps firms manage the ever-changing regulatory environment while meeting the needs of their institutional and retail investors. Ultimus provides comprehensive operational support and fund governance services to help managers successfully launch retail alternative products. 

Visit www.ultimusfundsolutions.com to learn more about Ultimus’ technology enhanced services and solutions or contact Ultimus Executive Vice President of Business Development Gary Harris on email at gharris@ultimusfundsolutions.com.

We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.

Show Notes

00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Message

02:06 Podcast Theme Song

02:44 Guest Introduction: Jim Strang

02:52 Jim Strang's Career Overview

05:35 State of Private Markets: Challenges and Opportunities

08:04 Fundraising Dynamics in Private Equity

11:25 European Private Equity: Evolution and Insights

15:01 Scaling Challenges and Ambitions in Private Equity

25:41 Technology and Innovation in Private Equity

32:47 Challenges in Organizational Analysis

33:56 Psychological Assessments in Investment Decisions

35:48 Effective Questioning Techniques for LPs

36:29 Transparency and Culture in Investment Firms

37:34 Evolution of Asset Management

38:41 Public vs. Private Asset Managers

40:27 Generational Shifts in Private Equity Firms

44:12 Growth and Democratization of Private Markets

48:40 Liquidity Challenges in Private Markets

54:45 Quick Fire Round: Insights on Private Markets

01:00:10 Entertainment Investments: Music Royalties and Sports

01:04:02 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

We had a special live episode of Alt Goes Mainstream this past Wednesday on $COIN Day to celebrate a landmark moment in the crypto industry that has, in many respects, signified the mainstreaming of crypto - the Coinbase IPO.

Adam Draper, the Co-Founder & MD at Boost VC, was one of the first investors in Coinbase’s Seed round in 2012. 

He joined the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to discuss what he saw in Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s Co-Founder, when he decided to invest in their Seed round, what excites him about the future of crypto, and why he looks for founders who are rational people doing very irrational things.

Adam is also learning how to play the guitar, so we were lucky enough to hear the exclusive release of a special new song that he created just for this podcast. Adam’s attempt to play the guitar and sing was quite admirable, but I think I can safely say that he should stick to investing as his career choice.

Adam is one of the most thoughtful, energetic, and vibrant people you’ll meet. This episode was signature Adam - unfiltered and unedited - which is much of what makes him so unique, interesting, and able to “see the ball” (as Adam calls it) with generational founders and ideas. It was a lot of fun to talk about Coinbase, crypto, and life with Adam on such a special day for him and the crypto industry.

If you want to see the live video (you won’t want to miss seeing Adam play guitar!) of the podcast, you can view it here on this Twitter link or here on this YouTube link.

I hope you enjoy.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have Matt Hougan, the Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise Asset Management and one of the leaders in the crypto industry. 

On today's podcast, we talk about:

* Matt's views on crypto.
* How Bitwise is bringing crypto to the wealth advisory community.
* How crypto's evolution is similar to that of the ETF market.
* How community has played such a big role in making crypto go mainstream.

Matt has had an illustrious career at the forefront of major industry shifts in financial services. He's been a pioneer in the creation of not just one, but two major asset classes and financial products. First ETFs, and more recently, crypto. Matt is the CIO of Bitwise Asset Management, one of the leading crypto-asset investment platforms with over $1 billion of AUM. Under Matt's leadership, Bitwise has pioneered the first crypto index fund and is the leading provider of rules-based exposure to the crypto space.

Matt and his team have brought institutional quality frameworks and learnings from the development of other industries within financial services, like ETFs, to bear as they help institutionalize crypto and work with many RIAs, family offices, and institutional investors. Matt led the development of the index that underlies the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund.

He's also been an educator and evangelist for the crypto space to more traditional investors and he couldn't have a better background to do this. He's able to share stories about how the ETF space evolved into an institutional investment product with over $4 trillion flowing into the asset class. 

He was the CEO of ETF.com, initially starting as a freelance writer, and working his way up to CEO. As CEO, he helped build ETF.com into the information provider for the industry and helped guide the sale of ETF.com in three separate, highly successful transactions. He also helped create the world's first ETF ratings and analytics service which now powers FactSet's ETF ratings.

He also co-authored the CFA Institute's monograph on ETFs and appeared three times as a member of the Barron's ETF Round Table. In 2016, ETF.com was acquired by Informa, where Matt joined their team to extend Insight ETF's position as the largest ETF conference in the world. He's been a pioneer in both the ETF and crypto worlds and sees the exciting opportunity in all different alt asset classes.

It's always fun to talk with Matt. He's such a thoughtful and intellectual guy who can live in both worlds of traditional finance and crypto.

I hope you enjoy.

Today, we have a special guest from an industry leader in the wealth management space. 

Ed Swenson is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the wealth management space. Ed is the Co-Founder and COO of Dynasty Financial Partners, a leading RIA technology services platform.

Ed and I had a really interesting discussion about the future of the wealth management industry – and how alts will play a role in the evolution of the space. We discussed:

• How and why the wealth management industry is changing.
• How Dynasty is a champion of entrepreneurs in the wealth management space.
• The democratization of access and advice in wealth management.
• How and why wealth managers should have alternative investments in their portfolio.
• How VCs will soon realize that the RIA space will be a great source of LP capital for them.
• How advisors allocating to “alt alts” (like crypto, sports cards, collectibles, art) should be “on the table.”

Ed co-founded and is the COO Dynasty Financial Partners, a leading RIA technology services platform that enables wealth advisors to become entrepreneurs and run their own businesses using Dynasty’s platform and infrastructure across technology, operations, diligence, access to investments, and M&A capabilities.

Ed and his Co-Founder Shirl have grown Dynasty to over $50 billion in aggregate AUM across almost 50 advisor teams. Dynasty is a leader in the fast-growing RIA space. They uniquely understand the needs of advisor teams who break away from wirehouses like UBS and Merrill Lynch and they’ve built out a tech stack and platform that is state of the art. Ed spearheads their technology approach by partnering with best-in-class fintech companies in various aspects of wealth management to build a tech platform that advisors love.

Ed also recently co-founded the Envestnet Advisor Services Exchange by Dynasty, a platform that enables Envestnet clients to access the value-added services that Dynasty offers. 

Ed comes from a wealth management background, so he’s in a unique position to understand the needs of independent advisors. Prior to Dynasty, he led the distribution network communications for Smith Barney’s Multiple Discipline Accounts division and was a Portfolio Manager for the Legg Mason Partners Large Cap Growth Fund. 

I hope you enjoy.

Today, we have a guest who's democratizing access to private investing. Ken Nguyen is the co-founder and CEO of Republic, a multi-asset investment platform for private markets.

Ken is a pioneer in the private markets investing world and a serial operator who knows how to build businesses. He's helped grow Republic to hundreds of millions of dollars in gross transaction volume over the past three years after Republic spun out of AngelList. 

After Ken was an instrumental part of building the investment and regulatory infrastructure at AngelList, as their General Counsel, Ken founded Republic to create a leading equity crowdfunding platform for both nonaccredited and accredited investors. 

While their incredible progress on the retail crowdfunding side is remarkable, Republic's platform and vision is so much more than simply a retail crowdfunding platform. They also have an accredited investor platform and they enable investors to invest into everything from real estate to e-sports and gaming financing to small businesses. 

Republic has done the hard things first. They built the investment infrastructure for private markets. And they combine that with a Robinhood-like investing experience for private markets, for both retail and high net worth investors alike. They've also been innovative in how they engage consumers by creating a Republic Note, a security token that has created network effects on their platform for users.

It's been really fun to watch this team execute at a blistering pace from the time that they started out with the idea of enabling investors to invest in startups at twenty dollar minimums, to building out a comprehensive private markets investment platform. Ken has been instrumental in that success with his infectious energy tireless work ethic and drive to create democratized access to investing for people around the world.

This was such a fascinating conversation. We talked about Ken’s drive for starting an investment platform that could enable everyone to participate in wealth creation in private markets, how investing and owning equity is part of the American Dream, how Republic has unlocked access to private markets for all investors, “Lean back vs lean forward” framework applied to investing (h/t Rishi Garg of Mayfield Fund for the “lean back vs lean forward” framework), and how community is such a big driver of Republic’s growth and success as a business.

I hope you enjoy.

Transcript

Note: This Transcript was created by an AI software package. It is not an exact translation of every word in the podcast.

Michael: [00:02:30] Ken, welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. 

Ken: Michael, thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. 

Michael: Oh, it's great to see you. I love that background of New York. 

Ken: I am in New York. So, art mimics real life or the other way around. 

THE FOUNDERS STORY

Michael: [00:02:46] Well, you've had a busy year, so congrats on everything. But before getting into Republic and all the things that you're doing, I'd love to hear your story. I mean, you've had such an incredible story of how you've gotten to Republic. So what is that story? 

Ken: [00:03:01] Yeah. Thank you, Michael. I definitely have a bit of an unusual founder story.

My family immigrated from Vietnam to the Bay Area in California. And so growing up in the late nineties, early 2000’s, you hear these stories of companies going IPO and tech and Google and Facebook. But just because you were smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, it doesn't mean that I or my family had anything to do with it.

We definitely weren't accredited, but that fascination early on, I think, ended up, staying with me. I ended up going to law school. Started out as a litigation attorney in New York and went into finance. And along the way, I think the story, the headline news that caught my attention the most was always tech companies. You know, you hear more and more of Facebook and then Airbnb. 

I had the opportunity to go back to the Bay Area and academia. I spent two years as a Teaching Fellow at Stanford and studying corporate governance. But Stanford happens to be also a tech hub. And so more and more, the different stages in my life just inserted me more and closer into the tech ecosystem and then I had an opportunity to join AngelList when they first launched their first syndication product. So I joined. I think the first non-engineer hired as the General Counsel back in 2013, 2014. 

Part of that work led to a change in the law, which is regulation crowdfunding in 2016. And I'm sure we're going to go into it. But in short, between the Great Depression in the 1930s, all the way to 2016, you had to be a millionaire to invest privately. In 2016, all of that changed. It's like opening up the flood gates. And that's when the team and I set out to found and launch Republic. 

DEMOCRATIZING ACCESS TO INVESTING

Michael: [00:05:04] That's fascinating. And it seems like you really have a variety of experiences. Everything from the kind of legal and regulatory side to working in startups, to working in private companies. Was there really a specific moment in your life that has driven you to make it your mission to democratize access to investing? 

Ken: [00:05:25] I think there were three moments. Thinking back, probably the first moment was when my oldest brother who was 15 years older than I am and was already very established by the time I graduated college and he was an accredited investor – the first one in the family to be accredited.

And he was like, Hey Ken, do you know how I can invest in this company called Facebook. And I was probably one of the earlier users, one of the earliest users of Facebook. And I'm like, great question. I'm an Associate at a law firm and I have no idea how you can do that. I asked around - no one knew how. Right in the middle of New York City, every law firm partner is a multi-millionaire and they're like, yeah, this is Silicon Valley stuff.

So I think that piqued my curiosity, but also I had a desire to be like, Hey, I want to be in. I use this product. I really like it. And wanting me as a stakeholder to be a shareholder. So, I would say that that was the first moment.

The second one was when, after two years of spending my time at AngelList, I realized that the accredited only model could only go so far. AngelList did open up the venture ecosystem to a lot more people, but you still have to be in the know, have to be accredited. And, I think that moment when AngelList shifted their attention to focus more on upstream institutional family offices, that's when I was like, wait, there is this law that's going to be effective very soon. And this is exactly what I, as a teenager growing up in Silicon Valley, wish that it was the case that I could get in. So, I think those two moments, rather than three in combination, probably culminated in the idea and the passion for retail investing. 

Michael: [00:07:31] Well, you're bringing up a really interesting point, right. And it's been during a time where value creation in private markets has far outpaced value creation in public markets. And yet, so many people really up until the...

Today we have a guest who is building the infrastructure for a new asset class – sports cards.

Leore Avidar is a visionary founder who is building a ground-breaking company, Alt, which is backed by Alexis Ohanian and Seven Seven Six, as well as First Round Capital, Addition, SV Angel, Box Group, and Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures.

Alt is on its way to changing how we think about investing. 

This was such a fun conversation. We talked about:

• How Leore’s experience and excitement for building infrastructure has dovetailed with his passion and love for sports and collecting cards.
• How he’s building the future of the sports card market with Alt by creating the tools and infrastructure enable people to value, trade, and store their investments
• How cards can be a tool to connect different generations through financial literacy.
• How culture can become a financial asset. 

Alt is the culmination of his experiences working on Wall Street as a trader to working on the API economy at Amazon Web Services to making direct mail programmable at Lob. 

He's building the infrastructure - much like Coinbase has done in crypto - for the world of alternative investments and specifically trading cards. 

As we've seen the development of market structure in other asset classes like public equities, fixed income, crypto, etc, it will only be a matter of time before we have a similar evolution in the alternatives and collectibles spaces and Leore is right at the forefront of this curve. 

Card collecting and investing is on a tear - 2020 and early into 2021 saw sales of sports cards at public auction reach all-time highs. 

Leore has built out an incredible team and vision to build the platform at the epicenter of this market - and he's also built out a fund, Alt Fund, to invest into top cards.

He's leveraging his deep background in the space, having invested in sports cards for 5 years and generated returns that best many hedge fund and VC managers over the same time period. 

And most of all, he's a company builder who combines the best of a visionary founder who sees markets before they develop with the ability to execute and ship product. 

He's also the founder and CEO of Lob, a highly successful Y Combinator-backed company.

Today’s podcast felt like we were peering into the future of what financial markets will look like. Thanks Leore for giving a glimpse of what’s to come.

I hope you enjoy.

I’m thrilled to kick off the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast with a special guest - one of the leaders in the alts industry, Lawrence Calcano of iCapital Network.

Lawrence has built iCapital into one of the category defining companies in the alts space. They have democratized access to high quality alternative investment products for the wealth management industry.

Lawrence and the iCapital team have built the de facto operating system for the wealth management community to invest in and access leading institutional quality alternative investment fund managers. 

They’ve grown to almost $70 billion of AUM across 740 funds and 125,000 underlying accounts in less than 7 years.

In the past year alone, iCapital grew their platform assets by over $20 billion and raised $162 million from top growth and strategic investors including Ping An, BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hamilton Lane, and WestCap.

Lawrence has had an an illustrious career as a banker and operator. Prior to iCapital, he was a Partner and Co-Head of the Global Tech Banking Group at Goldman Sachs, where he spent over 17 years advising tech companies on many landmark M&A deals and IPOs. He was named to the Forbes Midas List of influential people in venture capital for 5 out of 6 years from 2001-2006.

And now his second act as an entrepreneur at iCapital may top his first act as a Partner at Goldman.

I hope you enjoy.

Welcome to Alt Goes Mainstream!

Welcome to the 10th episode of a collaboration between iCapital x Alt Goes Mainstream. 

Here’s the latest episode of the Monthly Alts Pulse, a live conversation in studio with Lawrence Calcano, the Chairman & CEO of iCapital, who as the leader of a platform that is responsible for the majority of individual and advisor-led investment flows into the alts space, has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in private markets.

In today’s episode, Lawrence and I welcome a special guest. Hightower Advisors Managing Director, Head of Alternative Investments Robert Picard joins us to discuss the operational challenges and solutions in private markets.

Robert has spearheaded the creation of the Alternative Investment Platform offering at Hightower, where he and the team curates investment opportunities in private markets for their advisor teams through research and due diligence. Hightower has 140 advisor teams that collectively manage over $150B AUM. Robert has a wealth of experience in private markets. He was instrumental in building four multi-billion dollar alternative investment platforms at The Carlyle Group / Rock Creek, Optima Fund Management, RBC Capital markets, and State Street / InfraHedge. Most recently, Robert served as Head of Alternative Investments at First Republic Wealth Management.

On this episode, Lawrence, Robert, and I had a fascinating and lively discussion. We covered a number of topics, including:

• How wealth platforms like Hightower and infrastructure operating systems like iCapital are creating straight-through-processing solutions across the lifecycle of a private markets investment for the wealth channel.
• The importance of bringing alts directly to the advisor’s desktop.
• Why improving the experience for advisors in private markets is critical to increasing adoption.
• Why it’s important to build across the continuum of needs for different types of high-net-worth investors.
• The importance of customization and differentiation with private markets solutions for advisors.
• What is the biggest unlock to enabling greater flows of capital into private markets?
• What are the implications of opening up the alts superhighway?

Thanks Lawrence and Robert for a great episode … looking forward to next month’s conversation!

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s podcast is a special show with 3i Members co-founder Mark Gerson.

Alt Goes Mainstream’s first sponsor is 3i Members, an investing network built on community, collaboration and capital that was co-founded by Mark Gerson, Billy Libby, and Teddy Gold. 3i Members is a global deal network for accomplished private investors. Members uncover, share, and diligence high-quality investment opportunities in private markets. The network offers more than just investment opportunities, providing access to expert databases, legal services, international events and retreats, masterclasses, asset allocation workshops, and other resources.

Mark is a serial entrepreneur who has built a number of communities that have revolved around some form of crowdsourcing.

In addition to founding 3i Members, Mark founded Gerson Lehman Group, a knowledge brokerage and primary research firm, that figured out how to use the power of community to serve its customers. He also founded United Hatzalah, a crowd-sourced system of volunteer first response that enables Israelis to be treated within the moments separating life from death following any medical trauma. He also co-founded and is the Chairman of African Mission Healthcare, which enables Christian medical missionaries to provide clinical care, training, and medical infrastructure for people throughout Africa.

From co-founding United Hatzalah of Israel to building a unique community in the private markets space with 3i Members, Mark shares his experiences and the profound impact of community and crowdsourcing in both philanthropy and private markets. The episode dives into the intricacies of building capable, engaged communities, the conceptual differences between a network and a community, and the unique approach of 3i Members in creating a collaborative investing landscape. We discussed:

• Mark’s journey and the significance of pro-social behaviors and intellectual curiosity among investors. 
• How 3i Members facilitates a space for private investors to share, scrutinize, and engage with high-quality investment opportunities. 
• The importance of asking the right questions in investment. 
• ROI-based philanthropy
• The value of non-transactional relationships within communities.

Thanks Mark for coming on the show to share your stories and wisdom.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to the Mainstream: The Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast Intro

00:42 Introducing 3i Members: A New Era of Investing

01:11 Mark Gerson's Journey: Building Communities and Crowdsourcing Success

02:59 The Power of Community in Crowdsourced First Response

07:59 3i Members: Crowdsourcing in the Investment World

09:44 The Art of Building and Maintaining Quality Networks

12:02 The Philosophy of No-Selling in Building Trust and Community

14:59 Engineering Serendipity: Fostering Organic Growth and Engagement

19:59 Investment Strategies and Learning from the 3i Community

24:40 The Future of Investing with 3i Members

34:51 ROI in Philanthropy: A New Approach to Giving

40:09 Closing Thoughts

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s podcast provided us with an in-depth tour of financial markets with a student of both finance and history. And what a tour guide we had. Marc Rubinstein, an investment professional with 25 years of experience researching and investing in financial services joined us on the show.

Marc started his career as an equity research analyst, where he ultimately became a MD at Credit Suisse, leading the European banking sector equity research group before joining Lansdowne Partners. Lansdowne was one of Europe’s largest hedge funds, where he was a Partner and managed the award-winning $4B global long/short financials equity fund.

He retired from Lansdowne in 2016 and, after going back to school to obtain his MBA from LBS, he launched Net Interest, a wildly popular and incredibly thoughtful newsletter on financial sector themes. I find Marc’s thoughts and views on Net Interest equal parts insightful and digestible. Marc is also an active value investor and early-stage fintech investor, where he was an early investor in Revolut. He’s also a contributor to Bloomberg Opinion.

Marc and I had a fascinating conversation about a number of themes that are defining private markets. We discussed:

• Why most businesses are marketplaces and what that means for how one should evaluate a business.
• Whether or not private credit is a systemic risk.
• Why the Silicon Valley Bank crisis occurred and why private credit firms are filling the void.
• Where to look for new asset classes and how they become institutionalized.
• The nuts and bolts of alternative asset managers as businesses.
• Why pod shops have featured in the hedge fund world and why PE and VC will have different versions of pod shops.
• Why content is key for financial services businesses.
• How financial media has evolved and why the narrative arc of companies is a perspective that Marc enjoys covering

Thanks Marc for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom on financial services and financial markets.

Chapters

Introduction and Background

Getting into the World of Finance

Banks Today and the Rise of Alternative Asset Managers

Regulatory Concerns and Private Credit

Systemic Risk and Excessive Growth

Identifying Risks in Private Credit

Scale and Returns in Asset Management

The Growth of Large Platforms in Private Markets

The Equilibrium of Scale and Returns

The Convergence of Traditional and Alternative Asset Management

The Trend of Evergreen Funds in Private Markets

The Acquisition of GIP by BlackRock

The Competition Between BlackRock and Blackstone

The Merging of Traditional and Alternative Asset Management

The Future of Active Management

Lessons from the Financial Crisis

The Impact of Media on Financial Services

The Trend of Permanent Capital in Private Markets

The Evolution of Media in Financial Services

The Role of Content in Financial Services

The Importance of Understanding Financial Services History

The Relevance of Deep Analysis in Financial Services

Value Creation through Content

Different Paths for Content Businesses

Purity of Content in Financial Services

The Future of Content in Financial Services

The Impact of AI on Investment Recommendations

The Value of Artisanal Work and Intelligence

Pod Shops in Private Markets

GP Stakes as an Analogy to Pod Shops

The Psychology of Discounting Private Markets

The Growth and Sustainability of Private Markets

Infrastructure as an Interesting Alternative Investment

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode features an enabler of the micro VC movement who has now scaled his business into one of the industry’s larger fund administrators. Braughm Ricke is the Founder and CEO of Aduro Advisors, a leading fund administrator that has carved out a sterling reputation in the VC world.

He's grown the business to over $114B+ AUA and over 450+ customers, that counts many of the leading VC funds, including Lowercarbon, Cowboy Ventures, Ahoy Capital, Craft, Haystack, Boost VC, and others, as customers. They've also managed to combine a high-quality service with innovative technology and a partnership strategy that has enabled them to differentiate from other fund admins.

Prior to founding Aduro, Braughm was the founding CFO of True Ventures, a leading Silicon Valley VC fund. Braughm is incredibly knowledgeable about the private markets space more generally and is also an active investor in the private markets startup ecosystem, investing early in the likes of Carta, Allocate, Passthrough, Arch, and others.

Braughm and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of fund administration. We discussed:

• Why Braughm started with emerging managers and the unmet need he saw to serve them.
• Why he believed the emerging manager landscape would grow.
• How he’s moved upstream beyond venture capital clients.
• How fund admin can integrate technology.
• Will AI change fund administration?
• Advice Braughm would give to founders building in private markets.

Thanks Braughm for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom on building a core infrastructure provider for private markets.

Welcome to the 9th episode of a collaboration between iCapital x Alt Goes Mainstream. 

Here’s the latest episode of the Monthly Alts Pulse, a live conversation in studio with Lawrence Calcano, the Chairman & CEO of iCapital, who as the leader of a platform that is responsible for the majority of individual and advisor-led investment flows into the alts space, has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in private markets.

In today’s episode, Lawrence and I welcome a special guest. Arax Investment Partners CEO Haig Ariyan, a wealth management industry veteran, joins us to discuss the evolution of wealth management and the role that alts can and should play in wealth client portfolios. Together with RedBird Capital, an $8.6 billion AUM private equity firm focused on financial services and sports and media, Haig and Arax are partnering with wealth and asset management firms and teams to build a differentiated platform that takes lessons learned and deep experience from Haig's background running wealth management businesses. Following its recent acquisition of $9B AUM U.S. Capital Wealth Advisors, Arax now has over $16.5B in AUM and $13B in regulatory AUM.

On this episode, Lawrence, Haig, and I had a fascinating and lively discussion. We covered a number of topics, including:

• The importance of independent and hybrid platforms in wealth management.
• How to build culture at a wealth management firm.
• How advisors can utilize alternative investments to benefit their clients.
• How the industry can collaborate to enhance client outcomes and ensure informed investment decisions.
• How innovative fund structures could change the landscape of private markets.

Thanks Lawrence and Haig for a great episode … looking forward to next month’s conversation!

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode is with a fintech founder who has scaled one of the larger private markets investing platforms for individual investors.

Michael Weisz is the Founder and CEO of Yieldstreet, a leading private markets investing platform, with more than 450K members and $3.9B invested (as of October 2023). 

An award-winning entrepreneur, he co-founded Yieldstreet in 2015 with the ambition to provide individual investors with access to curated private market assets typically reserved for institutions. As CEO, Michael leads Yieldstreet’s strategic vision to make alternatives a fundamental piece of investor portfolios.

Before Yieldstreet, Michael held a variety of positions across the specialty finance spectrum, including founding Soli Capital. Previously, Michael was Vice President at a New York-based credit opportunities hedge fund with $1.2B under management.

Michael and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of private markets and how to deliver investment opportunities directly to consumers. We discussed the business evolution of Yieldstreet, how they work with both individuals and advisors, and what he thinks is important when it comes to providing investors with access to private markets.

Thanks Michael for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your thoughtful views on private markets.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode with an internet legend provides an illuminating window into how the past can help inform us about the future.

Steve Case is a pioneer and a visionary. He built one of the foundational companies of the internet, AOL, that brought America and the world online. As one of America’s best-known and most accomplished entrepreneurs, Steve has spent the past 39 years building, investing in, and shaping business policy for many industry-defining companies.

His entrepreneurial career began in 1985 when he co-founded America Online. Under Steve’s leadership, AOL became the world’s largest and most valuable internet company. AOL was the first internet company to go public, and one of the best performing stocks of 1990s, delivering 11,616% return to shareholders. At its peak, nearly half of internet users in the U.S. used AOL.

Steve has since built another successful company, Revolution, a Washington, D.C.-based investment firm that backs entrepreneurs at every stage of their development. Revolution Growth has invested nearly $1 billion in growth-stage companies including Sweetgreen, Tempus, Tala, DraftKings, and CLEAR. Revolution Ventures has invested in almost 30 companies, including Framebridge and SRS Acquiom. Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund has invested in over 200 startups in 100 US cities, building critical ecosystem development for entrepreneurship across the country.

Steve’s passion for helping entrepreneurs has extended to the policy world. He was the founding chair of the Startup America Partnership, an effort launched at the White House in 2011 to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship around the country. He was also the founding co-chair of the National Advisory Council on Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, where he chaired the subcommittee on entrepreneurship. He was also instrumental in passing the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act and the Investing in Opportunities Act. He’s also the Chairman of the Case Foundation, which he established with his wife, Jean, in 1997 and together in 2010 they joined The Giving Pledge.

Steve is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future and The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the American Dream,” which has ended up serving as a fantastic blueprint for the next wave of the internet.

Steve and I had a fascinating and illuminating conversation, full of lessons learned from building the first wave of the internet that can be applied to building and investing in companies today.

We discussed:

• How Steve and his team built AOL into the world’s largest and most valuable internet company at a time when 3% of people were using the internet for 1 hour a day.
• How revolutions happen in evolutionary ways.
• The three waves of the internet and why Steve believes that the third wave is much more complex and will require the ability to navigate policy and partnerships.
• Lessons he learned as a founder to build a successful and diversified investment firm in Revolution.
• How emerging technology ecosystems can build thriving startup communities, starting with “tentpole companies.”
• How the things that happen to you shape how you live your life and on “living a life that’s full with passion and urgency.”

Thanks Steve for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom, lessons learned, and visionary views of the future. It was an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode takes us into the world of technology with an expert in private markets tech.

Griff Norville is a Managing Director and Head of Technology Solutions at Hamilton Lane, the $903B AUM (*Inclusive of $120.2B in discretionary assets under management and $782.9B in non-discretionary assets under management, as of December 31, 2023) global alternative asset manager. Griff leads the firm’s tech-enabled analytics, forecasting, and investment diligence platform, Cobalt LPTM and related portfolio reporting services, and co-heads the firm’s Technology Committee.

Griff focuses on building proprietary tools and strategically partnering or investing into private markets fintech companies as part of the firm’s efforts to drive digital transformation within the industry. Griff also leverages his background on the investment side to help inform how he thinks about technology transformation within private markets. He previously co-led Hamilton Lane’s research team, where he was responsible for leveraging data to assess market trends and advice clients on investment and portfolio construction strategy.

Griff and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of private markets technology and why it’s an exciting time for innovation in the space. We discussed:

• How private markets are moving from the Stone Age and Excel age to the digital age.
• Why most GPs are still underinvested in technology.
• How Griff approaches the build, buy, invest question.
• Why Cobalt was so foundational to Hamilton Lane’s work in private markets.
• How technology innovation has driven product innovation when working with the wealth channel.
• What comes next for technology in private markets.

Thanks Griff for coming on the show to share your thoughts and wisdom on how technology is impacting private markets and for the work you’re doing to invest in technology that’s transforming the space.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s episode, we are joined by Mercer Investments’ US Financial Intermediaries Leader Gregg Sommer and CAIS’ MD and Head of Investments Neil Blundell.

Gregg and Neil bring deep experience and backgrounds in private markets to discuss how alternatives can be further adopted by the wealth channel.

Gregg is Mercer’s US Financial Intermediaries Leader, serving US wealth management and family office clients. He is a member of Mercer’s Wealth Leadership Team, Wealth Management Strategic Research and Investment Committees, and the Investment Policy Committee. He joined Mercer’s Investments business in 2009 and is based in Denver. Gregg began his career at U.S. Trust and over the last 35 years has held several executive positions in the investment industry. He has a comprehensive investment, business, and risk management background and has managed many successful investment teams focused on risk assessment, asset allocation, due diligence, portfolio management, organizational evaluation, and financial analysis across both private and public investment strategies. Gregg served as Chief Financial and Operating Officer of a firm that managed real estate and private equity and debt portfolios and has been a Principal and Portfolio Risk Officer for RCM, a Commodity Trading Advisor. Additionally, he was a founding Partner at Global Trading Partners, a trading firm focused on global market relationships.

Neil brings over 20 years of experience in private markets to CAIS. He recently worked at Invesco as the Global Head of Client Solutions and Alternatives for the Investment Solutions team. He was responsible for developing and managing over $90B in customized multi-asset investment strategies spanning both traditional and alternative solutions and was a member of the team’s executive committee, investment committee, and chair of the alternative investment committee. Prior to Invesco, Neil was at BlackRock for 10+ years, where he was most recently Managing Director and Alternatives Platform Head within the Institutional Client Business.

Gregg, Neil, and I had a fascinating discussion about how the wealth channel can approach alternatives and how they can think about both diligence and customization. We covered:

• The case for alternatives.
• How advisors currently approach alternatives and how they can think about it differently going forward.
• How to think about portfolio construction that includes alternatives.
• How alts can help advisors differentiate their practice and attract clients.
• Following the fast river in a career and why alternatives are “the fast river.”
• The meaning of “structure over strategy.”
• The rise in popularity of evergreen funds.

Thanks Gregg and Neil for coming on the show to share your views and experience in private markets. We hope you enjoy.

A word from AGM podcast sponsor, Ultimus Fund Solutions

This episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus Fund Solutions, a leading full-service fund administrator for asset managers in private and public markets. As private markets continue to move into the mainstream, the industry requires infrastructure solutions that help funds and investors keep pace. In an increasingly sophisticated financial marketplace, investment managers must navigate a growing array of challenges: elaborate fund structures, specialized strategies, evolving compliance requirements, a growing need for sophisticated reporting, and intensifying demands for transparency. 

To assist with these challenging opportunities, more and more fund sponsors and asset managers are turning to Ultimus, a leading service provider that blends high tech and high touch in unique and customized fund administration and middle office solutions for a diverse and growing universe of over 450 clients and 1,800 funds, representing $500 billion assets under administration, all handled by a team of over 1,000 professionals. Ultimus offers a wide range of capabilities across registered funds, private funds and public plans, as well as outsourced middle office services. Delivering operational excellence, Ultimus helps firms manage the ever-changing regulatory environment while meeting the needs of their institutional and retail investors. Ultimus provides comprehensive operational support and fund governance services to help managers successfully launch retail alternative products. 

Visit www.ultimusfundsolutions.com to learn more about Ultimus’ technology enhanced services and solutions or contact Ultimus Executive Vice President of Business Development Gary Harris on email at gharris@ultimusfundsolutions.com.

We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.

Show Notes

00:00 Introduction to Sponsor, Ultimus Fund Solutions

01:17 Podcast Opening and Guest Introduction

01:58 Guest Backgrounds and Career Highlights

03:43 Discussion on Wealth Channel and Alternatives

03:51 The Case for Alternatives

07:47 The Evolution of Private Debt

08:23 The Moment It Clicked for Alts

12:08 Institutional vs. Wealth Channel Approaches

13:54 Educating the Wealth Channel

15:47 Evergreen Funds and Wealth Channel

19:29 Generational Wealth Transfer

20:04 Current Market Trends and Private Markets

25:29 Importance of Due Diligence in Alternatives

26:33 Advisor Allocation Trends

26:53 Expected Allocations in the Next Year

27:07 Private Equity and Credit Insights

27:17 Real Estate and Hedge Funds Outlook

27:27 Emerging Infrastructure Strategies

27:47 CAIS Platform Overview

28:17 Transactional Volume Trends

28:36 Registered Funds Growth

29:30 Institutional vs. Wealth Channel Behavior

30:25 Customization in Private Markets

31:22 Technology's Role in Wealth Management

35:52 The Importance of Brand in Investments

39:26 Strategic Partnerships in Wealth Management

39:56 Concerns About Private Markets Growth

43:36 Evaluating Manager's Edge

45:54 Future of Alternative Investments

Disclosure

This content is for institutional investors and for information purposes only. It does not contain investment, financial, legal, tax or any other advice and should not be relied upon for this purpose. The materials are not tailored to your particular personal and/or financial situation. If you require advice based on your specific circumstances, you should contact a professional adviser. Opinions expressed are those of the speakers as of the date of the recording, are subject to change without notice and do not necessarily reflect Mercer’s opinions.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today we have the operator’s view on the show. We bring in someone who rose up the ranks of a private equity-backed software company to be CEO of that company — ECi Software Solutions — that now generates over $500M in revenue and $200M in EBITDA.

We welcome Ron Books, now an Operating Partner at Carlyle and the CEO at Net Health, a Carlyle portfolio company. He also sits on a number of boards for Carlyle.

He is now the Chairman and is the former CEO of ECi Software Solutions, a leading global provider of cloud-based software for SMEs, which he successful sold to Leonard Green & Partners for a multi-billion dollar exit. Ron started with ECi when it was a startup company and rose in the organization to serve as VP Sales, then COO, and then CEO, a position which he held from 2009 to 2021. While serving as CEO, Ron and his team developed and executed a strategic plan that included overseeing 46 M&A transactions and a successful software license to cloud migration across nearly a dozen platforms. They received investment from — and sold the business to — Insight Partners, Carlyle, Apax Partners, Goldman Sachs, and most recently, Leonard Green & Partners. Under his leadership as CEO, ECi grew from less than $50M in revenue to over $500M and a sale of the company in 2020 at a multi-billion dollar valuation.

Ron has all the hallmarks of a successful entrepreneur — energetic yet thoughtful, a tireless work ethic, the ability to connect with customers and employees, and loyalty to both customers and employees.

Ron and I had a fascinating conversation about what it takes to build a great company and culture and how to work with private equity given that he’s been on both sides of the table. We discussed:

• Lessons learned from growing a business to $500M in revenue and $200M in EBITDA.
• How he built and grew ECi through acquisitions and globalizing the business.
• Why culture matters and how to vet for culture in the hiring process.
• Stories from the challenges and successes of integrating 41 companies via M&A.
• How founders should think about working with private equity firms.
• How founders can get the most out of their board members and operating partners.
• The transition from CEO to Operating Executive back to CEO.

Thanks Ron for coming on the show to share your wisdom and experiences that are an invaluable source of learnings for both founders and investors.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode takes us inside the world of wealth from the perspective of one of the industry’s largest alternative asset managers.

We are joined by Sean Connor, President & CEO, Global Private Wealth at Blue Owl Capital, a firm with over $160B in AUM. 

Sean highlighted a number of key insights for navigating and working with the wealth channel as he shared lessons learned from building a successful private wealth business at a large alternative asset manager.

Sean is responsible for bringing the breadth of the Blue Owl investment platform to the global private wealth market. He’s at the forefront of Blue Owl’s private wealth initiatives globally and oversees fund formation, product structure innovation, capital raising, and client servicing. He also oversees business development, marketing, and operations for Private Wealth at the firm. Prior to his current role, Sean was one of the first employees at Owl Rock (now the Direct Lending division of Blue Owl) and was responsible for building out the private wealth business.

Prior to joining Blue Owl and Owl Rock, Sean served as a Managing Director of CION Investment Management for over 10 years. Sean was a member of CION’s Investment Committee and was responsible for all aspects of CION’s business including originating, underwriting, negotiating, and corporate finance transactions globally. In 2020, Sean was recognized by Private Debt Investor as one of the industry’s Rising Stars.

Sean and I had a fascinating conversation about what it’s like to work with the wealth channel. We discussed:

• How and why it’s so difficult to work with the wealth channel.
• Why the wealth channel is not a new phenomenon, yet why it’s still relatively untapped in terms of alternative asset managers understanding how to work with the wealth channel.
• How Blue Owl’s wealth business works across its three different investment platforms.
• Why scale matters in certain areas of private markets.
• Why the wealth channel is not one channel, but rather an agglomeration of different customer types and geographies.
• How the market is evolving where a one-stop-shop type firm may be how much of the wealth channel interacts with private markets.
• What it means for distribution professionals to understand their client and the daily demands of a wealth manager's business when educating the wealth channel on alternatives products.
• Why education of the wealth channel should focus more on holistic education and less on selling product.
• Why the wealth channel matters when it comes to alternative asset managers acquiring other alternative asset managers.

Thanks Sean for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share such actionable and thoughtful insights on how firms can work with wealth.

Welcome to the 8th episode of a collaboration between iCapital x Alt Goes Mainstream.

Here’s the latest episode of the Monthly Alts Pulse, a live conversation in studio with Lawrence Calcano, the Chairman & CEO of iCapital, who as the leader of a platform that is responsible for the majority of individual and advisor-led investment flows into the alts space, has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in private markets.

On this episode, Lawrence and I had a fascinating and lively discussion. We covered:

• How is product innovation enabling the wealth channel to invest in private markets?
• How are GPs being thoughtful about the structures they are creating for their clients?
• What challenges do GPs face when thinking about how to build products for the wealth channel?
• What is driving the growth of evergreen and interval fund structures?
• Why is it important to focus on user experience when structuring products?
• Where are we in the evolution of private markets? Is it still “early innings?”

Thanks Lawrence for a great episode … looking forward to next month’s conversation!

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode takes us inside the mind of a tech titan who is at the forefront of shaping the market structure evolution in private markets.

John Stecher is the Chief Technology Officer at Blackstone. He’s responsible for all aspects of technology across the firm and advises the firm’s investment teams as well as acts as a resource to portfolio companies on technology-related matters. John and the team at Blackstone have invested in iCapital, Canoe, 73 Strings, LemonEdge, amongst others.

It’s also his background in other areas of technology and consumer financial services that stands out – and provides insights and lessons learned for how to build technology within private markets. Prior to joining Blackstone, John was a Managing Director, the Chief Technology Officer, and the Chief Innovation Officer at Barclays. He was also a member of the Barclays Technology Management Committee. Prior to joining Barclays in 2017, he worked at Goldman Sachs, where he held a variety of senior management and engineering roles across the firm’s capital markets and technology divisions, and most recently built their Marcus-branded consumer finance division. He also worked at IBM, where he was appointed an IBM Master Inventor, where he delivered / created over 45 patents across several diverse problem spaces.

John and I had a fascinating conversation about how technology is core to both the business Blackstone is building and the businesses they invest into. We discussed:

• How Blackstone leverages technology internally and externally to create value.
• Why alts are still sold, not bought.
• Why he sees the biggest evolution happening in the finance and accounting space within private markets — and what innovations are being built there.
• Why the front office of private markets will still require human intervention despite technology advancements.
• Why the alts space needs systematization.
• How product structure innovation (i.e. evergreen funds, etc.) is driving technology innovation.
• How private markets are becoming more consumer oriented.

Thanks John for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and experience of building core technology for capital markets and private markets.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. 

Today we have an incredible discussion that spans the world of private credit and the growth of women’s sports - and how those two topics intersect in the guest’s daily life.

Chris Long founded Palmer Square Capital Management, an approximately $29B+ asset manager focused on corporate and structured credit with offices in Kansas City and London, in June 2009. Currently, he serves as Chairman, CEO, and Portfolio Manager. 

Since inception, Chris has been successful in building one of the premier credit investment firms in the world that includes clients across institutions, family offices, RIAs, bank / trust, and broker dealers. Prior to starting Palmer Square, Chris built a deep investment background at some of the top financial firms in the world, including Morgan Stanley, TH Lee Putnam Ventures, and JP Morgan.

In December 2020, Chris added the title of Professional Sports Team Owner, as he joined Co-Founder and Owner Angie Long and Co-Owner Brittany Mahomes in bringing a National Women’s Soccer League franchise to Kansas City. The KC Current launched on an extraordinary timeline, playing its first professional match just 124 days after the franchise was announced. As owners, Chris, Angie, Brittany, and recent addition to ownership Kansas City Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes, have had a clear vision for not only establishing the best women’s soccer club in the world, but also having the KC Current serve as a model for all of women’s sports, which was no more apparent than with the recent completion of their new stadium, a $124M project that is the first soccer stadium specifically for a women’s professional soccer team.

Chris serves on the National Women’s Soccer League’s (NWSL) Board of Governors and Expansion Committee as well as on the Executive Committee of the Kansas City 2026 World Cup Bid. Chris was recently recognized for winning the prestigious Kansas City Sports Commission’s 2022 Sports Executive of the Year and Sports Business Journal’s 2022 Power Players — Women’s Sports. He and his wife Angie were inducted into the 2023 Junior Achievement of Greater Kansas City Business Hall of Fame.

Chris and I had a fascinating conversation that spanned the world of credit and sports team ownership and investing — and how those two worlds are coming together. We discussed:

• How Chris and his team built a $29B asset manager in the credit space.
• Why he believes that private credit’s growth does not represent a systemic risk despite a more lax lending environment due to increased capital inflows and increased competition for good deals.
• Why he believes the one-stop-shop will emerge in credit for both borrowers and LPs.
• Why a background in credit and investing has been invaluable in understanding how to navigate the business side of building and running a sports franchise.
• How Chris decided to buy a NWSL team with his wife and co-founder Angie.
• Why Chris believes investing in women’s soccer in the US is like “buying the Boston Celtics in the 1960s.”
• Why owning your own facilities as a sports team is a huge lever to increase revenues and drive enterprise value.
• How driving business initiatives for a sports team can help build the community and build the roster.

Thanks Chris for coming on the show to share invaluable insights into building elite performers in both the world of finance and the world of women’s soccer. Good luck this season with the Current — I’ll be rooting for you, except when you play Angel City FC 😉.

This material is for informational purposes and is prepared by Palmer Square Capital Management LLC (“Palmer Square”), is not intended to be relied upon as a forecast, research or investment advice, and is not a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to adopt any investment strategy. The opinions expressed are as of date of publication and are subject to change. The information and opinions contained in this material are derived from proprietary and nonproprietary sources deemed by Palmer Square to be reliable and are not guaranteed as to accuracy or completeness. This material may contain ’forward looking’ information that is not purely historical in nature. There is no guarantee that any forecasts made will come to pass. Reliance upon information in this material is at the sole discretion of the reader. Past performance is not indicative of current or future results. This information provided is neither tax nor legal advice and investors should consult with their own advisors before making investment decisions. Investment involves risk including possible loss of principal.

“The room where it happens …

No one really knows how the game is played

The art of the trade

How the sausage gets made

We just assume that it happens 

But no one else is in the room where it happens …

When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game

But you don’t get a win unless you play in the game.”

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. 

These excerpts were in a song by Leslie Odom Jr. and Lin-Manuel Miranda from Hamilton. But they could also be applied to the conversation Laurence Tosi of WestCap and I had today.

Today’s show is with someone who has been in the room where it happens. Stories and perspectives shared today were from someone who has helped turn bills into laws in private markets.

Laurence Tosi has been part of building foundational technology businesses and companies in capital markets and private markets – from investing in and building Ipreo, iLevel, TMC Bonds, and Tradeweb as an executive at Merrill Lynch where he served as COO of Global Investment Banking and Trading, building Blackstone from 2008-2015 as the CFO, Management & Risk Committee Member, Head of the Tech Innovations Fund, and Blackstone Treasury Solutions Fund, and building and scaling Airbnb as CFO and Head of Payments, Customer Experience, and Corporate Development.

At Merrill Lynch and Blackstone, L.T. deployed $500M of capital, returning over $1.6B without taking a loss.

He's now building WestCap, a $7.6B growth investing firm that L.T. characterizes as an “operating equity firm” that helps founders and companies scale their businesses at the inflection point in between traditional venture capital and private equity. L.T. and WestCap have leveraged their collective operating knowledge to invest in a number of industry leaders, including two industry defining companies in private markets, iCapital and Addepar. They’ve also invested in the likes of SIMON, which was acquired by iCapital, GoodLeap, Sharegain, Klarna, Paxos, AccessFintech, Treasury4, Hopper, Avenue One, StubHub, and more.

L.T. and I had a fascinating conversation that took us to a number of places. We discussed:

• Stories from building Blackstone.
• The deeper meaning behind Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman’s comment “scale is our niche” and how “scale begets skill.”
• Insights L.T. and the Blackstone team had around working with the wealth channel that enabled them to transform how Blackstone and the industry worked with private wealth.
• Why the realization that at Blackstone, they weren’t selling to the end investor but that they were selling to the financial advisor was such a critical insight as they worked with the wealth channel.
• What it means to transform Blackstone from a firm into a business.
• Parallels and patterns L.T. took from building and investing in foundation market infrastructure businesses at Merrill Lynch and Blackstone to how they are investing in private markets at WestCap.
• L.T.’s learnings from a focus on customer experience and simplifying the product at Airbnb.
• What’s the unlock for alternatives that harmonizes the industry?
• Why consortium is a “bad word” but why standardization will be so critical to the next phase of private markets.
• Why private equity firms have the best business models in finance.
• The difference between being in the business of building their business between being in the business of building your business and what L.T. is trying to accomplish at WestCap.
• Why L.T. believes in the partnership model for alternative asset managers and why he believes that’s an enduring model.

L.T., thanks so much for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom, experience, and deep industry knowledge from being a pioneer in private markets.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode dives deep into one of the fastest growing independent wealth platforms in the US — Sanctuary Wealth — and how alternatives is a major ingredient to the growth of their firm and the RIA space more broadly.

We have Sanctuary’s MD and Head of Alternative Investments, Patrick McGowan, and Director of Strategic Partnerships, Oksana Poznak, on the show to discuss why they believe alternative investments are a key driver of their growth and why they are so important to the development of advisor’s practices.

Patrick and Oksana both bring valuable perspectives on private markets to bear.

Patrick was previously a SVP and Head of Product Management at Azimut Alternative Capital Partners, the NY based GP stakes arm of Azimut Group, one of the largest independent wealth management companies in the world. This background gives him a great understanding of the GP stakes world, where he's spent a bunch of time thinking about this in terms of how it relates to the wealth channel. Prior to Azimut, Patrick was part of the Invesco Private Capital team, the $1B PE and VC arm of Invesco, where he focused on their efforts for CalSTRS SMA and a fund of funds that invested in a number of high-performing, generally smaller and emerging managers. He also worked at OC Private Capital, a JV between Carlyle and OppenheimerFunds, the advisor to a $1B close-ended interval fund focused on private credit. Prior to this role, he was a Senior Director at AI Insight, which was acquired by iCapital. He started his career at OppenheimerFunds and then worked at Altegris Investments, which was a pioneer in bringing alts to the wealth channel.

Oksana brings over 20 years of experience in business development, marketing, and relationship management to Sanctuary. She was most recently Segment Marketing Director at CAIS, where she promoted alternative investment fund managers. Prior to CAIS, she held senior positions at Atria Wealth Solutions, BNY Mellon Pershing, Ladenburg Thalman, and Advisor Group.

We had a fascinating discussion about the intersection of wealth and alts. We discussed: 

• What it will take to grow Sanctuary to a $100B Super RIA.
• Why the wealth channel is so interested in alternatives.
• Why alternative asset managers are interested in working with the wealth channel.
• How alternative asset managers can best approach working with and educating the wealth channel.
• The biggest mistake alternative asset managers make when trying to work with the wealth channel.
• How smaller funds can partner with wealth advisors.

Thanks Patrick and Oksana for coming on the show to share your thoughts and wisdom about the intersection of wealth and alts. We hope you enjoy.

Welcome to the 7th episode of a collaboration between iCapital x Alt Goes Mainstream.

Here's the latest episode of the Monthly Alts Pulse, a live conversation in studio with Lawrence Calcano, the Chairman & CEO of iCapital, who as the leader of a platform that is responsible for the majority of individual and advisor-led investment flows into the alts space, has his finger on the pulse of what's happening in private markets.

On this episode, Lawrence and I had a fascinating and lively discussion. We covered:

• Why are chemistry and collaboration key for the next wave of private markets?
• How is solving distribution challenges like solving logistics challenges?
• What does the “Amazon-ification” of private markets mean?
• What does it mean to meet advisors at their point of need?
• What parallels can we draw from internet 1.0 to the growth in private markets today?
• How can the industry deliver tools to help advisors create holistic portfolios with alts at the start?
• What’s more important - the “fin” or the “tech” in “fintech?”

Thanks Lawrence for a great episode … looking forward to next month’s conversation!

A few weeks ago, the tables were turned and I sat down with David Weisburd of the 10X Capital Podcast to talk about the ongoing transformation of private markets.

The wealth channel is becoming a centerpiece of the LP universe. Every alternative asset manager either has — or has to have — a strategy for working with the wealth channel in today’s private markets.

We discussed:

• Why the wealth channel will become a prominent LP for many funds over time.
• How infrastructure solutions like iCapital are enabling the wealth channel to efficiently access private markets.
• Why GP staking will become part of the LP solution set for their exposure to private markets.

Thanks David for having me on your show to discuss how private markets are rapidly changing before our eyes.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s episode, we travel around the world of hospitality investing. We talk with Carlos Rodriguez Jr., the Founder, President, and COO of Driftwood Capital, one of the US’s leading hospitality sponsors with over $3B in hospitality assets under management. They’ve found a way to do both the traditional things in real estate investing and development well and compliment that with an innovative strategy to bring over 1,200 accredited investors on their platform as they find ways to improve how sponsors can access deals and capital.

Carlos and I had a fascinating discussion about real estate and private markets. We covered:

• How hospitality investing was impacted by Covid and how Driftwood weathered the storm.
• Lessons learned from operating through Covid.
• Why location, location, location rings true in real estate investing.
• How the millennial traveler and work from home have impacted hospitality investing.
• The most surprising things in real estate investing over the past few years.
• How technology is impacting real estate investing.

Thanks Carlos for coming on the show to share your insights and wisdom about hospitality investing. We hope you enjoy.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode features a guest who has consistently and astutely figured out the growth areas in private markets.

We are joined by Manulife’s new Global Head of Private Markets Anne Valentine Andrews. She’s responsible for the strategy, business development, and growth of Manulife Investment Management’s private markets business. Manulife has a platform that spans real estate, infrastructure, timber, agriculture, private equity, and credit.

Anne has a comprehensive and informed purview of both private markets trends and of the different asset classes. She brings together the CIOs from each asset class in the Manulife business and works with the global product group to drive private markets product innovation across the institutional, retail, and retirement channels.

Anne has a wealth of experience in private markets and in infrastructure in particular. She joined Manulife from BlackRock, where she was most recently Global Head of Infrastructure and Real Estate. Previously, she was Co-Head and Chief Operating Officer for the Morgan Stanley infrastructure platform and was a Director at Macquarie Bank.

Anne and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of private markets and how to build out a private markets investment platform and its brand. We discussed:

• How to approach building a private markets investment platform at an industry behemoth.
• Why culture matters at an investment firm.
• The continued consolidation of alternative asset managers.
• What it means to connect real assets with real money.
• How to build a brand and educate investors.
• How to bring private markets investment opportunities into retirement accounts.
• The opportunity in infrastructure investing.

Thanks Anne for coming on the show to share your experience and wisdom on private markets. We hope you enjoy.

A word from AGM podcast sponsor, Ultimus Fund Solutions

This episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus Fund Solutions, a leading full-service fund administrator for asset managers in private and public markets. As private markets continue to move into the mainstream, the industry requires infrastructure solutions that help funds and investors keep pace. In an increasingly sophisticated financial marketplace, investment managers must navigate a growing array of challenges: elaborate fund structures, specialized strategies, evolving compliance requirements, a growing need for sophisticated reporting, and intensifying demands for transparency. 

To assist with these challenging opportunities, more and more fund sponsors and asset managers are turning to Ultimus, a leading service provider that blends high tech and high touch in unique and customized fund administration and middle office solutions for a diverse and growing universe of over 450 clients and 1,800 funds, representing $500 billion assets under administration, all handled by a team of over 1,000 professionals. Ultimus offers a wide range of capabilities across registered funds, private funds and public plans, as well as outsourced middle office services. Delivering operational excellence, Ultimus helps firms manage the ever-changing regulatory environment while meeting the needs of their institutional and retail investors. Ultimus provides comprehensive operational support and fund governance services to help managers successfully launch retail alternative products. 

Visit www.ultimusfundsolutions.com to learn more about Ultimus’ technology enhanced services and solutions or contact Ultimus Executive Vice President of Business Development Gary Harris on email at gharris@ultimusfundsolutions.com.

We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.

Show Notes

00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Message from Ultimus Fund Solutions

01:18 Podcast Opening and Guest Introduction

03:39 Anne Valentine Andrews' Career Journey

04:42 Evolution of the Infrastructure Investments

05:41 Infrastructure’s Resilience and Growth

06:27 Building a Private Markets Platform

14:28 Challenges and Strategies in Making Acquisitions

17:12 Evaluating Culture and Integration in Asset Management

18:47 Building a Comprehensive Platform

20:20 Educating Investors and Expanding Access

23:29 Future of Alternatives in Retirement Accounts

26:43 Platformization of Alternatives

28:01 Building and Marketing a Trustworthy Brand in Financial Services

29:30 Learning from Other Industries: Amazon's Influence

31:15 The Evolution of Asset Management

31:57 Adapting to Market Changes and Mega Trends

33:34 The Importance of Long-Term Investment Strategies

34:33 Decarbonization and Natural Capital

35:32 The Importance of Long-Term Thinking

40:02 Connecting Real Assets to Real Money

45:42 Risks and Opportunities in Infrastructure Investment

48:03 The Role of Scale in Private Markets in Infrastructure

49:21 Future of Alternative Investments

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers, are subject to change as market and other conditions warrant, and do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation regarding any specific product or security. There is no guarantee that the investment strategy discussed will be successful or achieve any particular level of results. Any economic or market performance information is historical and is not indicative of future results, and no forecasts are guaranteed. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal.

Financial markets are volatile and can fluctuate significantly in response to company, industry, political, regulatory, market, or economic developments. The information provided does not take into account the suitability, investment objectives, financial situation, or particular needs of any specific person.

All overviews and commentary are intended to be general in nature and for current interest. While helpful, these overviews are no substitute for professional tax, investment or legal advice. Clients and prospects should seek professional advice for their particular situation. Neither Manulife Investment Management, nor any of its affiliates or representatives (collectively “Manulife Investment Management”) is providing tax, investment or legal advice. 

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Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s show, we welcome a senior member of the team at the world’s 3rd largest alternatives manager. Tyler Jayroe is a MD and Portfolio Manager in the Private Equity Group at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which manages over $2.4 trillion of assets on behalf of a diverse group of global institutions and individual investors. Tyler’s team, the Private Equity Group, has a 40 year history of investing across private markets, covering the alternative investment spectrum and investing over $42B of capital. Tyler helps spearhead a team that invests into funds, co-investments, and secondaries across private equity, growth equity, and venture fund strategies.

Tyler and I had a fascinating conversation about how an industry behemoth allocates capital across funds and strategies. We discussed:

• What they look for when investing into funds.
• Why middle market private equity is an area they have focused on.
• The opportunity for secondaries in the current market.
• The differences between a first time investor and a first time fund manager.
• What a scalable and replicable process really means when it comes to evaluating fund managers.

Thanks Tyler for coming on the podcast to share your deep experience in private markets. Hope you enjoy.

Contact JPMorgan Distribution Services, Inc. at 1-800-480-4111 for a fund prospectus. You can also visit us at www.jpmorganfunds.com. Investors should carefully consider the investment objectives and risks as well as charges and expenses of the mutual fund before investing. The prospectus contains this and other information about the mutual fund. Read the prospectus carefully before investing.

This document is a general communication being provided for informational purposes only. It is educational in nature and not designed to be a recommendation for any specific investment product, strategy, plan feature or other purpose. Any examples used are generic, hypothetical and for illustration purposes only. Prior to making any investment or financial decisions, an investor should seek individualized advice from personal financial, legal, tax and other professionals that take into account all of the particular facts and circumstances of an investor’s own situation.

Risk Summary

The following considerations, which summarize some, but not all, of the risks of an investment in the representative strategy, should be carefully evaluated.

General Investment Risks

There is no assurance that the investments held by the Fund will be profitable, that there will be proceeds from such investments available for distribution to Shareholders or that the Fund will achieve its investment objective. An investment in the Fund is speculative and involves a high degree of risk. Fund performance may be volatile and a Shareholder could incur a total or substantial loss of its investment. There can be no assurance that projected or targeted returns for the Fund will be achieved.

Financial Market Developments

Volatile conditions in the capital markets may cause limitations on the ability of companies in which the Portfolio Funds will invest to obtain capital, or subject such companies to higher costs of capital for financing. This lack of available credit could impede upon the ability of such companies to complete investments and higher costs of capital could reduce the returns of the Fund or Portfolio Funds. Changes in interest rates may adversely affect the investments held by the Fund. Changes in the general level of interest rates can affect the value of the Fund’s investments. Interest rates are highly sensitive to many factors, including governmental, monetary and tax policies, domestic and international economic and political considerations, fiscal deficits, trade surpluses or deficits, regulatory requirements and other factors beyond the control of the Fund and the companies in which the Portfolio Funds invest. Although it is expected that the Fund’s borrowings, if any, will be short-term in nature, the companies in which the Portfolio Funds invest may finance a significant portion of their activities with both fixed and floating rate debt. By financing the acquisition and development of an investment with floating rate debt, such companies and Portfolio Funds, and indirectly the Fund, will bear the risk that in the event of rising interest rates and a lack of concomitant growth in income, or any increase in underwriting standards that might limit the availability of credit, it could become difficult for such companies and Portfolio Funds to obtain refinancing. In such a case, a company or Portfolio Funds could be forced to take actions that might be disadvantageous at the time in question, such as refinancing on unfavorable terms or selling an asset. Any rise in interest rates may also significantly increase the interest expense of the companies in which the Fund and Portfolio Funds invest, causing losses and/or the inability to service debt levels. If a company in which a Portfolio Funds invests cannot generate adequate cash flow to meet debt obligations, the Fund may suffer a partial or total loss of capital invested in the Portfolio Funds. Given current market conditions following a historically low interest rate environment, risks associated with rising interest rates are heightened.

Closed-End Fund Structure; Liquidity Limited to Periodic Repurchases of Shares

The Fund is designed primarily for long-term investors. An investment in the Fund, unlike an investment in a traditional listed closed-end fund, should be considered illiquid. The Shares are appropriate only for investors who are comfortable with investment in less liquid or illiquid portfolio investments within an illiquid fund. An investment in the Shares is not suitable for investors who need access to the money they invest. Unlike open-end funds (commonly known as mutual funds), which generally permit redemptions on a daily basis, the Shares will not be redeemable at a Shareholder’s option. Unlike stocks of listed closed-end funds, the Shares are not listed, and are not expected to be listed, for trading on any securities exchange, and the Fund does not expect any secondary market to develop for the Shares in the foreseeable future. The Fund’s private market investments will be illiquid and typically cannot be transferred or redeemed for a substantial period of time. The Shares are designed for long-term investors, and the Fund should not be treated as a trading vehicle.

Repurchase of Shares Risk

Although the Board may, in its sole discretion, cause the Fund to offer to repurchase outstanding Shares at their net asset value and the Adviser intends to recommend that, in normal market circumstances, the Board conducts quarterly repurchase offers of no more than 5% of the Fund’s net assets. Shares are considerably less liquid than shares of funds that trade on a stock exchange or shares of open-end registered investment companies. It is possible that the Fund may be unable to repurchase all of the Shares that a Shareholder tenders due to the illiquidity of the Fund investments or if the Shareholders request the Fund to repurchase more Shares than the Fund is then offering to repurchase. In addition, substantial requests for the Fund to repurchase Shares could require the Fund to liquidate certain of its investments more rapidly than otherwise desirable in order to raise cash to fund the repurchases and achieve a market position appropriately reflecting a smaller asset base. This could have a material ad...

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s show, we welcome a long-time VC investor who brings the perspective from both sides of the pond. Fred Destin, the founder of Stride VC, a seed fund operating out of London and currently investing out of its second £123M fund, shares his views on the venture capital industry.

Prior to Stride, Fred was a General Partner at Accel and Accomplice (fka Atlas Venture). He’s invested in some of venture’s big winners, including Deliveroo, Pillpack, Cazoo, Zoopla, Secret Escapes, Integral Ad Science, and more, generating over $1.4B in value to investors and a blended multiple in excess of 7x. Fred has been featured on the Forbes European Midas List a number of times. 

Fred and I had a fascinating conversation about the hows and the whys of early-stage venture. We discussed:

• How VCs can navigate the difference between decision points and discovery zones.
• Why a positive bias towards people can be a driver of returns in venture.
• Why venture capital is often a poor experience for founders.
• Why trust, truth, and empathy make for a strong and enduring founder relationship.
• Why Fred thinks that the most product of a venture capital organization is decisions.
• Why. and how simplicity can be core to company-building.
• How to evaluate risk versus reward at early-stage.
• How younger investors can hone their craft.
• The future of early-stage venture.

Thanks Fred for coming on the podcast to share your wisdom on early-stage investing.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s show, we welcome a veteran of venture, a champion of portfolio concentration, a master of micro VC. 

Chris Douvos has taken a mosaic of experiences as an allocator at both endowments and funds that worked on behalf of institutional investors to found Ahoy Capital in 2018, an intentionally right-sized firm focused on working with smaller, emerging VC managers. A pioneering investor in the micro VC movement, Chris has been a mainstay in venture capital for decades. At Ahoy, he discovers and partners with smaller VC funds to help drive returns for his LPs, being seen as a “bird dog in the Valley” for many institutional investors who lack the access, network, and knowledge of the early-stage venture landscape to Chris’s degree.

Chris has been embedded in the venture world for years, dating back to the early 2000s. Prior to Ahoy Capital, Chris spearheaded investment efforts at Venture Investment Associates and The Investment Fund for Foundations. He initially learned the craft of private markets investing at Princeton’s University endowment, although he earned his BA and MBA from Yale.

Chris and I had such a fun discussion about venture and the emerging VC landscape. We discussed:

• How the business of venture has changed.
• Why there’s always room for a Bugatti when the market has a lot of Fords and Toyotas.
• What he learned from Doug Leone at Sequoia in his early days as an allocator at Princeton and how it’s informed how he invests today.
• Why it’s tough to be a midsized fund in today’s venture market.
• Why he believes that concentration is key as a LP – and that diversification can lead to “diworseification.”
• Why he believes smaller fund sizes can lead to outperformance.

Thanks Chris for coming on the podcast to share your wisdom and lessons learned from decades in venture.

Welcome to the 6th episode of a collaboration between iCapital x Alt Goes Mainstream.

Here’s the latest episode of the Monthly Alts Pulse, a live conversation in studio with Lawrence Calcano, the Chairman & CEO of iCapital, who as the leader of a platform that is responsible for the majority of individual and advisor-led investment flows into the alts space, has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in private markets.

On this episode, Lawrence and I had a fun and lively discussion. We covered:

• Will private equity save the day?
• Why the “educated consumer is the best customer.”
• Is liquidity the threshold issue of getting more investors to participate in private markets?
• How 80% of the flows into alts from the wealth channel are currently driven by 20% of the advisor population … and how the next wave of advisors can understand and allocate to alts.
• How the industry moves from education on alts to education of how alts fit into broader portfolio construction strategies.
• How do we go from “talk to action” in the allocation of alts.
• What’s the interplay of technology innovation and product innovation in alts?
• What is the “technology chassis” for alts?
• What’s the missing piece from a technology perspective to take alts to the next level?
• What’s the role that tokenization can play in helping alts go mainstream?
• Does private markets have its connective tissue?
• The current status of Michael’s Monthly Bracelet Pulse, featuring Eintracht Frankfurt and Angel City FC bracelets.

Thanks Lawrence for a great episode … looking forward to next month’s conversation!

Welcome to the 5th episode of a collaboration between iCapital x Alt Goes Mainstream.

Here’s the latest episode of the Monthly Alts Pulse, a live conversation in studio with Lawrence Calcano, the Chairman & CEO of iCapital, who as the leader of a platform that is responsible for the majority of individual and advisor-led investment flows into the alts space, has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in private markets.

On this episode, Lawrence and I had a fun and lively discussion. We covered:

• How interest in alts is growing around the world.
• What Lawrence learned on his trips to Europe, LatAm, and Asia meeting with advisors, private banks, and GPs across those respective regions.
• Why each region has its own unique challenges, in large part due to different regulatory structures and wealth management market structures.
• How to build a global alts business while simultaneously tailoring the culture and client experience to specific client demands.
• Why global, brand name fund managers may resonate in different parts of the world.
• Why advisors are very focused on products right now that have a “modicum of liquidity.”
• Stories and anecdotes from Lawrence’s conversations at an event they hosted with over 200 advisors in LatAm through iCapital’s partnership with Unicorn Strategic Partners.
• Why being on the ground to understand different cultures and ecosystems is so important to learning and building the right organic feedback loops to structure solutions in private markets.

Thanks Lawrence for a great episode … looking forward to next month’s conversation!

Today’s show brings us inside the mind of a top allocator and CIO in the private wealth world.

We talk with Shannon Saccocia, the CIO of Neuberger Berman Private Wealth, a division of NB that has almost $70B of assets under management. With over 24 years of experience, Shannon brings a wealth of knowledge on private markets to bear. At NB Wealth, she works closely with investment leadership to establish market views, asset allocation, and portfolio recommendations tailored specifically for NB Private Wealth clients.

Prior to joining NB, she was the CIO for 5 years at SVB Private and Boston Private Wealth, which SVB acquired in July 2021. In this capacity, she oversaw all investment management functions, including portfolio construction, asset allocation, third-party manager selection, equity and fixed income portfolio management, performance and trading.

Shannon and I had a fascinating conversation on the evolution of private markets and how both allocators and GPs can think about this changing landscape. We discussed:

• The definition of alts and what “true alternatives” are.
• The changing nature of asset allocation and why alts are such a critical part of an investors’ portfolio.
• The evolution of fees and what investors should be paying for.
• Why specialized managers can win.
• The importance of geopolitics and macro in a world where deglobalization has an increasing impact on asset allocation.
• Why secondaries are an important onramp to private markets for the HNW channel.
• What it means to get comfortable with being uncomfortable as an investor.
• What the institutional investor world can learn from HNW investors.

Thanks Shannon for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your thoughts and wisdom on private markets.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s show dives into the collision of culture, sports, and finance. We talk with Chase Griffin, a student-athlete and QB at UCLA, who has become a pioneer in the college athletics Name Image Likeness (NIL) movement and is the 2x winner of the NIL Male Athlete of the Year awards from the NIL Summit and Opendorse.

Chase has excelled on and off the field, so he’s no stranger to success. In high school, he was the Texas Gatorade Player of the Year, and he turned down Ivy League offers to commit to UCLA. At UCLA, he’s played behind NFL draft pick Dorian Thompson-Robinson and put up strong performances on the field. Off the field, he’s been a leader in the NIL movement and an exemplary scholar-athlete, to the point where his coach at UCLA, Chip Kelly, has said, “if you could buy stock in a human, buy stock in Chase Griffin.”

Chase has deftly navigated the rapidly changing landscape of the NIL to secure over 30 NIL brand deals and launched the community / charity giving platform #NILforGood. He recently joined Range Media Partners as Athlete/Creator in Residence and contributes to Range business operations across Sports, NIL, Film, TV, Music, and Social Impact.

Chase and I had a fascinating discussion about how the NIL could change college sports as we know it and how it will coincide with more investment into college athletics. At a time when private equity firms are investing into companies that are part of the developing NIL ecosystem and possibly even investing into collegiate athletics conferences, Chase shares his views on the impact that the NIL and financialization of sports has on athletes, colleges, pro sports, and broader student bodies.

Congrats on all the accomplishments in your young career thus far, Chase. Thanks for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your experiences and wisdom on the NIL.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s show, we bring the institutional family office perspective to private markets. We talk with Jamie Rhode, a Principal at Verdis Investment Management. Verdis is a single family office based in Philadelphia that was built on the rich legacy of the family, a major business family, that has spanned over three centuries.

At Verdis, Jamie is focused on venture capital, private equity, and hedge fund investment sourcing and due diligence. She joined Verdis from Bloomberg, where she held roles in both equity research and credit analysis. Verdis is an active investor in the venture capital ecosystem, leveraging a data-driven investment approach that Jamie spearheads to allocate to mainly smaller and emerging managers. They’ve taken a very thoughtful approach to asset allocation, particularly venture, and have had a number of valuable insights on asset allocation come out of that process.

Jamie and I had a fascinating discussion about the allocator’s perspective on venture capital and smaller fund managers.

We discussed:

• Why Jamie believes that 90% of investment returns come from asset allocation strategy.
• Why smaller funds often drive the best returns.
• Why illiquidity and duration are so critical to producing outsized returns, with Verdis finding that the last 20% of the hold period of a fund producing 46% of the returns.
• Why Verdis believes in the strength of the YC network.
• The perfect fund size and portfolio construction.
• Why former operators may not make the best fund managers in Jamie’s view.

Thanks Jamie for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and data-driven perspectives.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today we bring on one of the world’s largest pre-seed investors to cover what the state of early-stage investing looks like.

We welcome Maelle Gavet, the CEO of Techstars, a leading accelerator and global investment business that works with early-stage startups. Maelle has taken a background where she’s been a CEO, COO and operator at the likes of Priceline and Compass to run Techstars as they continue to transform their business. Techstars has invested in over 3,700 early-stage startups that have collectively achieved over $98B in all-time accelerator portfolio market capitalization.

With a global reach and an early-stage perspective across ecosystems and sectors, Maelle was in a great position to share views on: 

• Why being relentless makes a great founder.
• Why, even despite more seed funds than ever, there’s still been an increase in applications to Techstars by over 2.5x.
• Why Techstars can be seen as the ultimate fund-of-funds in her view.
• Why an actively managed index of early-stage innovation can make sense for many allocators.

Thanks Maelle for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and perspectives on early-stage investing.