AGM Alts Weekly | 5.24.26: What's your edge?
AGM Alts Weekly #156: Making private markets more public, every week.
“Alt Goes Mainstream is category of one.” Global Head of Marketing & Communications, $X00B AUM alternative asset manager.
“When it comes to the intersection of alternative investments and wealth management, Michael just gets it.” CIO, $18B AUM RIA.
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Good afternoon from Washington, D.C.
“I thought I knew this manager, but I learned things I didn’t know about them.”
“I didn’t know much about them before, but now I’m really intrigued.”
We just wrapped up AGM’s inaugural RIA Field Trip in NYC this past week.
15 RIA executives x 4 GPs x 2 days.
The goal?
A crafted, curated experience for wealth managers and asset managers to learn about each other, their respective firms, and understand what makes asset managers differentiated and unique.
Differentiation can sometimes be hard to capture in two-dimensional forms like words or a presentation. Differentiation needs to be brought to life and made three-dimensional.
As one of the Field Trip attendees said, “I’ve never seen a bad pitch deck.” Some decks are certainly better than others, but a deck often makes every fund manager look good. That’s what a pitch deck is meant to do.
What is harder to distinguish is the essence of an investment firm.
The RIA Field Trip aimed to bring to life what can be so hard to capture online or in a deck: the DNA of an investment firm.
To understand the DNA of an investment firm means to unpack what the founders and executives believe makes their firm unique.
The RIAs had an opportunity to sit around the table with each firm and ask its executives who they were, who they are, and who they want to be.
A question that continually came up? “What’s your edge?”
What’s your edge?
Such a simple question to ask, but often the hardest answer to discern.
Every LP is looking for something a fund manager possesses that makes them unique and gives them an unfair advantage in a sea of sameness.
It’s not as simple as asking a manager, “What’s your edge?” It takes spending time with a manager to unpack their edge.
Manager edge can take different shapes and forms, depending on the fund’s size, investment strategy, and sector focus.
The numbers don’t lie. Performance is paramount. But there are different ways that a manager can lean into their edge.
I’ll dive into distinct types of manager edge, but one aspect that highlights a firm’s edge is an LP’s ability to articulate and capture, in a single sentence, what separates a manager from its peers.
After spending the better part of a day with four different managers over two days, I’ll attempt to do so with each of the firms from the Field Trip (and correct me or add to this if you see differently!):
KKR: “We not I” means persistence in process that enables them to create their own luck and engenders a culture of ownership (which includes the Broad-Based Employee Ownership program) that can help drive returns, as the firm’s recent 15x return on CoolIT illustrated.
Franklin Templeton: A family of private markets specialists, led by unique and differentiated scaled specialists and pioneers, each with ~20-40+ years of experience across secondaries (Lexington Partners), credit (Benefit Street Partners), and real estate (Clarion Partners).
Brookfield: Skin in the game (~25% of every fund includes an investment from Brookfield’s balance sheet) meets scale and synergies across megatrends in infrastructure, real estate, real assets, and industrial private equity, as evidenced by Brookfield’s investment in Westinghouse Electric Co., which recently signed an $80B contract with the US government to build new nuclear reactors in the US.
Veritas: Differentiated network and insights meet a focused investment strategy (investments at the intersection of technology and government) and a structural moat.
LPs are always looking for “edge.”
Edge can be judged on several dimensions.
Allocators often start with past performance and track record. And for good reason. There’s data to show that, particularly in venture capital, past top-quartile managers are likely to persist as top-quartile performers.
Using cash-flow data from Burgiss’s sample of institutional investors (as of December 2020), researchers and practitioners Robert Harris (University of Virginia Darden School of Business), Tim Jenkinson (University of Oxford - Said Business School), Steven Kaplan (University of Chicago - Booth School of Business), and Reudiger Stucke (Warburg Pincus) examined persistence in private equity and venture capital. They found that venture capital performance remains “remarkably persistent across funds raised by the same general partner.” Buyout funds’ performance, they found, had noticeably weaker performance persistence over time, particularly post-2000 (it’s also worth noting that inter-quartile dispersion between buyout managers, and large buyout managers in particular, is less protracted than that of venture, but both private equity and venture capital have significant dispersion compared to public markets equivalents).
This data appears to align with research by Michael Ewens and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf in 2015, who wrote in the Journal of Finance that ~50% of VC performance is attributable to the individual partner rather than the firm, a finding that is particularly impactful in venture capital. Team continuity and individual partner performance become important considerations for those looking to allocate to venture capital funds.
Hamilton Lane Executive Co-Chairman Hartley Rogers, who has over 40 years of industry experience, added another dimension to the aforementioned point during our conversation at iCapital Connect a few months ago, in response to my question about how to discern a manager’s edge. Hartley said it’s critical to understand “how much of [the manager’s] personal net worth, time, focus, and commitment is on the fund.”
Hartley’s perspective is interesting when evaluated alongside research by David Robinson and Berk Sensoy in 2013 in The Review of Financial Studies. Robinson and Sensoy studied the relationship between private equity management fund fee terms and performance across 837 funds from 1984-2010. They found no evidence that higher fees or lower managerial ownership were associated with lower net-of-fee performance. In fact, their evidence suggested that managers with higher fees delivered higher gross investment performance.
Tying together different sets of data can help connect the dots.
Dispersion in returns is a key feature of private markets, particularly in asset classes where there is the possibility for outsized outlier returns.
A chart from a report from Dimensional Fund Advisors’ Kaitlin Hendrix and Mamdouh Medhat illustrates just how protracted dispersion within asset classes in private markets can be. The dispersion of returns in venture capital is significantly wider than that of buyouts, which is still much wider than that of both private credit and private real estate.
Given the dispersion of returns in private markets, the stakes are even higher for LPs to pick well.
HarbourVest CEO John Toomey shared in our podcast on Alt Goes Mainstream that “what is fascinating is that edge can be sourced from different places.”
iCapital Managing Director and Head of Private Asset Research & Model Portfolios Kunal Shah encapsulated many of the aspects of edge in a quote below:
"Edge" in a private equity manager is a combination of pattern recognition, a deep and diverse network, and applying a growth mindset. The goal is to help the underlying companies win, but that requires private equity managers to work collaboratively with the management team to develop the right execution strategy, governance & incentive structure, attract the best talent, and leverage new tools to unlock value that can come from learnings from dozens of current and past investments. Good private equity managers do this consistently over a long period of time.
Kunal’s quote identifies several aspects of edge, tying them together into something LPs can hang on to: “good private equity managers do this consistently over a long period of time.”
What can enable managers to have a sustainable competitive advantage over a prolonged period of time?
Sourcing edge
Sourcing in and of itself can be an edge. Managers who pick well do so in part because of what’s in their pipeline.
Sourcing can come from a number of different features. It could be brand that enables a manager to receive referrals or inbounds from companies or other investors. It could be a unique and advantageous network that uncovers proprietary dealflow. It could be the speed of sourcing, where a certain fund manager is able to see deals before other funds. It could be data, where a firm’s proprietary data models help them to identify investment opportunities before others.
In private markets, and particularly in venture, “success begets success.”
That’s something that Toomey noted in our podcast:
“We invest with managers whose edge is that they are actually just exceptional at sourcing. Whether it's a market position, a following within an industry, or a market. You see this more so on the venture and growth side. There's a little bit of success begets success. And there's a credibility that comes with having been an early investor, having known the founders of different companies and really watched that movie before.”
The flywheel of success spins into motion as firms become known for making successful investments, creating a brand halo around the firm. That brand halo begins to translate into sourcing advantages, which compound over time as firms have increasing investment success.
Selection edge
Some investors have an edge when it comes to picking well.
Selecting the right companies and management team is an integral part of investment success.
These advantages are particularly true in venture capital, as a 2020 research paper by Paul Gompers, William Gornall, Steven Kaplan, and Ilya Strebulaev finds. They surveyed 885 institutional VCs at 681 firms to understand how they made investment decisions. They found that the VCs rated deal selection as the most important driver of value creation.
Picking well doesn’t mean that post-deal value creation can be an afterthought, but it certainly makes it easier to have a better investment outcome when the picking is done right.
Operational / post-deal value creation edge
In some respects, persistence in performance is driven by persistence in process.
Investment firms must have repeatable playbooks and processes to create value. This feature is particularly true in this new era of private equity.
In an era defined by higher interest rates, private equity firms will no longer be able to generate returns through multiple expansion and leverage alone, as the chart below from KPMG illustrates. Investors will have to create value through EBITDA margin expansion.
But EBITDA margin expansion just got tougher. As the recent Bain & Company Global Private Equity Report highlighted, “12 is the new 5.”
Bain’s report hammers home what higher interest rates have done to the industry: Annual EBITDA growth required to generate a 20% IRR and 2.5x MOIC over a 5-year holding period now means 12% EBITDA growth, not 5% EBITDA growth ten years ago.
Post-deal value creation is an area where scale can matter. Firms that invest in their post-deal value creation capabilities can have the right to win.
This feature is particularly true in investment strategies such as carve-outs, where a private equity firm takes a business out of a larger corporation. There must be a repeatable process in place to externalize that company, infuse a set of processes, technology, and people to enable the company to streamline operational efficiencies and give the business a foundation to grow. These skill sets are features that KKR, Brookfield, and Veritas all possess, given their focus and expertise in carve-outs.
Control buyout is a strategy that enables private equity firms to tilt the odds in favor of success, or, as KKR Partner, Head of Industrials on the Americas Private Equity team, and an Americas Private Equity Investment Committee member, Josh Weisenbeck, called “creat[ing] [their] own luck.”
Weisenbeck noted a few key features of what value creation actually means: “something that is within [their] control and repeatable.”
When a firm “creates [its] own luck” over multiple fund vintages, then they have very likely demonstrated repeatability in their value creation process.
It’s possible to underwrite a firm’s value creation process by dissecting its value creation process in prior deals, as Toomey noted:
“We've seen it in value creation plans. There are managers who you could go through two dozen of their underlying investments in their portfolio and they can articulate with specificity exactly what they did for each part of the business. And you can see the pattern there.”
Firms that have persistence in process very well might end up having persistence in performance.
Specialization edge
Focusing on the strong forehand rather than the weak backhand can also help to drive investment performance.
Investment firms that play to their strengths can build and maintain a sustainable competitive edge with their specialization, as the distinct scaled specialist firms that are part of Franklin Templeton’s family of alternatives managers, Lexington Partners in secondaries, Benefit Street in credit, and Clarion Partners in real estate, showed.
A 2007 research paper (though a bit outdated) by Robert Clive Cressy, Federico Munari, and Alessandro Malpieri examined whether investment specialization conferred a competitive advantage for a private equity firm relative to its peers. A sample of 122 UK buyouts from 1995-2000 found that industry specialization of PE firms added 8.5% to the profitability advantage of PE-backed buyouts, which had 4.5% higher operating profits than non-buyout companies in the first three years following a private equity-backed buyout.
Firms that lean into their specialization can drive outsized returns from better investment selection and value creation than generalist investors.
Again, Toomey highlighted that industry expertise and specialist managers can possess an edge, noting that there is an advantage for “industry-focused managers who've just kind of seen it, and done it, and done it over and over and over again.”
It’s also worth noting that sometimes the specialist story can resonate more with LPs. A specialist’s story can be memorable to LPs because it can be easier for an LP to make the connection between an investor’s thesis and the reason why they have a right to win in a specific industry or strategy.
Fund size edge
There’s a saying (largely applicable to venture, but true in virtually every category of private markets) that “your fund size is your strategy.”
Fund size can have a major impact on fund returns. Exit outcome math drives much of this.
Fund managers who have discipline with their fund size often have persistence in performance, according to a 2015 research paper by Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Ludovic Phalippou, and Oliver Gottschalg. They found that investment performance is often correlated with diseconomies of scale in private equity.
This feature is often the case in venture, on a MOIC basis. It can generally be harder (but not always) to generate a high multiple on invested capital with a fund that is twice the size of a prior fund.
One interesting and important caveat that has yet to be examined is whether or not this might change as scale matters more than ever in private equity and venture. Firms with scale will be able to access certain investments. If we end up in a world where scaled companies generate an outsized share of investment returns, then perhaps scaling fund sizes might run counter to the aforementioned assertion about fund-size discipline. It is worth noting that every new fund vintage must be evaluated in the context of the current opportunity set and market evolution. Some moments in time, particularly platform shifts with new technologies, might require a different fund size in order to win.
The question of scale also implies that there can be different ways for LPs to win in private markets. One could be to blend down fees through co-investments or strategic partnerships with GPs, as many large LPs have done over the years. Another could be to gain exposure to these firms and their scaling investment platforms and correlated fee-related earnings through GP stakes investments.
There’s another, and perhaps equally important, but difficult to measure element of edge: commitment and passion.
Alt Goes Mainstream’s RIA Advisory Board dinner served as a reminder that it can be hard to measure heart, but it might be the most important component of edge.
Do what you love and love what you do
On Wednesday night, I took the Advisory Board to Una Pizza Napoletana to experience an artist in action.
Una Pizza Napoletana is a story of persistence in process.
The Lower East Side restaurant is the “current and only expression of Anthony Mangieri’s decades-long pursuit of pizza.”
As Una Pizza’s website notes, “every ball of dough is made by Anthony. Every pizza served is shaped, topped, and baked by him.”
Anthony shared how, at age 15, he was obsessed with understanding dough. He would go to the library and pore over books about the process of making the perfect dough.
39 years later, it’s clear that he internalized every nuance of the art of making dough. He could share, in meticulous detail, exactly how he evaluates his dough every afternoon before making pizza each night.
He said that he leaves the restaurant every night knowing that he “gave every ounce of his being to making the perfect pizza.”
No wonder Una Pizza is one of the hardest reservations to snag in NYC, often booked out months in advance.
Anthony’s hard work, passion, and immaculate attention to detail have created the Ferrari of pizzamaking.
It’s one of one.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Una Pizza has been named the #1 pizzeria in the world by 50 Top Pizza in 2022, 2024, and 2025.
Anthony provided us with perhaps the best advice for fund managers. It’s true authenticity and passion that matter most. That’s what makes everyone unique. Everyone is different, so people should lean into what makes them special, he said.
The greatest edge of all?
No one will outwork someone who loves what they do.
AGM Index
AGM has created an Index to track the leading publicly traded alternative asset managers.
Some of the industry’s largest alternative asset managers are publicly traded — and their net inflows can serve as a window into how private markets are being perceived by investors and allocators who are allocating capital into alternative investments.
Note: AUM figures are based on fee-paying AUM where applicable.
🤝 Interested in learning more about AGM RIA Field Trips? 🤝
Read about the expansion of Alt Goes Mainstream, with the launch of the AGM Community and AGM Events.
We’ve also built out the AGM Community RIA Advisory Board, an experienced, thoughtful, and intellectually curious group of private wealth management and private markets executives and operators, to help shape the direction of AGM Community.
The inaugural RIA Field Trip took place on May 19–20 in New York City. We had an exceptional group of RIAs and GPs joining for a highly curated, uniquely structured, exciting 2-day program.
If you’re an RIA or a GP and you’re interested in joining the wait list for the next Field Trips on October 6-7 or November 17-18 in NYC, please reach out or click on the link above for more information.
Who is hiring?
In order for alts to continue to go mainstream, we need the best talent to go into the space. Here are some openings at private markets firms. If you’d like to connect with any of these teams, let me know, and I’m happy to facilitate an introduction if appropriate. If you’re a company or fund in private markets, feel free to reach out to share a job description you’d like to be listed here to highlight for the Alt Goes Mainstream community.
🔍 Blackstone (Alternative asset manager) - Blackstone Private Wealth - Product Specialist, Vice President (Real Assets). Click here to learn more.
🔍 KKR (Alternative asset manager) - VP - Social Media Strategist. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Apollo Global Management (Alternative asset manager) - Director, Transformation Management - Private Credit & Private Markets. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Blue Owl (Alternative asset manager) - Private Wealth, Portfolio Strategist Real Assets, Vice President. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Franklin Templeton (Asset manager) - Portfolio Manager, Private Markets. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Goldman Sachs Alternatives (Alternative asset manager) - Asset & Wealth Management, Client Solutions Group, Wealth Alternatives Specialist, New York - Vice President. Click here to learn more.
🔍 HarbourVest (Alternative asset manager) - Senior Associate, Business Intelligence - Global Private Wealth. Click here to learn more.
🔍 iCapital (Private markets infrastructure investment platform) - Chief Risk Officer, Managing Director. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Ultimus Fund Solutions (Fund administrator) - Managing Director, Fund Accounting. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Krilogy (Wealth manager) - Senior Wealth Advisor. Click here to learn more.
🔍 MSCI (Data services) - Sales Executive, VP - Private Capital Solutions. Click here to learn more.
The latest on Alt Goes Mainstream
Recent podcast or video episodes and blog posts on Alt Goes Mainstream:
🎥 Watch 73 Strings’ CEO and Co-Founder Yann Magnan discuss how technology innovation is unlocking valuation intelligence in private markets. Watch here.
📝 Read “Alternative Thinking: Connecting the dots with the data with RIA CIOs and KKR’s 2025 RIA Private Markets Survey,” a recap of a conversation with Beacon Pointe CIO Michael Dow, Cary Street Partners CIO Matt Rubin, and KKR MD Matt Magill about how RIA CIOs are allocating to private markets and tying two live examples to data gleaned from KKR’s 2025 RIA Private Markets Survey. Read here.
🎥 Watch Hamilton Lane’s Executive Co-Chairman Hartley Rogers share perspectives from 40+ years of pioneering in private markets in a podcast recorded live at the iCapital Connect conference. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Lincoln International’s Managing Director and Global Head of the Portfolio Valuations practice Brian Garfield share perspectives on how AI is impacting private markets valuations. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Q&A with Davidson Kempner Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer Tony Yoseloff and Partner and Head of Research Suzanne Gibbons for opportunities in credit amidst a capital structure reset. Read here.
🎥 Watch Bridgepoint’s Partner and Chief Investment Officer Xavier Robert provide a masterclass on the European middle market investing landscape. Watch here.
🎥 Watch AlphaCore’s CEO & Founder Dick Pfister share his perspective on building a wealth management firm with “alpha at its core” in a podcast recorded live at the iCapital Connect conference. Watch here.
🎥 Watch HarbourVest’s CEO John Toomey discuss how private markets have changed and how HarbourVest has been “earning investors’ trust” for over 40 years. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Stonepeak’s Partner and Senior Managing Director, Stonepeak Credit Ryan Roberge on the evolution of infrastructure credit. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Bloomberg’s Head of Fixed Income & Private Markets Brad Foster on the convergence between public and private markets and how the market structure evolution in private markets might unfold. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Q&A with MSCI Head of Private Assets Luke Flemmer for perspectives on how market structure is evolving to build increased transparency in private markets. Read here.
🎥 Watch Brookfield Asset Management’s President, Private Equity Group David Nowak discuss what “earn your seat” private equity means and how Brookfield’s owner-operator and industrial heritage have shaped the firm’s private equity investment business. Watch here.
🎥 Listen and watch EQT’s Deputy Managing Partner and Chairperson of EQT Real Assets Lennart Blecher share the history, background, and evolution of the firm’s infrastructure investment business and how EQT takes an active ownership approach to real assets. Listen here and Watch here.
🎥 Watch Stable Asset Management’s Founder & CEO Erik Serrano Berntsen discuss the evolution of the GP seeding market and what it takes to build a great alternative asset management firm. Watch here.
🎥 Watch MSCI’s Head of Private Assets Luke Flemmer discuss the evolution in private markets market structure and how standardization, normalization, and transparency of data will transform private markets. Watch here.
🎥 Watch AGM Unscripted at the Goldman Sachs Alternatives Summit with Partners Matt Gibson (here), James Reynolds (here), Kristin Olson (here), Harold Hope (here), Michael Bruun (here), and Jeff Fine (here).
🎥 Watch Lexington Partners’ Partner Taylor Robinson share details about the evolution of the secondaries market and why secondaries are in the spotlight. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Q&A with Blue Owl Senior MD and CEO of Global Private Wealth Sean Connor on how they are serving the wealth channel in 2026 and beyond. Read here.
🎥 Watch Ultimus Fund Solutions’ CEO Gary Tenkman discuss how Ultimus is helping to build core fund administration infrastructure that powering the evergreen evolution and is helping to make private markets go mainstream. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Goldman Sachs’ Partner and Global Head of Private Wealth Management Capital Markets and Global Head of Goldman Sachs Apex Family Office Coverage Sara Naison-Tarajano discuss how Goldman Sachs has built its Apex Family Office Coverage group to serve UHNW families and family offices. Watch here.
📝 Read about the expansion of Alt Goes Mainstream, with the announcement of AGM Community, the creation of the AGM Community RIA Advisory Board, and why we believe that the industry should have small, curated events and community-building efforts. Read here.
🎥 Watch Stonepeak’s MD and CEO of SP+ INFRA Cyrus Gentry discuss the why and the how of bringing infrastructure investing to the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Blue Owl’s Senior MD and President & CEO of Global Private Wealth Sean Connor discuss the firm’s focus on the wealth channel and how the firm is a growth company in a growth industry that is investing in megatrends. Watch here.
🎥 Watch the latest Alts Pulse with iCapital Chairman & CEO Lawrence Calcano where we go global and discuss Lawrence’s recent trip to Asia to peer into the nuances of the different wealth management markets around the globe. Watch here.
🎥 Listen and watch EQT’s Chairperson EQT Asia and Head of Private Capital Asia Jean Eric Salata share reflections on leadership, culture, and values from one of the world’s largest investment firms. Listen here and Watch here.
🎥 Listen and watch EQT’s Founder and Chairperson Conni Jonsson discuss how EQT has built a global private equity firm the Nordic way. Listen here and Watch here.
🎥 Watch Vista Equity Partners’ President and COO David Breach discuss how Vista has built a software investing powerhouse in the age of AI. Watch here.
🎥 Watch ING’s Anneka Treon, Global Head of Private Banking, Wealth Management & Investments, and Johan Kloeze, Head of Private Banking & Wealth Management NL, ING, share lessons learned from building a private markets platform for private wealth clients. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Oaktree Capital Management’s Co-CEO and Head of Performing Credit Armen Panossian share why investors shouldn’t “have to reach for risk to generate the right return.” Watch here.
🎥 Watch Franklin Templeton’s COO - Global Wealth Management Alternatives George Stephan discuss the evolution of Franklin Templeton’s Alternatives business and how the firm has brought public and private together. Watch here.
🎥 Watch iAlta Holdings’ Founding Partner Bill Crager discuss the evolution of wealthtech from building Envestnet as Co-Founder and CEO to why today is a “transformational moment” in wealth management. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Vista Equity Partners’ Founder, Chairman, and CEO Robert F. Smith discuss who will benefit from AI and how he built a $100B enterprise software scaled specialist firm. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Nomura Capital Management’s CEO Robert Stark discuss how they have built a private credit firm within a global bank. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Op-Ed with Blue Owl Senior MD and Head of Digital Infrastructure Matt A’Hearn on building the backbone of the digital economy. Read here.
🎥 Watch PGIM’s Global Head of Alternative Investments Dominick Carlino discuss the evolution of distributing alternative investments to the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Blue Owl’s Senior MD and Head of Digital Infrastructure Matt A’Hearn share why he believes there’s a generational opportunity in financing digital infrastructure. Watch here.
🎬 Watch AGM Originals The DNA - Season 1 with conversations with EQT’s Conni Jonsson, Jean Salata, Lennart Blecher, Geraldine O’Keeffe, Peter Beske Nielsen, Peter Aliprantis, Hari Gopalakrishnan, William Vettorato, and Ken Wong about the firm’s DNA and its different investing capabilities. Watch here.
🎥 Watch PGIM’s Head of Multi-Asset and Quantitative Solutions Phil Waldeck discuss the intersection of insurance and asset management. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Stonepeak Chairman, Co-Founder, CEO Mike Dorrell share his story as a pioneer in infrastructure investing. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Hg Partner and Head of Value Creation Chris Kindt discuss AI’s transformative role in value creation for private equity. Watch here.
🎥 In Permira Part 2, watch Permira Co-Chairmen & Co-CEOs Brian Ruder and Dipan Patel discuss how the collaborative leadership model in action has helped the firm scale to an €80B alternative asset manager. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Permira Co-Chairman & Co-CEO Dipan Patel discuss how to scale an €80B alternative asset manager. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor cover the most pressing topics in private markets today, including the convergence of public and private, liquidity vs illiquidity, investor education, the importance of transparency, and the why, what, and how behind evergreen funds. Watch here.
🎥 Watch The Compound and Friends (TCAF) Co-Hosts and Ritholtz Wealth Management Partners Downtown Josh Brown and Michael Batnick and I go back and forth about private markets on TCAF Episode 207. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Stonepeak Co-President Luke Taylor discuss what it takes to be a great infrastructure investor. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Arcesium MD and Head of Client and Partner Development David Nable discuss how to architect private markets technology infrastructure for the future. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Hg Senior Partner and Executive Chairman Nic Humphries discuss how Hg has grown into a $100B scaled specialist and how one of the industry’s leading private equity technology and services investors is “navigating investing at an inflection point in history.” Watch here.
🎥 Watch EQT Partner, Head of Private Wealth Americas Peter Aliprantis live from Miami on how EQT is bringing global local. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Op-Ed with Arcesium SVP, Business Development - Private Markets Jean Robert on why asset managers need to rethink reporting as a strategic advantage. Read here.
🎥 Watch Blue Owl Co-President and Global Head of Real Assets Marc Zahr share the story of how he built Oak Street from $17M in AUM in 2009 to what is now Blue Owl’s $67.1B AUM Real Assets business in a live Alt Goes Mainstream podcast at Future Proof Citywide. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Hg’s Partner and Head of Hg Wealth Martina Sanow discuss how Hg has unlocked opportunities for the wealth channel to invest in Europe’s largest portfolio of software and services businesses. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Goldman Sachs’ Partner and Global Co-Head of the Petershill Group at Goldman Sachs Robert Hamilton Kelly discuss the evolution of the GP stakes industry and how Goldman has become a market leading GP stakes investor. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Blue Owl’s MD, Head of Alternative Credit Ivan Zinn unpack private credit and why ABF has become a prominent part of the private credit ecosystem. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Op-Ed with Blue Owl Head of Alternative Credit Ivan Zinn on why “asset-based finance today mirrors the evolution of corporate direct lending from over a decade ago.” Read here.
🎥 Watch Krilogy’s Partner and CIO John McArthur discuss how an RIA can chart a growth path by building out its private markets capabilities. Watch here.
🎥 Watch New Mountain Capital’s Founder & Chief Executive Officer Steve Klinsky discuss how $55B AUM New Mountain has built a business that builds businesses. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Arcesium’s Private Markets Head Cesar Estrada discuss data silos and technology integrations in private markets. Watch here.
🎥 Watch GeoWealth President & COO Jack Hannah and iCapital SVP, Partnerships Michael Doniger discuss the ground-breaking BlackRock, iCapital, and GeoWealth unified managed account partnership live from iCapital Connect. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Goldman Sachs’ Managing Director, Global Head of Alternatives, Third Party Wealth Kyle Kniffen discuss how they are “standing on the shoulders of Goldman Sachs to be a complete partner” for the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Fortress Investment Group Managing Director & Co-Head of Private Wealth Solutions Adam Bobker discuss how Fortress has built a wealth solutions business from a whiteboard, leaning on the firm’s pioneering history of innovation. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Constellation Wealth Capital President & Managing Partner Karl Heckenberg on why there will be a $1T independent wealth management firm. Watch here.
🎥 Watch BlackRock Managing Director, Co-Head of US Wealth Business, Senior Sponsor for Retirement Business Jaime Magyera and iCapital Chairman & CEO Lawrence Calcano discuss the ground-breaking BlackRock, iCapital, and GeoWealth unified managed account partnership live from iCapital Connect. Watch here.
🎥 Watch KKR Partner & Co-CEO of KKR Private Equity Conglomerate LLC (K-PEC) Alisa Wood discuss how the firm has innovated in private markets, why KKR came up with the Conglomerate structure, and how evergreens can play a role in investors’ portfolios. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Cantilever Group’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner Todd Owens in a live podcast from BTG Pactual’s NYC office share why GP stakes can be the best of all worlds. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Op-Ed with Arcesium Private Markets Head Cesar Estrada on the rise of asset-based finance and why it’s the next growth engine for private credit. Read here.
🎥 Watch BlackRock’s Head of the Americas Client Business Joe DeVico, Head of Product for US Wealth & Head of Alts to Wealth Jon Diorio, and Partners Group's Co-Head of Private Wealth Rob Collins discuss their landmark private markets model portfolio partnership that could be the industry’s “iPhone Moment.” Watch here.
🎥 Watch Brookfield Oaktree Wealth Solutions CEO John Sweeney discuss how to build a high-performing wealth solutions team and why the word “solutions” matters when working with the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Cerity Partners’ Partner & Chief Client Officer Tom Cohn and Partner Amita Schultes talk about how and why they have combined a leading OCIO with a $100B AUM wealth management practice. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Marc Lipschultz, Co-CEO of Blue Owl, talk about how they have aimed to skate where the puck is going as Blue Owl has grown its AUM to $265B in nine years. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Q&A with Blue Owl Co-CEO Marc Lipschultz, where he highlights some of the trends that have propelled alternative asset management into the mainstream: scale, a focus on private credit, and a focus on private wealth. Read here.
🎙 Listen to Stephanie Drescher, Partner & Chief Client & Product Development Officer of Apollo, discuss what is safe and what is risky as she dives into both the convergence between public and private and the nuances of asset allocation. Listen here.
🎥 Watch Joan Solotar, Global Head of Private Wealth Solutions at Blackstone share why it’s not even early innings, but that it’s “spring training” for private markets adoption by the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Venkat Subramaniam, Co-Founder of DealsPlus on building a single source of truth for private markets. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Hamilton Lane Managing Director, Co-Head US Private Wealth Solutions Stephanie Davis and iCapital Co-Founder & Managing Partner Nick Veronis discuss the evolution of evergreen funds on the third episode of the Investing with an Evergreen Lens Series. Watch here.
🎥 Watch KKR Managing Director, Head of Americas, Global Wealth Solutions (GWS) Doug Krupa and iCapital Co-Founder & Managing Partner Nick Veronis discuss the evolution of evergreen funds on the second episode of the Investing with an Evergreen Lens Series. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Vista Equity Partners Managing Director, Global Head of Private Wealth Solutions Dan Parant and iCapital Co-Founder & Managing Partner Nick Veronis discuss the evolution of evergreen funds on the first episode of the Investing with an Evergreen Lens Series. Watch here.
📝 Read about a year in the book of alts — a compilation of the 1,000+ pages written in weekly newsletters on Alt Goes Mainstream in 2024. Read here.
📝 Read about the launch of the AGM Studio, a collaboration between Alt Goes Mainstream and Broadhaven Ventures to incubate, invest in, and help scale companies and funds in private markets. Read here.
🎥 Watch Stepstone Private Wealth CEO Bob Long discuss StepStone Private Wealth’s edge and nuances with their evergreen structures in the first episode of “What’s Your Edge.” Watch here.
🎥 Watch Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Cantilever Group and former Goldman Sachs and Broadhaven Capital Partners Partner Todd Owens discuss the middle market opportunity in GP stakes investing. Watch here.
🎙 Hear me discuss why and how alts are going mainstream on The Compound’s Animal Spirits podcast with Ritholtz Wealth’s Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson. Listen here.
📝 Read about the evolution of GP stakes, why alternative asset management business models are better than SaaS, and our partnership with Todd Owens and David Ballard at Cantilever, a mid-market GP stakes firm anchored by BTG Pactual. Read here.
🎙 Hear how Chris Long, Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Palmer Square Capital Management has built a $29B credit investment firm and a winning NWSL soccer franchise, the KC Current. Listen here.
🎙 Hear stories from building market-defining companies Blackstone, Airbnb, and private markets from Laurence Tosi, former CFO of Blackstone and Airbnb and Managing Partner & Founder of $7.6B investment firm WestCap. Listen here.
🎙 Hear Chris Ailman, the CIO of $307B CalSTRS, discuss how he manages a portfolio with ~40% exposure to private markets. Listen here.
🎙 Hear Blackstone CTO John Stecher discuss how technology is transforming private markets. Listen here.
🎙 Hear investing legends John Burbank and Ken Wallace of Nimble Partners provide a masterclass on investing with both a macro and VC lens. Listen here.
Thank you for reading. If you like the Alts Weekly, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone interested in private markets.
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Special thanks to Cameron Molnar, Ryan McCormack, Nick Owens, Michael Rutter for their contributions to the AGM Index section of the newsletter.
Disclaimer: Alt Goes Mainstream is an independent newsletter focused on the private markets industry. It is published for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, legal advice, or any other form of professional advice. Nothing contained herein should be construed as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or investment product. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of any affiliated organization, employer, or third party. Some companies, individuals, or organizations featured or mentioned in this newsletter may be current or past sponsors of Alt Goes Mainstream. Sponsorship does not influence editorial coverage, but readers should be aware that a relationship might exist. The author may hold direct or indirect investments in companies, funds, or other entities mentioned in this newsletter.