Podcasts about lps

In this episode, Axel sits down with Zach Hoereth — real estate investor, operator of Midwest Storage, and one of the more entertaining (and polarizing) voices on real estate Instagram — for a genuinely unfiltered conversation about what actually works in this business.He brings a uniquely blunt, been-there perspective on direct-to-seller acquisitions, the limits of AI and technology in a relationship-driven business, and why chasing unit count and AUM is one of the most overrated status games in real estate investing.This episode is essential listening for any investor who wants a no-BS look at what it actually takes to source deals, build a lean operation, and avoid the traps that sideline so many people who get into this business.Join us as we dive into:Zach's path from a college leasing hustle to buying his first $20–30K house in Indianapolis in 2018, and how that snowballed into today's business.How Zach's operation is structured: direct-to-seller mail feeding wholesaling and flipping, which funds acquisitions of small multifamily, single-family rentals, and self-storage — all without outside equity to date.Why "just buying rentals" isn't a wealth strategy — cash flow keeps you in the game, but equity and capital events are what actually move the needle.Why AI and chatbots can't fix a bad reputation or replace the human-to-human trust that wins deals, retains tenants, and keeps LPs engaged.The "70 dudes who partnered on a fourplex" problem — why unit count and AUM get wildly overrated as status symbols, and why doing a few deals solo teaches more than riding shotgun on a syndication.The three things you actually need to start doing direct-to-seller deals: a CRM, a targeted list (tools like PropStream and Reonomy), and a mail houseHow to make aggressive offers respectfully, and why "running toward the confrontation" beats avoiding it.The three Ds of distress — death, divorce, and drama — and how to quickly identify which sellers are actually motivated versus wasting your time.Why a seller's real pain point is often bigger (and weirder) than investors assume, and why being present when they decide to sell matters more than trying to convince them.Connect with Zach Hoereth:Follow him on InstagramAre you looking to invest in real estate, but don't want to deal with the hassle of finding great deals, signing on debt, and managing tenants? Aligned Real Estate Partners provides investment opportunities to passive investors looking for the returns, stability, and tax benefits multifamily real estate offers, but without the work - join our investor club to be notified of future investment opportunities.Connect with Axel:Follow him on InstagramConnect with him on LinkedinSubscribe to our YouTube channelLearn more about Aligned Real Estate Partners

Richard McGirr is the co-founder and CEO of Property Llama and Property Llama Capital, an income focused fund sponsor that helps accredited investors move underperforming real estate equity into passively managed, cash flowing investments. He also hosts Unlimited Capital on the Best Ever CRE network, where he covers capital raising, fund operations, and the business of building an investment platform. Richard and his partner Chris Lopez launched their own firm roughly two years ago, after raising about $55 million in 18 months at a previous shop. The first twelve months were a grind. Today the firm runs about $42 million in its own debt fund, raised $24 million last year, and treats capital raising as a measurable sales and marketing operation rather than a relationship exercise. Richard McGirr returns for part two to open the books on capital raising. He starts with why debt funds reshaped his business. Carried interest is collected every month rather than at a sale, which turns a raise into recurring revenue instead of a run of acquisition fees. With rates elevated, investors have pulled in their time horizons, and a fund that distributes within 60 days is a far easier sell than an equity deal that pays on exit in year five. From there Richard walks through the machinery. He explains why launching his own firm nearly failed once the low hanging fruit ran out, why weekly dials are the leading indicator he manages against, and why he pays for access to trusted distribution instead of building an audience from scratch. He also lays out his full funnel, from a single webinar to a 50 email drip to a same day phone call triggered by a link click.       Make sure to download our free guide, 7 Questions Every Passive Investor Should Ask, here.     Key Takeaways Debt fund carry is collected monthly, which turns a raise into recurring revenue Higher rates shorten investor time horizons and favor shorter lockups Manage weekly dials and new qualified leads, because both sit inside your control Buy access to trusted distribution rather than building an audience from scratch One webinar delivered repeatedly outperforms ten new ones Call every investor who clicks a link, the same day     Topics Why Debt Funds Became the Engine of the Business Carried interest is collected monthly, not at a sale About $42 million in the fund throws off just under $2 million a year in carry At their previous firm, the debt fund quietly covered company payroll Why Debt Funds Sell Faster Right Now Higher rates pull investor time preference in LPs receive a first distribution within 60 days Lockups run 18 to 24 months, with monthly loan payoffs providing liquidity Why the Launch Nearly Failed The easy network at the previous firm was already tapped Every personal network runs out eventually Messaging, product selection, sales management, and email drips all had to be rebuilt Dials Are the Metric You Control Sales results are input driven, and inputs are the only controllable variable Richard's team makes 200 calls a week Moving from 25 to 100 dials a week tripled soft commits within two weeks Lead Quality Over Lead Volume Minimums are $100,000, with no exceptions Two paid Best Ever webinars raised $1 million each, at roughly half a percent media cost of capital A webinar swap with an estate planner produced 600 registrants and zero closes Large audiences skew toward broad content and non-accredited viewers Brand Transfer From Paid Webinars Presenting on a trusted platform borrows that platform's credibility Investors arrive already willing to listen, so there is less convincing to do The result is a higher conversion rate in less time Earned Media vs. Paid Media Earned media costs nothing and converts well, but the ceiling is low Richard hosts on Best Ever CRE and Chris Lopez hosts on PassivePockets Paid webinars buy speed, volume, and control over timing One Webinar, Delivered Repeatedly The Intro to Private Lending webinar is the only one they run Staff are tasked with sourcing groups and pricing webinar slots Fear the operator who has delivered one webinar 10,000 times Go Where Buyers Already Gather Publishing content and waiting to be found rarely reaches your ideal investor Target communities built around passive income and financial independence Capital raising is a two sided market, and plenty of people are already looking to deploy Richard's Funnel, Start to Finish A webinar form on the site leads to the replay and a 50 email drip Any link click notifies the sales team on Slack and triggers a same day call Of 25,000 contacts, roughly 100 are actively in market at any given time Winning the Attention Battle Investors triage hundreds of emails a day, and your offering sits at the bottom Rank your list by opens and clicks before you start dialing Ask for a specific commitment, such as watching the webinar within three days Interested investors rarely call to say they are on the fence, they simply go quiet    

Venice founder Erik Voorhees says crypto's real job was never speculation. It's becoming the rails AI agents actually need. Plus, why he sold equity, not tokens. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn ======================================================== Stripe bought OpenRouter this month in one of the cleanest crypto-to-AI pivots yet, and Erik Voorhees says most of the industry drew the wrong lesson from it. Voorhees, founder and CEO of Venice AI, joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to argue that crypto's job was never to serve crypto people, it was to become the financial rails a decentralized AI future actually needs. He pushes back on the instinct to abandon tokens for pure AI plays, and on the assumption that America deserves to win the AI race just because it is America. They get into why Voorhees sold Venice's equity but refused to sell its VVV tokens, why he says the big labs are losing money "hand over fist" subsidizing $200-a-month plans, how DeepSeek reset the cost curve for inference, and why he calls the moderation layer sitting inside today's AI models "deceptive." His answer for who should actually win the AI race has nothing to do with flags. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Erik Voorhees - Founder and CEO of Venice AI Timestamps

Note: As a reminder, Rumcast Reserve bottles are officially available in stores and shipping from our online retailer! You can grab your bottles here.You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.This is an episode that's been months in the making. After our Rumcast Reserve project, Main Rum Company put together a mystery box of old and rare cask samples that they promised would wow us. Thanks to U.S. customs, it took nearly a year for us to actually get our hands on the samples, but once we finally did we can definitively say they did not disappoint. They were some of the finest rums we've ever tasted.For an extra bit of fun, we decided to try our luck at guessing their origins. This episode shows you how we did, all in real time, followed by a ranking of our personal favorites at the end. Here's a look ahead at what we tasted:1992 Pampero aged for 34 years in ex-bourbon and ex-Scotch malt whisky casks, 42.3% ABV1989 (or 1991?) Caroni aged 34-37 years in an ex-rum cask, 45.4% ABV, TMC8 mark1983 blend of various Hampden and Long Pond marks (including DOK, HGML, CH, H, HLCF, LPS, and STC♥E), full aging details not revealed, 48.6% ABV, listen for more detailsBlend of Barbados, Jamaica, and Guyana rums with an average vintage of 1990, though rums from '82, '83, '86, and '89 are also in the blend, 48.9% ABV1989 Guyana (Uitvlugt Port Mourant) aged for 37 years in ex-bourbon and ex-Scotch malt whisky casks, 56.7% ABV1984 Clarendon (MMW mark) aged for 42 years (including 34 at origin) in an ex-rum cask, 59.7% ABVThese were all cask samples from Main Rum Company, so everything is cask strength and single cask. Have a listen, and see how wrong we were!

In this episode of the Health Optimization Medicine Podcast, Boomer Anderson, Dr. Allen Bookatz, Dr. Ted Achacoso, and Dr. Jup Kuipers explore a misunderstood cause of chronic fatigue and leaky gut: the bioenergetic failure of your colonocytes. While many practitioners throw random probiotic strains and anti-inflammatory herbs at gut issues, metabolomic research shows this approach fails to address the root problem. The team explains how a starved microbiome forces gut cells to switch energy systems, leaking oxygen into the colon, destroying strict anaerobes, and allowing endotoxins to flood the bloodstream and drain your cellular vitality. From holobiont metabolomics to targeted mucosal protocols, this discussion reframes gut health through the lens of mitochondrial beta oxidation rather than simply managing inflammation.  Join us as we delve into: The Gut Hypoxia Trap: How starved colonocytes switch to anaerobic glycolysis and leak oxygen into the gut, killing off the strict anaerobes that make butyrate. The Endotoxemia Dilemma: How opportunistic bacteria pry apart tight junctions, allowing lipopolysaccharides (LPS) into the bloodstream and locking your cells into a permanent Cell Danger Response. Why Probiotics Fall Short: Why conventional protocols fail to repair the mucosal shield and how to properly signal Akkermansia muciniphila with complex polyphenols. The 4-Step Clinical Protocol: How to use stool metabolomics, pomegranate ellagitannins, oral tributyrin, and L-glutamine to rebuild the gut barrier from the ground up. Pathogenesis vs Salutogenesis: Why Health Optimization Medicine focuses on restoring root cause physiological health rather than perpetually suppressing symptoms. This episode is for you if: You are dealing with chronic fatigue, brain fog, and unyielding food intolerances despite taking probiotics. You want to understand the true biochemical mechanism behind leaky gut and systemic endotoxemia. You are a practitioner looking to replace guesswork with objective metabolomic testing and precision mucosal protocols. You can also find this episode on… YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wZH8tJTFWw&feature=youtu.be Find more from Health Optimization Medicine and Practice (HOMeHOPe): Website: https://homehope.org/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homehopeorg/ HOMeHOPe Conference 2026: https://homehope.org/homehope-conference-2026 Use PODCAST10 to get 10% OFF your purchase of the Clinical Metabolomics Module at https://homehope.org/products/clinical-metabolomics Find more from Troscriptions: Website: https://troscriptions.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/troscriptions/ Use POD10 to get 10% OFF your Troscriptions purchase at https://troscriptions.com/collections/our-products

In this PassivePockets community roundtable, Chris Lopez sits down with Adam Cranmer, Pascal Wagner, and Christy Burakovsky to talk through real portfolio moves, new investments, and the questions LPs should be asking before and after they write a check. The conversation starts with portfolio updates: Adam shares why he invested in Alturas' retail-focused fund through an SPV, passed on a strong sponsor because the deal was outside their core market, and received capital back from a debt fund that no longer fit the team's risk/reward standards. Pascal walks through how he's helping manage his mom's portfolio by diversifying across multiple credit and lending funds, while also keeping dry powder available for single-family foreclosure opportunities. Christy shares why she's still looking at single-family for tax planning purposes and why she recently invested in a non-performing loan fund after getting comfortable with the math, risk profile, and strategy. Then the group digs into a nuanced but important LP topic: return of capital vs. return on capital. Christy breaks down how distributions can either reduce your invested basis or represent earnings on top of your original investment, and why that difference can impact taxes, pref calculations, redemption mechanics, and long-term portfolio tracking. The panel debates whether return of capital truly de-risks an investment, how compounding can quietly increase exposure to a single deal or operator, and why LPs need to understand how these mechanics are written into the legal documents. Finally, the roundtable turns to sponsor questions and due diligence etiquette. Adam shares a recent example of an operator who stopped accepting capital from PassivePockets members because the volume of questions became too time-consuming. The group debates where the line is between reasonable diligence and overwhelming a sponsor, why LPs should not be afraid to ask thoughtful questions, and how operators can reduce friction with better data rooms, clear reporting, and transparent communication. The takeaway: ask the questions, understand what you're asking, and remember that good diligence continues after the wire is sent. Key takeaways: How experienced LPs are repositioning portfolios across retail, debt funds, NPLs, and single-family rentals Why Adam passed on a strong sponsor when the deal fell outside their proven market expertise How Pascal thinks about diversification, cash flow, and protecting family capital Why Christy is focused on tax planning, single-family exposure, and non-performing loans The difference between return of capital and return on capital, and why it matters How compounding can unintentionally increase concentration risk Why LPs should ask better questions, not just more questions How data rooms, reporting, and sponsor communication can make diligence more efficient Why post-investment follow-up is just as important as upfront diligence Join a community of passive investors. Start your FREE 7-day trial: https://passivepockets.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=none Listen to the PassivePockets Podcast Anywhere: https://lnk.to/passivepockets Subscribe to the Passive Investing Newsletter: https://www.biggerpockets.com/email-subscribe?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=none Join BiggerPockets for free: https://www.biggerpockets.com/signup?utm_source=owned_media Disclaimer The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk, so use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This podcast may contain paid advertisements or other promotional materials for real estate investment advisers, investment funds, and investment opportunities, which should not be interpreted as a recommendation, endorsement, or testimonial by PassivePockets, LLC or any of its affiliates. Viewers must conduct their own due diligence and consider their own financial situations before engaging with any advertised offerings, products, or services. PassivePockets, LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising out of reliance on information and advertisements presented in this podcast.

In this episode of the Major League Real Estate Podcast, Nate Sosa and Thomas Castelli break down some of the most common tax questions real estate sponsors hear from limited partners. When should LPs expect their K-1s? Can passive real estate losses offset W-2 income? Do you need an LLC to invest in a syndication? What happens when you invest through a retirement account? And what happens from a tax perspective when the property finally sells? Nate and Tom also unpack depreciation recapture, UBIT and UDFI, passive loss carryforwards, and why an individual LP generally can't simply initiate a 1031 exchange when a syndication sells. Request a free discovery meeting: go.therealestatecpa.com/mlre Register for FREE access to the 2026 Hall CPA Tax Strategy Summit: www.taxandlegalsummit.com/2026signup Join the Hall CPA Team: www.therealestatecpa.com/careers/ Get the Ultimate Guide for Real Estate Syndications: go.therealestatecpa.com/mlreultimateguide Submit your questions to: go.therealestatecpa.com/question The Major League Real Estate podcast is for general information purposes only and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal, investing, financial, or accounting advice. Information on the podcast may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. No reader, user, or listener of this podcast should act or refrain from acting on the basis of information on this podcast without first seeking legal and tax advice from counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. Only your individual attorney and tax advisor can provide assurances that the information contained herein – and your interpretation of it – is applicable or appropriate to your particular situation. Use of, and access to, this podcast or any of the links or resources contained or mentioned within the podcast show and show notes do not create a relationship between the reader, user, or listener and podcast hosts, contributors, or guests. Any mention of third-party vendors, products, or services does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation. You should conduct your own due diligence before engaging with any vendor.

It took me a while to find the right story for Lewistown Usually these town profiles center on a brewery, or a distillery, a chef, a candymaker. But this time, it's about a bookstore.  I talked to Sarajane Snyder, the owner and inspiration at Mondragón Books, Lewisburg's community-supported bookstore. It's cozy, it's inspirational, it's necessary, it's...it has a tree in it. It has a cat. It has a fascinating selection of used books, LPs, zines, incense, and maps, and the reason it's there, in Lewisburg, opens up a whole discussion of why we have independent bookstores, and used bookstores, and community spaces that aren't the traditional ones.  This is, I think, one of the most important interviews we've done on the show, up there with Lindsay Hutchinson of People's Provisions, and Tom Doman, the trout guide.  There's all the usual town profile stuff, of course! I visited Paris Bakery & Cafe, Hungry Run Distilling's tasting room, The Fence drive-in, Susquehanna Smokehouse, May's Drive-in and May's Freez, the Roller Mills and The Street Of Shops, Fero Vineyards, Davy's Fresh Market, and Jackass Brewing.  There's a bonus interview with Eric Dash, the founder of the upcoming Another World Music Festival, coming to Coburn in Penns Valley on September 10-13. I was going to have this as part of a wider episode, but that's running late, and I wanted to bring the fest to your attention so you can plan to come join us. It's a GREAT way to experience Penns Valley! What I'm Drinking Today is the 2025 edition of Parker's Heritage Collection, an 11 year old American Straight Whiskey, in anticipation of the 20th anniversary edition that should be coming along any day now. But this one -- which got stuffed in a box while I went out flogging the new book last fall and I just rediscovered -- is pretty damned good till that comes along.   Next episode will be see the return of our most popular interview subject ever, to talk about a very seasonal delight. See if you can figure out what that means! See you in two weeks! Until then? TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THE PODCAST! This episode uses these sounds under the following license: Creative Commons CC BY 4.0   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Champ de tournesol" by Komiku at https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ "Glow" by Scott Buckley | www.scottbuckley.com.au  Music promoted by https: //www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ All sounds sourced by STAG Music Librarian Nora Bryson, with our thanks.

KATA PEMRED #65PinterPolitik.comRepublik baru saja memilih pemegang uangnya. Presiden Prabowo Subianto mengirim Surat Presiden ke DPR pada 10 Agustus 2026. Di dalam surat itu tertulis 1 nama untuk kursi Gubernur Bank Indonesia: Destry Damayanti. Surat yang sama membawa calon Deputi Gubernur Senior dan calon Deputi Gubernur. Surpres terpisah berisi calon Komisioner OJK. Semua nama datang sendirian. Pasar menyambut ramah. Rupiah menguat ke 17.755 per dolar AS pada hari pengumuman.Persoalannya bukan Destry. Rekam jejaknya membentang dari pasar modal, perbankan, LPS, sampai kursi Deputi Gubernur Senior. Destry akan memimpin Bank Indonesia. DPR akan mengujinya dalam pekan-pekan ini. Kedua lembaga itu bekerja tanpa pertanyaan yang menguji mutu keputusan mereka sendiri.

This week on Swimming with Allocators, Earnest and Alexa welcome Kelli Fontaine of Cendana Capital, as she traces her path from journalism to data-driven venture investing and explains how her obsession with finding the truth shapes her work as an LP. She breaks down how Cendana builds and uses its data systems, why early-stage power laws and portfolio construction matter more than headline TVPIs, and how she balances hard data with judgment about GPs. Kelli challenges the idea that pre-seed always outperforms seed, shares why fund I and II managers are uniquely compelling, and explores trends like concentrated portfolios, deep tech, defense tech, AI-native founders, and secondaries. Also, Sidley emerging companies lawyer Michael Podolny explains that rapid growth and complexity in AI-driven startups are driving demand for globally sophisticated legal advice from day one, with a particular focus on repeat founders, control, and tax optimization through QSBS planning. Highlights from this week's conversation include: Kelli's Journalism Roots and Early Fascination with Data (0:29) Moving from Finance to Tech and Startups at RPX (2:42) Building Data Infrastructure and Dashboards at Sandana (7:07) What People Mean by the “Sandana Model” and Relationship Focus (10:31) Why Funds Ones and Twos Are Special and How GPs Evolve Over Time (15:09) Why Late-Stage AI and Mega Rounds Don't Replace Early Stage Alpha (19:30) Sponsor Segment: Sidley's Work With AI and Sophisticated Startups (21:16) Tax Optimization and QSBS Considerations for Founders and Investors (24:49) KPIs That Matter: Revenue, Customer Quality, and Go-To-Market (28:40) How Changing Graduation Rates Affect Fund One and Fund Two Diligence (30:24) How to Think About Founder Secondaries vs GP Secondaries (34:54) Portfolio Management, Write-Offs, and the Real Role of Acqui-Hires (37:13) Treating Venture Like Public and Private Equity Segments (Small vs Mega) (40:05) Frustrations With AI Hype, FOMO, and Public Perception of Tech (43:50) Closing Remarks and Reflections on Macro Conversation (45:39) Cendana Capital is a venture fund-of-funds focused on investing in seed-stage venture capital firms and partnering with managers at the earliest stages of company formation. The firm is one of the most active LPs dedicated to the seed ecosystem, with a focus on identifying and supporting differentiated early-stage venture managers. Learn more at www.cendanacapital.com. Sidley Austin LLP is a premier global law firm with a dedicated Venture Funds practice, advising top venture capital firms, institutional investors, and private equity sponsors on fund formation, investment structuring, and regulatory compliance. With deep expertise across private markets, Sidley provides strategic legal counsel to help funds scale effectively. Learn more at sidley.com. Swimming with Allocators is a podcast that dives into the intriguing world of Venture Capital from an LP (Limited Partner) perspective. Hosts Alexa Binns and Earnest Sweat are seasoned professionals who have donned various hats in the VC ecosystem. Each episode, we explore where the future opportunities lie in the VC landscape with insights from top LPs on their investment strategies and industry experts shedding light on emerging trends and technologies.  The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this podcast are for general informational purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello Friends! We're back in Holliesland this month on the show, with a look at the group's greatest pure-pop LP, 1966's For Certain Because.... Notable for being the first LP by the group composed entirely of original material, this Clark-Hicks-Nash composed album is chock full of fantastic mid-60s British pop, and even more full of great mix differences between the mono and stereo LPs. So, if additional vocal layers, extra echo, and revealing panning sound like a fun time to you, don't even think about changing! This ain't not peculiar situation, so be a crusader and and listen to this high classed episode. Happy Listening, Frederick Patreon  Email  Instagram - @hypnoticfred 

Get ready for another episode of Surface Noise: The Show of Record, Talking Records as we dive into the latest happenings in the world of vinyl collecting, record releases, and industry news! For the latest current events, the panel talks about a Rhino Reserve recall situation, the latest Vinylphyle release news underwhelming us, and a QUICK discussion on the Beatles/Rubber Soul box set announcement. Next we head north of the border for an in-depth conversation about what it's really like buying and selling vinyl in Canada from new friend of the show Nick, owner of the record store Resurrected Records, in Saskatchewan. Nick shares his origin story in starting a record store and all the things he's learned doing it close to two years strong (and at 25 years old, to boot!). We also touch on some irritable topics for our fellow vinylists up north including shipping costs and import fees to availability, local record stores, online marketplaces, and the unique challenges Canadian collectors face, as we compare experiences across borders and discuss how geography can shape the collecting journey. If you're passionate about vinyl records, record collecting, Discogs, rare LPs, vinyl community discussions, record stores, audiophile releases, music collecting, and the ever-changing vinyl marketplace, you've found your vinyl resting place.  This. Is. Surface Noise.   ⤵️⤵️⤵️⤵️⤵️⤵️   For more on host Concert Buddie: https://www.youtube.com/@ConcertBuddie https://concertbuddie.com IG: @concertbuddie   For more on guest Nick and his record store Resurrected Records: https://resurrectedrecords.ca IG: @resurrecords   For more on one of our favorite VC Canadians, Rob (Northern Revolutions): https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernRevolutions IG: northern_revolutions   For more guest Kendall (aka Spin Doctor and His Vinyl Mayhem): https://www.youtube.com/@spindoctorandhisvinylmayhem   For more on guest Joel (Static ATX Records): https://staticatx.com https://www.youtube.com/@staticatx IG: staticatxrecords   And our returning champion, Arnaldo (Fidelios_Frequency): https://www.youtube.com/@fidelios_frequency IG: @fidelios_frequency   For more information on Vinyl Community Podcasts: https://vinylcommunitypodcasts.com   . . . .   Don't forget to visit FOTS (friends of the show) Vinyl Storage Solutions for the BEST sleeves to protect your best records (and your worst). Save 10% using the code(s) below: VCP10   For more information on the Spinz Vinyl App for IOS and taking your collecting game to the next level, get your free download here:  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spinz-vinyl-record-scanner/id6758249212  

Jeff Axley of Ridgeline Capital Partners joins Chris to break down medical office buildings, one of the healthcare real estate niches more LPs are starting to pay attention to. Jeff walks through how his background across office, multifamily, development, restructuring, industrial, and master-planned communities ultimately led him to focus on medical office as a more durable, recession-resilient asset class. Chris and Jeff start with the basics: what medical office buildings are, how they differ from hospitals, senior housing, skilled nursing, assisted living, and other parts of the healthcare real estate landscape, and why outpatient care has become such an important long-term trend. Jeff explains why medical office can behave like traditional office in some ways, but with important differences: longer leases, triple-net structures, higher tenant improvement costs, more specialized build-outs, and stickier tenants who are much harder to move once they have expensive medical infrastructure in place. They also dig into the current market opportunity. While traditional office and multifamily have faced major headwinds, medical office occupancy and rents remain strong, with supply typically built to match tenant demand rather than speculative growth. Jeff explains why buying existing medical office at a meaningful discount to replacement cost can create a protected basis, how rising construction costs support the value of existing buildings, and what LPs should look for when evaluating MOB underwriting. Key takeaways: What medical office buildings are and how they fit into the broader healthcare real estate landscape Why outpatient care, aging demographics, technology, and reimbursement pressure support long-term MOB demand How medical office differs from traditional office through lease structure, tenant improvements, plumbing, foot traffic, and tenant stickiness Why MOB supply is typically more controlled than multifamily or traditional office supply How triple-net leases help owners pass through operating expenses, while still requiring competitive cost management Why replacement cost matters and how buying existing buildings below new construction cost can create downside protection What LPs should watch in MOB deals, including going-in cap rate, cost of financing, positive leverage, stabilized yield on cost, and exit cap assumptions Join a community of passive investors. Start your FREE 7-day trial: https://passivepockets.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=none Listen to the PassivePockets Podcast Anywhere: https://lnk.to/passivepockets Subscribe to the Passive Investing Newsletter: https://www.biggerpockets.com/email-subscribe?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=none Join BiggerPockets for free: https://www.biggerpockets.com/signup?utm_source=owned_media Disclaimer The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk, so use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This podcast may contain paid advertisements or other promotional materials for real estate investment advisers, investment funds, and investment opportunities, which should not be interpreted as a recommendation, endorsement, or testimonial by PassivePockets, LLC or any of its affiliates. Viewers must conduct their own due diligence and consider their own financial situations before engaging with any advertised offerings, products, or services. PassivePockets, LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising out of reliance on information and advertisements presented in this podcast.

This year's Global Investor 150 – Private Equity International's annual ranking of the largest private equity LPs in the world based on the fair market value of their PE investment portfolios – reveals a total of $2.88 trillion was allocated to the asset class by the featured investors as of end-December 2025. This represents an increase of almost 9 percent on the previous year. Investors appeared to prioritise long-term strategy over short-term market conditions, maintaining confidence in private equity despite a challenging fundraising and exit environment. Rather than stepping back from the asset class, many are refining how they deploy capital, with greater interest in the mid-market and increasingly sophisticated portfolio construction strategies. PEI Group's senior content producer Evie Rusman was joined by Carmela Mendoza and Katrina Lau, both senior reporters at PEI, to break down the findings and explore what this signals about the private equity landscape. This is the fourth episode in PEI Group's new Data Dive miniseries, where we dig into our proprietary data, surveys and rankings, as well as recent market data sets, to understand what investors and fund managers are thinking, where capital is moving and how the asset class is evolving. Stay tuned for the next episode, which will provide insight into affiliate title Private Funds CFO's Fees and Expenses 2026 Survey.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.We sat down with Jake Elmhirst, Partner, Head of Private Wealth Secondaries Solutions and Head of Capital Formation at Coller Capital.We were live from Berlin, which becomes the “capital of private capital” in June as private equity industry leaders make the annual pilgrimage to the city for one of the marquee private equity conferences, SuperReturn Berlin.With Prosek Partners and former Bloomberg TV journalist Deirdre Bolton as my producer, along with her team, we took over a Tiny Space cabin to hold big conversations with some of the industry's leading alternative asset managers.Coller Capital has been a pioneer in the rapidly growing secondaries market. Coller's tagline? “First in secondaries.” Coller might be “first in secondaries.” The industry they focus on has moved to the forefront of private markets. Secondaries are coming in first for many LPs, in part because secondaries are now an active portfolio management solution for LPs (LP-led secondaries) and a way for LPs and GPs to continue to invest in the growth and value appreciation of some of their funds' best assets (GP-led secondaries). The firm completed its first secondaries transaction in 1990 and its first GP-led investment in 1996. Today, Coller has $55B in AUM (as of 3/31/26). Jake joined Coller after a long career at UBS, where he partnered with Coller from a few different vantage points co-founding and co-leading the Private Funds Group within UBS Investment Bank and leading the Private Markets effort within UBS Global Wealth Management. His perspective on Coller was very much a reason why he decided to leave his farm in Yorkshire (as a 23rd generation farmer!) to join Coller as they build out their wealth efforts.Jake and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of secondaries and how they are increasingly “solutions” for LPs and GPs. We covered:Jake's experience witnessing the rise of the early days of private markets and how that's shaped how he thinks about secondaries today.Why secondaries are becoming “solutions” for LPs and GPs.Why secondaries can be a core portfolio holding.The features of secondaries. The drivers of the increase in LP-led sales.Why have GP-led continuation vehicles become a popular solution?Why secondaries make sense for private wealth investors.BioJake is a Partner and Head of Private Wealth Secondaries Solutions and Head of Capital Formation. He is based in the firm's London office.Prior to joining Coller Capital in April 2022, Jake spent 25 years at UBS where he led the Private Markets effort within UBS Global Wealth Management, based in London. Prior to that, Jake co-founded and co-led the Private Funds Group within UBS Investment Bank, based in New York.He previously worked at Freshfields in London, where he qualified as a solicitor working in the Tax Team with a focus on collective investment schemes.Jake has a degree in Law (LLB) from the University of Bristol.Jake Elmhirst is a registered representative of Parallel Distributors LLC.Thanks, Jake, for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion in private markets, private wealth, and secondaries. Show Notes 00:00 Live in Berlin Intro00:39 Jake Elmhirst's Career Journey02:08 Wealth Channel Lessons05:06 Farming Roots Detour07:34 Secondaries Liquidity Fix09:26 Continuation Vehicles Impact11:21 Wealth Channel and Scale13:21 Why Secondaries Work15:15 Core Holding for Wealth16:31 Discount Versus Quality18:43 Underwriting in CV Era20:56 Evergreen Portfolio Mix21:56 Future of Solutions23:02 Toolbox Expansion Ideas24:55 Why Scale Matters25:53 Discount Nuance Explained27:30 Active Portfolio Management28:45 Closing Thoughts

In this episode of The Private Equity Podcast, Alex Rawlings is joined by Adrian Siew, Managing Director at Rothschild & Co and co-leader of its GP Solutions practice.Adrian explains why continuation vehicles have become an increasingly important part of the private equity market and how firms can use them to generate liquidity, retain high-performing assets and strengthen relationships with investors.The conversation explores the rapid growth of the secondaries market, the pressure created by longer hold periods and slower exit activity, and why continuation vehicles should be considered alongside traditional exit routes rather than treated as a last resort.Adrian also outlines the characteristics of a strong continuation vehicle, including a compelling investment narrative, attractive return potential, meaningful GP alignment, LPAC support and a clear path to exit.Key HighlightsWhy continuation vehicles have experienced significant growthHow dedicated secondary capital has accelerated adoptionWhy many leading private equity firms have completed multiple CV transactionsThe benefits of providing liquidity while retaining high-conviction assetsWhy a continuation vehicle should not be the option of last resortHow slower distributions have affected LP investment programmesThe role of secondaries in portfolio optimisation and capital recyclingHow CVs can strengthen sponsor and LP relationshipsThe importance of transparency, optionality and LPAC engagementThe key indicators of a high-quality continuation vehicleCareer opportunities within the expanding secondaries marketTimestamps00:00 – Introduction to Adrian Siew and Rothschild & Co's GP Solutions practice00:59 – Why continuation vehicles are growing so quickly01:29 – The evolution of fund restructurings into continuation vehicles01:58 – Growth in dedicated secondary-market capital02:25 – Increasing adoption among leading private equity firms02:53 – Benefits for GPs, LPs and management teams03:39 – The biggest mistake firms make when considering a CV04:46 – Longer hold periods, slower exits and fundraising pressure05:16 – Why LPs are manufacturing their own liquidity06:14 – Restarting the private markets capital flywheel06:43 – The contribution of CVs to LP distributions07:12 – Secondaries as a strategic portfolio-management tool08:39 – Portfolio optimisation and greater flexibility for LPs09:37 – How continuation vehicles affect sponsor-LP relationships10:05 – Giving existing LPs liquidity and rollover optionality11:03 – What separates a good CV from a bad transaction11:23 – Building a credible investment narrative11:52 – Ensuring sufficient upside remains in the asset12:21 – GP alignment and commitment to the next phase13:18 – LPAC support and establishing a clear exit strategy14:10 – Adrian's recommended reading14:39 – Careers in secondaries and how to contact Adrian15:35 – Closing remarksRaw Selection partners with Private Equity firms and their portfolio companies to secure exceptional executive talent. We focus on de-risking executive recruitment through meticulous search and selection processes, ensuring top-tier performance and long-term success.Upcoming Webinar:Join Alex Rawlings on 18 August at 3:30 PM BST for How Top Private Equity Firms Run Their Executive Hiring Process.Discover how leading firms define roles, assess candidates and build a more effective executive hiring process.Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/650UiYAJQ9CWzPkIUGXmrg#/registration

In an environment when everyone in US commercial real estate is basically making the same pitch, why are some firms more successful than others at raising capital? Why are some firms more successful than others at getting the deal? In this episode, AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson discusses these questions with the founder, chairman and CEO of Institutional Real Estate Inc., Geoffrey Dohrmann. Branson and Dohrmann decide the key involves relationships and trust, and discuss ways to meet the challenge of building trust across international borders and between investors. Also on the agenda: Wisdom from commencement speeches! Marathon Man star Laurence Olivier's advice to Dustin Hoffman! And what a catchphrase from one of Geoffrey Dohrmann's old girlfriends has to do with relationship building in CRE. LINKS Geoffrey Dohrmann LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffrey-dohrmann-cre-9b2b5a2/ Institutional Real Estate Inc. website https://irei.com/ Dustin Hoffman on Laurence Olivier's advice in Marathon Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fodPlCp-28c IREI podcast with Bob Sessa on how LPs evaluate leadership https://irei.com/video-and-podcast/nextgen-capital-conversations-episode-4-talent-and-retention/ Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc Blackstone president Jon Gray's 2023 commencement speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7fKDtOqZOY To hear the globe's top experts discuss opportunities in US property markets, register for future AFIRE conferences: https://www.afire.org/events/ KEY MOMENTS 00:00 Marketing vs success 01:40 Guest introduction 04:08 Winning through trust 06:10 Inclusion and actions 10:39 Best practices 14:34 Ego and leadership 17:36 Ownership and accountability 21:24 Asset liability managers 31:49 Obi-Wan Kenobi comparison 34:26 Fiduciary financial objectives 38:26 Brand building asset 39:38 Commencement speeches 43:13 Success and relationships

On Part 2 of Exclusively Van Halen on Johnny Beane TV, legendary guitar tech Zeke Clark returns with another incredible collection of rare Van Halen and Prince memorabilia from his current Backstage Auctions event. Zeke shares the fascinating stories behind an autographed 5150 vinyl LP signed by Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, and 5150 Studio engineer Ken Deane. He also reveals an amazing collection of rare VHS tapes featuring Van Halen music videos, live performances, interviews, Cabo Wabo footage, Pittsburgh recordings, and other never-before-seen treasures whose contents are still waiting to be rediscovered. Having also worked closely with Prince, Zeke takes us inside another chapter of music history with a stage-used tambourine from Prince, 30 hand-stamped black Love Symbol white guitar picks personally stamped by Prince himself, and stories from his time helping develop the iconic Love Symbol era. The Van Halen history continues with Edward Van Halen's personal Fair Warning Access All Areas pass, one of Eddie's original 1978 first-issue signature guitar picks, Alex Van Halen's early Regal drumsticks, studio inspection vinyl LPs spanning 1978–1988, a Diver Down Access All Areas crew pass, 1984 stage-used guitar picks from both Eddie Van Halen and Michael Anthony, and never-before-seen personal photographs from the 5150 Tour. Zeke also shares the story behind a remarkable Farm Aid sweatshirt that Eddie Van Halen actually tried on before the band's historic first performance with Sammy Hagar in September 1985, along with rare late-'80s Van Halen pins and even more one-of-a-kind collectibles. Every item has a story, and Zeke was there to live it. If you're a Van Halen fan, collector, or rock history enthusiast, this is another episode you won't want to miss. Be sure to check out the current Backstage Auctions event to see these incredible pieces of rock history. #VanHalen #EddieVanHalen #ZekeClark #BackstageAuctions

Of all commercial real estate investors, only 3% are women – and when Beth Azor learned that stat, she decided to frickin' change it. In this episode, Erin sits down with the woman affectionately known as The Canvassing Queen®: founder and CEO of Azor Advisory Services, owner of three Florida shopping centers valued at over $75 million, and founder of the Women's Real Estate Investment Summit, where Erin has had the joy of speaking – and riding the famous four-hour bus tour of the town Beth practically owns. Beth's story starts with an $11,000-a-year nonprofit salary and a real estate license she'd had since age 18. It took a boss literally marching her to a bank to co-sign a $50,000 note – on the condition she invest 20% of every commission from then on – to turn a high-earning spender into an investor. Eight LP deals later, she went out on her own as a GP, and today she's the co-GP of a $32 million asset she waited thirteen years to buy. Yes, thirteen. That story alone (Mr. G, the quarterly "no," and the pivot to pure relationship-building) is worth the listen – and so is the one about crashing a utility company's remote HQ with cupcakes. Whether you've never heard the terms LP and GP or you're ready to raise capital for your first deal, Beth breaks the path down into steps any woman can start this week: pick an asset class, find an expert, invest passively first, and watch how it's done. Because as Beth's community proves – 68 women stood up at this year's summit having invested with someone in the room – you don't have to do it alone. Listen in as Erin and Beth discuss: The boss who called her "a freaking idiot" (with love), co-signed her first $50K investment, and made her bank 20% of every commission The stat that lit the fire: only 3% of commercial real estate investors are women – and most inherited it or signed on a husband's guarantee Why "we don't know any other women doing it" is the real barrier – and how the Women's Real Estate Investment Summit is dismantling it LP vs. GP, explained in plain English: preferred returns, refinances, and why LPs end up "playing with house money" Beth's starting playbook: pick your asset class, find an expert, LP first, and watch the GP How GPs raise capital – including the empty Wells Fargo bank deal where Beth raised $3.2M from 22 people in four days Beth's non-negotiable: never invest with a GP who has no skin in the game The 13-year Mr. G story: how persistence plus genuine relationship turned "no, click" into co-GP of a $32M asset The cupcake story: how a Friday-afternoon delivery did what eight men yelling couldn't Women Investor Wednesdays, the March 2027 summit, and how to get in the room About Affectionately known as The Canvassing Queen®, Beth Azor is the founder and CEO of Azor Advisory Services (AAS), a leading commercial real estate advisory and investment firm based in Davie, Florida. As its principal, Beth currently owns and manages three shopping centers in Florida valued at over $75M. She travels the U.S. consulting with, brokering deals for, and training associates in the commercial real estate industry, with clients including Phillips Edison & Co., Brixmor Properties, The Shopping Center Group, Urban Edge Development, DLC Management Group, and Bedrock. Beth is the author of Don't Say No for the Prospect (2019) and The Retail Leasing Playbook (2020), the founder of the Women's Real Estate Investment Summit – on a mission to get more women investing in real estate and growing their families' wealth – and co-founder of the South Florida Independent Retailer Awards®. Her newly created AI bot "Ask Beth" is a compilation of her 900 YouTube videos and 300 podcast episodes. A graduate of FSU, Beth is founder and past Chairwoman of the FSU Real Estate Foundation, past President of HOPE Outreach Center in Davie, and co-founder of 100+ Women Who Care in South Florida. She is a single mom to a superhero movie podcaster and an aspiring pro golfer – and she recently walked 250 miles of the Camino de Santiago across Spain. How to Connect With Beth Azor Website: https://www.bethazor.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethazor/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/azoradvisoryservices Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethazor/  Recommended Resources Women's Real Estate Investment Summit – March 3 – 5, 2027, registration opens September; only ~60 of 250 seats left: https://thewomeninvestmentsummit.com/  Women Investor Wednesday podcast – Beth interviews a woman investor every Wednesday (want to be a guest? She wants startup stories, even your first VRBO): https://www.bethazor.com/beths-podcasts/ Don't Say No for the Prospect by Beth Azor: https://www.bethazor.com/product/dont-say-no-for-the-prospect-how-1-went-from-a-sales-rookie-to-a-retail-leasing-rockstar/ The Retail Leasing Playbook by Beth Azor: https://www.amazon.com/Retail-Leasing-Playbook-Beth-Ratzan/dp/0578224208 "Ask Beth" AI bot – 900 videos and 300 podcast episodes' worth of answers: https://www.bethazor.com Happiness & Fulfillment Assessment: https://pursuingfreedom.com/happiness Pursuing Freedom Collective: https://pursuingfreedom.com/collective Get a copy of Pursuing Freedom on Amazon: https://amzn.to/46o7m7z Subscribe to the Pursuing Freedom podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for weekly inspiration and strategies.

In this episode of Tank Talks, host Matt Cohen sits down with Julia Maltby, a Principal at Fengate Asset Management who has lived the full venture capital lifecycle. Julia started as the first employee at Plum Alley Investments, ran partnerships at WeWork during its hyper-growth phase, spent over five years rising from Associate to Principal at Flybridge Capital, and even ran her own seed fund, Deco Ventures, before moving to the LP side at Fengate in 2025. Today, she invests in early-stage VC funds and direct opportunities across North America.Julia offers a brutally honest perspective on what she wishes every emerging manager knew about fundraising. She explains why LPs value process over outputs, why founder references from failed companies are more valuable than those from winners, and how GPs can stop leaving first meetings as a “polite maybe” and start qualifying LPs like a sales funnel. She also pulls back the curtain on LP-to-LP communication (which she says is 10X stronger than GP gossip), shares tactical advice on building data rooms that actually get read, and reveals how Fengate pre-approves co-investments to move at startup speed.Whether you're a GP in the middle of a raise, an LP sorting through an endless stack of emerging manager pitches, or just curious what venture looks like from every seat at the table, this episode is for you.From Liberal Arts to Venture Capital (02:07)* Julia's unconventional path from studying architecture and social inequality to becoming one of venture's most respected emerging investors.* How a cold LinkedIn message landed her first job in venture capital.* Why having no finance background became an advantage instead of a limitation.Learning Venture from the Ground Up (04:13)* Building crowdfunding platforms and SPVs before venture became mainstream.* Why early-stage investing means wearing product, operations, and fundraising hats.* Lessons learned from saying “yes” before knowing exactly how to do the work.Inside WeWork's Hypergrowth Machine (05:11)* Joining WeWork during its explosive expansion and learning from one of startup history's fastest growth stories.* What Adam Neumann got exceptionally right about building mission-driven teams.* The leadership lessons worth keeping and the scaling mistakes worth avoiding.The Flybridge Investing Framework (10:39)* Why durable venture investing starts with disciplined systems rather than intuition alone.* The importance of pricing integrity and staying focused on core business strengths.* How evaluating customer urgency shaped Julia's investment philosophy.Becoming a Solo GP (14:14)* Launching Deco Ventures with Flybridge's support.* The challenges of making investment decisions without partners.* Why every solo GP needs trusted people whose job is to challenge—not validate—their thinking.What Makes a Venture Manager Truly Different? (18:00)* Why there isn't just one formula for becoming a successful GP.* Understanding your competitive advantage instead of copying other managers.* How LPs think about portfolio fit beyond fund performance.The Data Room Mistakes GPs Keep Making (23:18)* Why withholding information often slows fundraising rather than helping it.* Julia's advice: send everything instead of drip-feeding documents.* How GPs should reference-check LPs before sharing sensitive materials.Looking Beyond Markups and Valuations (27:16)* Why portfolio KPIs matter more than inflated funding rounds.* How disciplined reserve strategies separate thoughtful investors from reactive ones.* Using follow-on decisions as a measure of investment discipline.The Power of Great References (31:45)* Why founders from failed companies often provide the strongest references.* How LP references reveal governance, transparency, and communication quality.* Why perfect references can actually make LPs more skeptical.Stop Leaving Meetings as a “Maybe” (34:35)* The questions every GP should ask before ending a fundraising meeting.* Understanding the difference between genuine interest and structural misalignment.* How qualifying LPs like a sales pipeline saves months of wasted fundraising.Building Better Co-Investment Relationships (37:06)* How proactive communication makes co-investments move faster.* Why LPs build internal pipelines long before deals officially launch.* The importance of giving institutional investors time to prepare.The Future of Early-Stage Venture (39:27)* Why Julia remains optimistic despite today's challenging fundraising environment.* The growing divide between mega-funds and smaller venture firms.* Why smaller funds continue delivering meaningful returns that often go unnoticed.Using AI to Build Better LP Portfolios (41:17)* How Fengate uses AI to understand portfolio exposure across hundreds of startups.* Moving beyond broad fund branding into detailed market analysis.* Why better portfolio intelligence leads to better future investment decisions.About Julia MaltbyJulia Maltby is a Principal at Fengate Asset Management, where she invests in early-stage VC funds and direct opportunities across North America. She has lived the full VC lifecycle: she was the first employee at Plum Alley Investments, ran partnerships at WeWork, spent 5+ years rising from Associate to Principal at Flybridge Capital, and founded her own seed fund, Deco Ventures. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and writes about her LP experiences on her Substack, Julia's Field Notes.Connect with Julia Maltby on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/juliamaltbyLearn more about Fengate Asset Management: https://fengate.com/Read Julia's Field Notes:Connect with Matt Cohen on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/matt-cohen1Visit the Ripple Ventures website: https://www.rippleventures.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

Send us Fan MailThree rapid-fire insights that the room had not heard before. First: gross revenue royalty deals — a family office founder who has done 17 of them explains why investors love them, almost nobody uses them, and how a dental practice scaled to $30M in revenue returned the full initial investment through monthly cash flow royalties before the exit even happened. Second: deal terms are where most investors get quietly destroyed — preference shares and waterfall structures can leave LPs with nothing even when a deal performs. Third: Grizz Ali reveals that almost no family office is depreciating its intellectual property — a legal, massively underused strategy that simultaneously reduces tax liability and increases balance sheet value when seeking a line of credit.About Family Office ClubThe world's largest investor club in the family office space. 19 years. 300+ events. 16 million members. $1B+ in community transactions.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.We sat down with Kyle Kniffen, Managing Director, Global Head of Alternatives, Third Party Wealth at Goldman Sachs. We were live from Berlin, which becomes the “capital of private capital” in June as private equity industry leaders make the annual pilgrimage to the city for one of the marquee private equity conferences, SuperReturn Berlin.With Prosek Partners and former Bloomberg TV journalist Deirdre Bolton as my producer, along with her team, we took over a Tiny Space cabin to hold big conversations with some of the industry's leading alternative asset managers.A little over two years ago, I wrote on AGM about how, at $456B in AUM in alternatives, Goldman Sachs was a “sleeping giant” in private markets. In reality, Goldman is anything but a sleeping giant in private markets, having started its private equity business in 1984 and earning the distinction of being a top-5 alternatives manager by AUM across both traditional and alternative asset managers.Today, Goldman has grown its alternatives business to over $625B in AUM.The firm has expanded its platform with the acquisition of Industry Ventures and a partnership with T. Rowe Price to deliver public and private markets solutions to the wealth channel, and, most recently, the creation of its Alternative Investment Platform to provide HNW clients with direct access to private companies.The evolution of Goldman's Alternatives business reflects a thoughtful, measured approach to understanding the needs of wealth channel investors and finding the utility and purpose of strategy, product, and product structure.That was much of the focus of the conversation Kyle and I had in Berlin. We discussed the objective and utility of private markets in a portfolio. We covered:The growth of evergreen funds.Why evergreens are the product structure of choice.Why are evergreens also appealing to institutional allocators, insurance companies, and UHNW investors?How GPs and LPs are approaching LP composition to evergreen vehicles.The next wave of product innovation.The build, buy, partner framework Why Goldman is so excited about the GeoWealth partnership and what the future of model portfolios look like.What is not known but should be known about the Goldman Alternatives franchise.BioKyle Kniffen is a managing director in the Client Solutions Group within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He serves as global head of Alternatives for Third Party Wealth (TPW), overseeing client strategy for the firm's TPW clients globally, delivering the power of the Alternatives investing platform to a broad set of individual investors through our partnerships with financial intermediary clients and their advisors, including Private Banks, Broker-Dealers, RIAs and other distribution platforms. Kyle partners closely with leadership across our Alternatives franchise to develop products that meet our clients' evolving needs. He is also co-chair of the AWM Global Distribution Working Group.Prior to this role, Kyle was in Alternative Capital Markets (ACM), serving as head of ACM for Goldman Sachs Ayco and leading coverage for One Goldman Sachs financial sponsors globally. He joined Goldman Sachs in 2018 as a vice president in ACM and was named managing director in 2021.Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Kyle led a variety of distribution and product management teams for Bank of America's Alternative Investment Group within their Global Wealth and Investment Management division.Kyle is a board member for the Institute of Portfolio Alternatives (IPA), and a member of The Economic Club of New York. Kyle earned a BA from Gettysburg College.Thanks, Kyle, for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion about private markets and serving the wealth channel.Show Notes00:00 AGM Live from SuperReturn Berlin00:22 Meet Kyle Kniffin01:10 Wealth Meets Private Markets01:37 Big Pools Little Allocation02:24 Alt Strategies Explosion03:04 Lessons from Hedge Funds03:34 Start with Client Goals03:53 Risk Liquidity Tradeoffs04:10 Portfolio Utility First04:25 Holistic Private Markets04:44 Fit and Terms Matter05:07 Setting Expectations05:32 Product Innovation Shift05:52 Evergreens and Flexibility06:10 Monthly Access and Tactics06:39 Evergreen Growth Rates06:45 Education and Dispersion07:15 Why Evergreens Exist07:41 Diversification Lower Minimums08:04 Operational Simplicity08:21 Evergreen Nuance Phase One08:47 Goldman in Third Party Wealth09:26 Institutions Buying Evergreens10:31 LP Mix and Liquidity Caps11:36 Institutionalizing Wealth Platforms13:29 Goldman Platform Advantage14:46 Feeding the Evergreen Engine15:13 GeoWealth and Model Portfolios15:45 T Rowe Price Collaboration16:12 Build vs Buy Partner Balance16:42 Industry Ventures Acquisition17:33 Goldman Alts Heritage18:35 Pioneering GP Stakes19:45 Secondaries Since 199820:12 Apex of Private Markets21:08 Will Secondaries Be Core21:48 Max Flexibility for Wealth22:42 Customization vs Scale23:16 Flagships Then Bespoke23:49 Lessons from Private Wealth25:10 Broader Menu of Privates25:34 Closing Thoughts 

This week on Swimming with Allocators, returning guest Chris Schelling of Aksia joins Earnest Sweat and Alexa Binns to unpack how AI, private markets, and the wealth channel are evolving. They discuss where AI may already be in bubble territory, how it's reshaping SaaS, services, and investment processes (including AI “agents” on investment committees), and why some SaaS and low-value information services are most at risk. Chris explains Aksia research-driven approach across private equity, private credit, real assets, and hedge funds, and shares why he's skeptical of layered SPV “sandwiches” and headline-driven fear around private credit. The conversation explores the democratization of alternatives for wealthy clients, the role of content as a strategic edge for allocators, challenges in structuring venture access products, and why early-stage technical venture and quantum computing are compelling. Chris closes with advice for newer professionals: in a world of AI tools, differentiated relationships, networks, and deep domain expertise matter more than ever. Also, Nick Cassin explains how Sidley's secondary practice spans multiple asset classes and deal types, highlights the growing role of secondaries in venture (including GP‑leds and LP trades), and shares how Sidley's breadth, commercial mindset, and experience help clients navigate complex liquidity and continuation vehicle structures. Highlights from this week's conversation include: Chris Schelling Returns & Aksia Career Move (0:13) Why To Be Skeptical of AI Valuations & Bubbles (2:26) How AI Is Reshaping SaaS, Services, and Credit (6:48) Using AI for Diligence, Memos, and Investment Committees (11:29) Behavioral Coaching and Training Analysts With AI (15:06) SPVs, SPV “Sandwiches,” and 2008-Style Layering Risk (19:58) Checklist Ideas for Evaluating SPVs and Access Claims (29:24) How Mega RIAs Are Building Private Markets Platforms (36:38) Strategic vs Tactical Allocations Across Private Markets (41:38) Product Diversity Needed Across RIAs and Client Segments (44:08) Segmenting Venture: Seed, Growth, and Late Stage Dynamics (47:52) Crystal Ball on Venture, Deep Tech, and Quantum Computing (49:39) Skills for Young Investors: Networks, Relationships, and Domain Expertise (54:22) Where To Read Chris's Research and Writing (55:13) Aksia is a global private markets investment advisory and research platform with deep expertise across private equity, private credit, real assets, and hedge funds. The firm advises institutional investors globally and also manages discretionary capital through customized funds-of-one, co-investment vehicles, fund-of-funds, and wealth-oriented private markets solutions. Aksia is known for its open architecture model, broad GP relationships, and rigorous diligence culture across alternative assets. Sidley Austin LLP is a premier global law firm with a dedicated Venture Funds practice, advising top venture capital firms, institutional investors, and private equity sponsors on fund formation, investment structuring, and regulatory compliance. With deep expertise across private markets, Sidley provides strategic legal counsel to help funds scale effectively. Learn more at sidley.com. Swimming with Allocators is a podcast that dives into the intriguing world of Venture Capital from an LP (Limited Partner) perspective. Hosts Alexa Binns and Earnest Sweat are seasoned professionals who have donned various hats in the VC ecosystem. Each episode, we explore where the future opportunities lie in the VC landscape with insights from top LPs on their investment strategies and industry experts shedding light on emerging trends and technologies.  The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this podcast are for general informational purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brandon Sedloff and David Weisburd explore the hidden psychology behind venture capital fundraising and LP decision-making on The Distribution. Weisburd, co-founder of Weisburd Pierce and host of How I Invest, shares insights from hundreds of conversations with institutional allocators managing over 10 trillion dollars in assets. The discussion reveals why LP incentives often diverge from traditional performance metrics, how career risk shapes investment behavior, and why media has become a structural advantage in private markets. They discuss: - Why LPs use a "double gated" diligence process that most GPs misunderstand - How the average pension CIO tenure of 6.1 years creates rational but seemingly counterintuitive investment patterns - Why elite Ivy League endowments are shifting away from blind pool funds toward direct investments and SPVs - The mechanics of anchor investor psychology and momentum in fundraising - How media functions as a network effect business and relationship-building tool at scale This episode offers a practical framework for understanding how capital allocation decisions actually get made in venture and private markets. Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:32) - David's immigrant journey and first ventures (00:04:16) - Starting the How I Invest podcast (00:05:29) - Growing up poor and the mindset it created (00:08:06) - The stamp of approval from elite institutions (00:11:32) - From Tuck to 10x Capital (00:14:08) - What is a media-driven venture firm (00:17:00) - Why media is a moat in venture capital (00:20:28) - Advice for GPs on podcast guesting (00:23:03) - The psychology of elite listening (00:27:25) - Theory of mind and the LP LLM (00:29:09) - The rational irrationality of LP behavior (00:43:00) - Themes guiding capital allocation (00:49:05) - Advice for GPs and LPs (00:51:41) - Outro Speaker Profiles:   Brandon Sedloff     LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/bsedloff/     Website — https://brandonsedloff.substack.com/     Juniper Square - https://www.junipersquare.com/   David Weisburd     LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dweisburd/     Twitter / X — https://x.com/DWeisburd     Weisburd Capital — https://www.weisburdpierce.com/ Podcasts:   How I Invest — https://howiinvestpodcast.com/episodes

Vessi Kapoulian spent fifteen years as a commercial lender. She underwrote more than a thousand deals and managed a credit portfolio north of a billion dollars before she ever bought a building for her own account. That order matters, and it is the whole reason this conversation is different from most multifamily interviews. Her framework has four parts, and she looks at them in a deliberate order: the operator, the market, the numbers, and last, the structure of the deal. Last. As she puts it, people pay back loans, not properties. The building is collateral and a secondary source of repayment. The person is the deal. The lender's opening question is the one most passive investors never ask: how do I lose money on this? Not what is the projected return. What is the downside, and where does it come from. She is direct about where LPs get hurt. The preferred return is not guaranteed, and a lot of investors believe it is. She walks through both waterfalls, the capital event and the cash flow, and what she wants to see about priority when a deal is stressed rather than when it performs. She has walked away from deals where the sponsor checked out and the numbers checked out but the structure did not align. She also talks about fraud, from both sides. She caught it as a lender. She was a victim of it as a passive investor. That is in the new book, and she does not soften it. Her latest, The Busy Professional's Guide to Passive Apartment Investing, is written for the doctor, lawyer, accountant, or executive working an eighty-hour week who wants real estate exposure without becoming an operator. Each chapter stands on its own so it works as a reference rather than a front-to-back read. Her first book, Mastering Multifamily Underwriting, is an Amazon bestseller and goes deep on the deal analysis itself. Both are on Amazon in all four formats. We also get into what changed in her 2026 underwriting on rates and insurance, why she wants insurance modeled well above the standard three percent, why she will not invest where the operator has no local infrastructure, and what a decade of watching LPs lose money taught her about protecting capital. Connect with Vessi Kapoulian: dbacapitalgroup.com masteringmultifamilyunderwriting.com LinkedIn Chapters 00:00 A lot of fraud, a lot of scams emerge in this part of the cycle 00:45 Welcome to Real Estate Underground 01:00 A returning guest: Vessi Kapoulian 01:30 Bulgaria, the Iron Curtain, and what it shaped 02:30 Fifteen years underwriting, then buying for her own account 04:00 Parallel paths: Clark St moves to the lending side 04:30 Why she wrote Mastering Multifamily Underwriting 07:00 The four areas, in order: operator, market, numbers, structure 08:00 People pay back loans, not properties 09:00 The Busy Professional's Guide to Passive Apartment Investing 11:00 Fraud, from both sides of the table 12:00 What a lender sees that a syndicator pitching LPs does not 14:00 Following the deck versus reading the documents 15:00 Both waterfalls, and why the preferred return is not guaranteed 17:00 Fees, alignment of incentives, and capital call conditions 18:00 Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, run from Los Angeles 19:00 Why she starts with local boots on the ground 20:00 Underwriting rates and insurance in 2026 22:00 Losing money, and why nobody has until they do 24:00 FOMO, and the deal you should regret more 27:00 Transparency after a loss, and the venture rule about cycled founders 29:00 The Final Five 29:30 Purpose: lasting positive impact 31:00 Best advice: you will get ready when the opportunity is presented 33:00 The decision she would take back, and God's timing 35:00 What is on the nightstand 36:30 Defining success: a life of significance 36:50 Life outside real estate: running, reading, family 37:30 How to reach Vessi Vessi's books: The Busy Professional's Guide to Passive Apartment Investing Mastering Multifamily Underwriting This week's books: The Family Office Handbook by Kirby Rosplock, and Raising Financially Fit Kids by Jolene Godfrey. Real Estate Underground with Ed Mathews. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, at clarkst.com/podcast or elevista.com/podcast Elevista - Speed as a Service™Elevista Connect is the first AI-powered lead conversion system built for real estate investors.

Small businesses represent nearly half of all American jobs and 45% of all technology spend, yet less than 5% of venture capital goes to building technology for them.In this episode, Tim Metzner joins us to share how Fireroad, his Cincinnati-based early-stage venture firm, is betting that AI is changing that math. A serial entrepreneur who co-founded Coterie Insurance ($70M+ raised) and Differential (the studio behind Cincinnati's first unicorn, Astronomer), Tim returns to the show four years after his Episode 190 appearance with an entirely new chapter.We dig into the "silver tsunami" of retiring business owners with no succession plan, why Fireroad targets AI-resistant categories where technology supercharges rather than replaces, the flywheel of having business owners as LPs who become his founders' first customers, and why Tim believes staying small as a fund is the alpha most VCs are missing. Hosted by Logan JonesMiddle Tech is proudly supported by:KY Innovation → kyinnovation.comAwesome Inc → awesomeinc.org

Chloe Steins joins Black Bat Audio to discuss this week's brand-new Reality Awaits by The Strokes and Music Fashion Film by Charli xcx, as well as Livin in the USA by Low Cut Connie and new LPs by Jack White, Kurt Vile, Swapmeet, and mary in the junkyard. What did Chloe and Nathaniel make of the two albums released this week? Charli follows up brat, The Strokes follow up The New Abnormal, Chloe interprets why multiple rising indie bands share a curiously similar detail, and ‘rock music' of many backgrounds gets discussed.The albums are:The Strokes - Reality AwaitsCharli xcx - Music, Fashion, FilmLow Cut Connie - Livin in the USA Jack White - Frozen CharlotteKurt Vile - Philadelphia's been good to memary in the junkyard - Role Model HermitSwapmeet - Mount ZeroRead Chloe's criticism at: https://chloeloe.substack.com/. Music has always been integral to Black Bat Productions. From the live jazz noir atmosphere of Mack The Knife to the pivotal 1960s radio of Technicolor, from the original compositions of In Everglade Studio to this show's theme, ‘Port City' by avery, from Port City Signature, every project of ours has its carefully crafted playlist. It's a delight to welcome Chloe on to discuss brand-new rock releases, which may well find their way into playlists and productions to come. @BlackBatUK • ⁠⁠blackbat.uk⁠⁠Theme music 'Port City' by avery - @avery.el13

Fix Leaky Gut, Boost Testosterone & Slash Endotoxins with Spore-Based Probiotics | Kiran KrishnanYour bad gut bacteria might be the reason your testosterone, your immune system, and even your sperm count are struggling, and most probiotics never survive long enough to fix it. This episode reveals which strains actually make it through your stomach acid alive, and what happens once they do. Go To JustThriveHealth.com/asprey for a free 90 day supply of bitters with your next subscription. Host Dave Asprey sits down with research microbiologist Kiran Krishnan, co-founder of Microbiome Labs, the leading microbiome therapeutics brand among healthcare professionals. He has published multiple peer-reviewed studies, holds global patents, and has spent 20 years building companies focused on the science of the microbiome. His work centers on spore-based probiotics, the rare strains proven to survive the stomach's brutal acidity and actually rebuild the gut from the inside out. Kiran and Dave break down why 98 percent of conventional probiotics die before they ever reach your gut, and why spore-forming bacteria are different. They dig into the "gelding effect," the well-documented pathway where endotoxins from bad gut bacteria shut down testosterone production and drive up cortisol, and how fixing your microbiome can reverse it. They cover the connection between endotoxemia and nearly every major marker of aging, metabolism, and inflammation, why butyrate acts like a natural GLP-1 for fat loss, how Akkermansia can upregulate mitochondria and improve blood sugar control, and the surprising role vitamin K2 plays in bone density and functional medicine. This is biohacking at the cellular level, using ancient biology, fasting-adjacent metabolic pathways, and precision supplementation to optimize human performance from the gut up. You'll Learn: Why 98 percent of probiotics die in your stomach before they ever work What the "gelding effect" is and how gut bacteria can shut down testosterone How endotoxins drive inflammation, cortisol, and accelerated aging Why butyrate functions like a natural, low-cost alternative to GLP-1 drugs How Akkermansia improves mitochondrial function and blood sugar control The overlooked link between your microbiome and vitamin K2 production Why spore-based probiotics can survive gastric acid when most others cannot How 90 days of gut repair can measurably reduce circulating endotoxins Keywords: best probiotics that survive stomach acid, spore based probiotics benefits, gelding effect testosterone, endotoxins and testosterone, how to lower endotoxins, LPS gut bacteria, Akkermansia GLP-1 natural, gut bacteria and belly fat, vitamin K2 bone density, Kiran Krishnan microbiologist, Just Thrive probiotic, leaky gut symptoms, microbiome and testosterone, fecal transplant benefits, Dave Asprey, biohacking, longevity Resources: • Go To JustThriveHealth.com/asprey for a free 90 day supply of bitters with your next subscription • Learn More About All Of Just Thrive's Offerings At: https://justthrivehealth.com/ • Get My 2026 Clean Nicotine Roadmap | Enroll for free at https://daveasprey.com/2026-clean-nicotine-roadmap/ • Dave Asprey's Latest News | Go to https://daveasprey.com/ to join Inside Track today. • Danger Coffee: https://dangercoffee.com/discount/dave15? • My Daily Supplements: SuppGrade Labs (15% Off) • Favorite Blue Light Blocking Glasses: TrueDark (15% Off) • Dave Asprey's BEYOND Conference: https://beyondconference.com • Dave Asprey's New Book – Heavily Meditated: https://daveasprey.com/heavily-meditated • Join My Substack (Live Access To Podcast Recordings): https://substack.daveasprey.com/ • Upgrade Labs: https://upgradelabs.com Thank you to our sponsors! - ZenBud | Dave's Nervous System Biohack. Visit zenbud.health and use code DAVE15 at checkout for a discount. - BodyHealth | Visit BodyHealth.com and use code DAVE20 for 20% off your first purchase. - Redmond Real - Leaf Toothpaste | Go to https://redmond.com/asprey and use code ASPREY for 15% off your first order. - Show notes - ELITE Performance Coaching | If you'd like to discover where you may be addicted to struggle, allergic to success, and what may be standing between you and your next breakthrough, visit FastestChange.com Timestamps: 00:00 – Trailer 00:38 – Kiran Intro 02:01 – Stomach Acid & Probiotics 05:25 – Fauci & Spore Bacteria 13:58 – Losing Gut Diversity 19:01 – How Butyrate Is Made 22:11 – Dave's Personal Stack 24:00 – Quorum Sensing 31:26 – Endotoxins Explained 37:13 – Charcoal & Binders 39:41 – SIBO & Gut Bacteria 45:03 – Discovering Vitamin K2 49:33 – Gelding Effect & Testosterone 54:51 – Akkermansia & Weight Loss 01:02:17 – Role of Bitters 01:04:47 – Just Thrive Gift See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What actually separates a great early-stage bet from an obvious one? This week on The Data Minute, Peter sits down with Lan Xuezhao, Founder and Managing Partner of Basis Set Ventures, fresh off closing the firm's $250 million Fund IV.Lan built Basis Set in 2017 as one of the first venture funds structured specifically around AI, years before AI became the entire market's obsession. Her portfolio includes an early bet on Scale AI before the fund technically existed, along with Quince, Path Robotics, Workstream, Ergeon, Cusp, and Drata. She and Peter dig into why she deliberately looks for founders who don't come from the obvious pedigree or the most hyped category, how she reads "speed of learning" in a founder across a single meeting or a string of them, and why she thinks a chart everyone loves (fastest company ever to $100 million in revenue) is one of the most misleading in venture right now.The conversation also covers her thesis behind backing Quince as a supply chain company rather than a consumer brand, why robotics went from a graveyard of failed bets to the hottest category in the market, how AI is compressing deal diligence from weeks to days, and her framework for thinking about secondaries with LPs who have stuck with her since fund one. It closes with a personal story: raising her first fund five months pregnant, and the LPs who told her flatly she was crazy to try.Subscribe to Carta's weekly Data Minute newsletter: https://carta.com/subscribe/data-newsletter-sign-up/Explore interactive startup and VC data, with Carta's Data Desk: https://carta.com/data-desk/Chapters:00:00 – Intro: Reading the Bifurcated Seed Chart01:20 – Why Unknown Founders Command Premium Valuations03:38 – Higher Valuation, Lower Multiple: The Math of Being Late04:18 – Two Types of Companies Basis Set Backs05:33 – Defining "Good": Avoiding the Most Obvious Space07:14 – Is Revenue-Per-Employee a Real Signal or Just Vanity?08:55 – Defining "Speed of Learning"11:55 – Do the Most Expert Founders Struggle to Update Their Views?13:14 – The Interview Trick: Pick Any Topic, Go Deep16:31 – The Revenue Chart Everyone Loves (and Why It Lies)18:48 – Margin, Retention, and What Actually Matters at Seed21:19 – Why Series A to B Is the Most Confusing Stage22:35 – Using AI to Compress Diligence From Weeks to Days24:16 – The Quince Thesis: Supply Chain, Not Consumer Brand27:06 – Robotics: From Graveyard to Hottest Category27:54 – Model Commoditization: Real Risk or Lazy Narrative?30:07 – The San Francisco Premium: Moving Here Doubles the Price33:27 – Does Sky-High Ambition Help Companies or Kill Them?36:17 – LP Sentiment: Recycling Capital, and Why the Type of LP Matters40:28 – A Framework for Secondaries: Baskets, Founders, and the Data Point That Worries Her44:13 – Are There Too Many VCs?45:51 – Fund Four: When a Firm Stops Feeling Like a Collection of Funds47:26 – LPs Aren't Backing the Outcome, They're Backing the Process48:34 – Raising Fund One Five Months Pregnant, and Being Called Crazy49:14 – OutroThis presentation contains general information only and eShares, Inc. dba Carta, Inc. (“Carta”) is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services, and is for informational purposes only.  This presentation is not a substitute for such professional advice or services nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business or interests. © 2026 eShares, Inc., dba Carta, Inc. All rights reserved.

Most B2B landing pages are built to convert — but what if that's the wrong goal entirely? In this conversation, we'll sit down with Tas Bober, landing page strategist and founder of The Scroll Lab, to rethink how we approach LPs for complex products and services. We'll cover:Why on-page conversions are a misleading success metricHow to build pages that serve buying committees, not just individual clicksWhat it actually looks like to match your landing page to the B2B buying journeyFrom page structure to messaging strategy, Tas will share what it takes to create landing pages that give buyers the information they need to build a business case and put you on the shortlist.

Matilda Ho was banned from the kitchen for the first 25 years of her life. Her mother's rule was simple: cooking is what you do when you fail at school. She now runs China's first food tech venture fund.I'm joined by Matilda Ho, Founder and Managing Director of Bits x Bites — a $100 million fund vintaged in October 2020, 15 companies backed, Series A and B, and a board seat as a condition of every check. Her LPs are sovereign funds from Singapore, the Middle East and China, agrifood strategics, and family offices.Her argument is that the food system cannot be fixed at the checkout. She spent five years at BCG and IDEO advising food companies, and one project — working out how likely a Chinese meat processor was to have another scandal — turned up roughly half a million food safety incidents a year. She built an online grocery to fix it one shopper at a time, then concluded that would take longer than her lifetime. The leverage was upstream.What she found upstream is a manufacturing advantage most investors outside China have not priced. Seventy percent of the world's vitamins, two-thirds of its amino acids and more than 80% of its stevia are already made there — much of it in brownfield plants with fermentation tanks sitting idle. Where European biotech founders cannot fund scale-up, she can buy it cheap.She is equally blunt about what does not work. Beyond Burger's peas travel from Canada to Suzhou to California, and the margin never survives the trip. China already has tofu — clean, plant-based and 2,000 years old. So she funds certainty over moonshots: functional ingredients, animal health, matcha. And in a market where government money is now the largest source of innovation capital, her first exit was a stake sold to a provincial government vehicle.In this episode we discuss:Why the food system cannot be fixed at the checkout, and what changes upstreamHalf a million food safety incidents a year — the consulting project that exposed themBiomanufacturing as China's unpriced edge: overcapacity, brownfield sites and idle fermentation tanksWhy alternative meat fails on unit economics in a country that already has tofuChina's “visible hand” — how government money became the largest source of innovation capitalSelling a portfolio company to a provincial government vehicle, and why DPI beats IRR in ChinaWhy she will not write a check without a board seatBacking wartime CEOs, and what a decade of bad hires taught her about founder diligenceFeatured guest:Matilda Ho, Founder and Managing Director at Bits x BitesListen Next:AgTech Profits Meet Planet: Where Climate Impact and VC Returns AlignDiscover More from SRI360°:Explore all episodes of the SRI360° PodcastSign up for the free weekly email updateKey Takeaways:Fixing food at the checkout does not scale. Matilda built an online farmers market and learned that people only change how they eat after a life event — a birth, a diagnosis. A movement, she says, but not a viable business model. The leverage sits upstream in the supply chain.The supply chain is the problem. In China a vegetable passes through roughly seven hands before it reaches a table. A third of food rots on the farm, another third in transit, and the rest is wasted in fridges and warehouses.China's arithmetic is brutal. Around 20% of the world's population and under 7% of its arable land, feeding 1.4 billion people. More than 85% of soybeans are imported, mostly to feed chickens and pigs.Biomanufacturing is China's quiet edge. Europe's biotech founders struggle to fund scale-up. China has the opposite problem — overcapacity, brownfield sites and idle fermentation tanks, plus the plant managers who know how to run them. 70% of global vitamins, two-thirds of amino acids and over 80% of stevia are already produced there.Cost is king and taste is king. Beyond Burger's peas grow in Canada, get processed in Suzhou, then travel to California for final formulation. The gross margin never works. And as she puts it, China already has tofu — clean, plant-based, cheap, and 2,000 years old.Government money is now the largest source of innovation capital in China. Local governments run fund-of-fund structures and back specialized GPs rather than investing directly. Her own first exit was selling a stake to a provincial government vehicle at Series B, in year five of the fund.In China, DPI matters more than IRR. IRR can be manipulated; cash returned to LPs cannot. Most domestic funds have only a five-year life, which forces short-term decisions. Her USD fund has ten to twelve years.Back wartime CEOs, not peacetime ones. Growing revenue tenfold when money was free is not a replicable track record. She looks for humility, grit, and founders who keep going when 99% of the signals say stop.Software alone does not work in agriculture. Farmers will not pay for something invisible. Her Beijing crop-model company had to bundle seeds and inputs with the software; two-thirds of its revenue now comes from selling the inputs.Drones changed the economics for smallholders. A tenth of the chemical input, up to half the water saved, and profits up around 30% on cash crops — plus a whole new job class of drone operators. Most growth is now outside China, in North America, Brazil and Argentina.Agrifood is under-invested. It accounts for less than 5% of total venture funding. Her ambition is that generalist fund managers eventually treat it as a sector worth a seat.Additional ResourcesMatilda Ho LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matildaho/Bits x Bites LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bits-x-bitesMatilda Ho on X: @matildajyhoBits x Bites: https://bitsxbites.com/Matilda Ho's TED profile: https://www.ted.com/speakers/matilda_hoRelated SRI360° Episodes:Beyond the 2/20 Model: Disrupting VC & 25% IRR from Climate Adaptation in Southeast Asia

This week John Leeming continues looking through his LPs. Visit organistencores.co.uk to listen to the show & find out more.

Barbara and Jacie continue their CIRSx 2026 recap with the medical talks, emphasizing that the episode should not be considered medical advice and encouraging listeners to consult their own CIRS practitioners. They summarize Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker's talk on “triple positives” on GENIE (AKT, RELA, tubulin) as an early risk pattern for neurodegeneration including Parkinson's, highlighting the promise of early intervention. Dr. Lacey Venanzi focused on gut-driven inflammation in CIRS via LPS, dysbiosis, permeability tied to low MSH, and discussed preferred microbiome testing. Dr. Kellen Milani shared a stalking experience and the need for practitioner boundaries. Louise Carter reviewed GENIE/HLA patterns, suggesting CIRS subtypes and vascular dysregulation. Dr. Eric Dorninger covered step five of the Shoemaker Protocol: androgen correction, especially DHEA, plus additional testing options like DUTCH. Dr. Scott McMahon critiqued overly broad test interpretation. Dr. Oseni discussed pulmonary manifestations of CIRS and spirometry, noting TGF-beta1 and fibrosis. Dr. Peg DiTulio reviews MARCoNS treatment data, maintenance strategies to prevent recolonization, and when to consider ENT/dental issues. For more information and support, join us at https://thecirsgroup.com TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro and disclaimer 01:00 Dr. Shoemaker on Triple Positives 03:34 Dr. Lacey Venanzi: Gut Endotoxins and Actinos 10:03 Dr. Milani: her story of being stalked by a patient 15:58 Louise Carder's talk on GENIE subtypes 20:46 Dr. Eric Dorninger's hormone support talk 24:52 Dr. Scott McMahon on proper medical terms 32:18 Dr. Oseni on testing lung capacity 35:57 Dr. Peg DiTullio: lessons from treating MARCoNs 42:59 Wrap Up Next Episode For more information and support, join us at https://thecirsgroup.com HELPFUL LINKS: Dr. Lacey Venanzi's website: https://www.drlacey.org/ Our interview with Dr. Lacey: https://youtu.be/baldT8N7nl4?si=A4SrJ6tmY_zr1u53 Dr. Lacey's new podcast with Dr. Christian: https://www.coherencedx.com/ Dr. Kellyn Milani's website: https://remedynaturalhealth.com/ Louise Carder's website (for UK based patients): https://www.colabeu.com/ Dr. Eric Dorninger's website: https://drdorninger.com/ Our interview with Dr. Anjali Noble about hormones and menopause: https://youtu.be/OStNHRNffqw?si=PUfXfmfcAoVbvFR1 Our episode on urinary mycotoxin tests: https://youtu.be/qWIIBaMybFA?si=5yoXqYTGvDSC6YG6 Our interview with Dr. Peg re: tick borne illness: https://youtu.be/czSjykCdOR4?si=P-oePTLGCG-ujip6 Dr. Peg DiTulio's website: https://regenixhealing.com/ Our episode all about MARCoNs: https://youtu.be/wOSmKcZr06s?si=7s7wJKQQa7EidDel Order Jacie's book! The 30 Day Carnivore Bootcamp: https://a.co/d/7MgHrRs The CIRS Group: Support Community: https://thecirsgroup.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecirsgroup/ Find Jacie for carnivore, lifestyle and limbic resources: Jacie's book on the Carnivore diet!  https://a.co/d/8ZKCqz0 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladycarnivory YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LadyCarnivory Blog: https://www.ladycarnivory.com/ Find Barbara for business/finance tips and coaching: Website: https://www.actlikebarbara.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/actlikebarbara/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@actlikebarbara Jacie is a Shoemaker certified Proficiency Partner, NASM certified nutrition coach, author, and carnivore recipe developer determined to share the life changing information of carnivore and CIRS to anyone who will listen. Barbara is a business and fitness coach, CIRS and ADHD advocate, writer, speaker, and a big fan of health and freedom. Together, they co-founded The CIRS Group, an online support community to help people that are struggling with their CIRS diagnosis and treatment.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.We were live from Berlin, which becomes the “capital of private capital” in June as the private equity's industry leaders make the annual pilgrimage to the city for one of the marquee private equity conferences, SuperReturn Berlin.Much of the SuperReturn conference is centered on fundraising. GPs take up every available space — from hotel rooms to Tiny Space cabins that line the parking spots on Budapester Strasse outside of the InterContinental conference venue — to conduct meetings with LPs.With Prosek Partners and former Bloomberg TV journalist Deirdre Bolton as my producer, along with her team, we took over a Tiny Space cabin to hold big conversations with some of the industry's leading alternative asset managers.Our first conversation was with Apax Co-CEOs Andrew Sillitoe and Mitch Truwit.Apax is one of the pioneers in the private equity industry. The firm's rich history dates back to the 1970s, when its founders, Alan Patricof (US), Sir Ronald Cohen (UK), and Maurice Tchénio (France), came together to establish the first US-UK partnership firm in private equity. During that time period, the firm backed Steve Jobs and the first iteration of Apple. The UK and US firms merged in 1981, laying the foundation for Apax.Today, Apax stands at over $80B in aggregate funds raised. The firm underwent its second leadership transition in 2014, when Andrew and Mitch were elected as Co-CEOs, succeeding Martin Halusa, who became Chairman.Apax sits in a unique position. They are a scaled platform that focuses on the middle market. They operate across three sectors, Tech, Services, and Digital / Consumer, infusing a digital DNA and value creation team into everything they do. Their platform spans “a mile wide and a mile deep,” which is what much of the conversation between Andrew, Mitch, and me unpacked.We had a fascinating discussion about the current state of private equity and the middle market, why Apax focuses on “density-driven business models,” why the firm focuses on carveouts in the middle market, what's underappreciated about the middle market, why it's important to “buy in the right neighborhood and fix it up,” and how the firm's core values of “having impact through insight and tenacity” drive every decision they make.BiosAndrew Sillitoe has been Co-CEO of Apax since 2014. He is Chairman of the Apax Global Investment Committee and the Digital Investment Committee, amongst others. He is also a member of the Apax Executive Committee. He has been based in London since joining the Firm in 1998, focusing on Tech & Telco investments.Andrew has been involved in a number of investments including Inmarsat, Intelsat, King, Orange Switzerland, TIVIT, TDC and Unilabs.Prior to joining Apax, Andrew was a consultant at LEK. Andrew holds an MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MBA from INSEAD.BoardsAndrew has previously served on the boards of Inmarsat, King, Intelsat, Orange Switzerland and TDC.Mitch Truwit is Co-CEO of Apax, based in New York.Prior to joining Apax in 2006, Mitch was the President and CEO of Orbitz Worldwide between 2005 and 2006 and was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of priceline.com between 2001 and 2005.Mitch is a graduate of Vassar College where he received a BA in Political Science. He also holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School.BoardsMitch serves as a Board member of Openlane and Trade Me. Prior boards include Advantage Sales & Marketing, Assured Partners, Dealer.com, Bankrate, Garda World, Hub International, Trader Canada, Boats Group and Quality Distribution Inc.Mitch serves on the charitable boards of the Apax Foundation, the John McEnroe Tennis Project, Posse and StreetSquash.Thanks, Andrew and Mitch, for a fascinating conversation and for sharing your expertise, wisdom, and passion at the intersection of investing and operating in private equity.Show Notes00:00 Meet Apax co-CEOs, Andrew Sillitoe and Mitch Truwit00:26 Andrew's Origins at Apax00:47 Private Equity Then vs Now01:25 Apax Growth and Values01:45 Curiosity as a Differentiator02:04 Mitch's Operator Background02:56 Why Mitch Joined Apax03:40 Defining the Middle Market04:14 Why Sub-Billion EV Works04:59 Middle Market Talent Gap05:20 Carve Outs as a Strategy05:29 TRADER Corporation - Canada App Turnaround06:12 Scaled Platform Advantage07:14 Digital DNA and AI Wave07:50 Top Line Growth Lever08:36 Add-ons and TAM Expansion09:33 ECI Case Study Roll Up10:07 Integration Over Collection10:28 Exit Options in a Bigger PE World10:59 Building for Multiple Buyers11:45 Fund Size Discipline12:34 Choosing Returns Over AUM13:16 Understanding Firm DNA14:01 Global Micro Investing14:49 Making Global Pods Work15:50 Scale Specialization Flexibility17:08 Where to Invest Now19:23 Buying Complexity for Value20:15 Moats and Investment Committee22:13 Why Middle Market Excites Them23:19 Future of PE and AI at Scale24:50 Impact Insight Tenacity Culture25:54 Obligation to Dissent Story26:55 Aspirational Brand Analogy27:48 Wrap Up and Thanks

Richard McGirr talks to Chad Ackerman as he shares his journey from building a community of LPs at Left Field Investors to coaching operators and investors on mastering deal structures. You'll discover how simplifying complex arrangements like preferred equity and deal tranching can dramatically increase your chances of closing deals, while reducing your risk and aligning incentives for all parties involved. Chad Ackerman Founder of Chad Ackerman Real Estate Based in: Dublin, Ohio Where to find them: https://chadackermanrealestate.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-ackerman-8089a8a Book your free demo today at bill.com/bestever and get a $100 Amazon gift card. Visit https://malabarhillcapital.com/ for more info. Podcast production done by⁠ ⁠Outlier Audio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1 · SummaryPart 1 of 2. Kanwal Singh is the first venture capitalist to appear on First Principles, and the reason is the bet he made with the fund itself. In 2017, at the peak of the tech boom, he walked away from tech investing to raise a fund only for Indian consumer brands, when almost nobody believed India had a consumer story worth venture capital. His first backers weren't institutions, they were the consumer families who had built India's brands. This half covers the whole bet: what investors actually said when he pitched a consumer-only fund, why he raised in India rather than abroad, the ownership and follow-on design he corrected fund after fund, his claim that most of his companies succeed rather than one outlier, and his working map of India 1, 2 and 3. Part 2 turns to the person behind it.2 · Chapters0:00 Cold open and Part 1 intro 3:27 What Fireside is, and why it exists 10:04 How the fund makes money 11:23 The stats: 9 years, 4 funds, 68 investments 12:50 Raising fund one: consumer families, not global institutions 17:14 Two years as a solo angel 25:51 Ownership by design, and the follow-on model 34:05 What "success" means, and the anti-power-law 36:56 The centre of excellence 45:40 The three breaks from the VC default, and India 1/2/3 53:47 Quick commerce is brand-first 57:54 Brand vs performance: Underneat, Truvi3 · Pull-quotes[0:20] "For a 5x, nobody will call you legendary."[34:24] "We can build successful funds, fund after fund... not necessarily depending on those one or two outliers. Good news is we also have the outliers."[40:26] "The answer lies in the question. It is hard."[54:12] "The power of the brand is truly manifest in quick commerce."4 · Frameworks & mental modelsAnti-power-law investing: a portfolio where most companies clear "capital plus," not one built to live or die on a single outlier.The three breaks from the VC default: consumer over tech, Indian consumer-family LPs over global institutions, one shared-credit team over lone-hero dealmakers.India 1, 2, 3: his working map of where consumption grows, with India 2 needing products designed for it and India 3 reached through doorstep models.Quick commerce is brand-first: scarce shelf space and a buy-not-browse shopper mean only brands with genuine pull survive.This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Our guest on This Week in Radio Tech episode 809 is Tim Berry, Chief Engineer at WUOT-FM, the public radio station at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. WUOT combines NPR news with classical and jazz music, much of it still played live from CDs and occasionally from the station’s enormous collection of LPs. Tim gives us a tour of the control room, performance area, technical center, and an extraordinary music library that also includes thousands of historic 78 RPM records. We’ll see one of Tennessee’s earliest Audio over IP installations, built around Axia Livewire technology and operating for about 15 years. Tim also maintains more than 20 analog and digital amateur radio repeater sites throughout East Tennessee. Join us for a fascinating look at preserving broadcasting’s rich history while planning the technical upgrades that will carry WUOT into the future. Show Notes:Pioneers & Engineers - The WUOT Story Guest:Tim Berry, CBRE, CBT - Chief Engineer at WUOT-FM & WUTK-FM "UT's College of Rock!" Host:Kirk Harnack, The Telos Alliance, Delta Radio, Star94.3, South Seas, & Akamai BroadcastingFollow TWiRT on Twitter and on Facebook - and see all the videos on YouTube.TWiRT is brought to you by:Broadcasters General Store, with outstanding service, saving, and support. Online at BGS.cc. Broadcast Bionics - making radio smarter with Bionic Studio, visual radio, and social media tools at Bionic.radio.Aiir, providing PlayoutONE radio automation, and other advanced solutions for audience engagement.Angry Audio and the new USB Phone Gizmo - Put VoIP callers on-the-air The new MaxxKonnect RMT416 Multi Tuner - 4 to 16 AM/FM/WB/HD web-connected tuners in 1 RU Subscribe to Audio:iTunesRSSStitcherTuneInSubscribe to Video:iTunesRSSYouTube

Our guest on This Week in Radio Tech episode 809 is Tim Berry, Chief Engineer at WUOT-FM, the public radio station at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. WUOT combines NPR news with classical and jazz music, much of it still played live from CDs and occasionally from the station's enormous collection of LPs. Tim gives us a tour of the control room, performance area, technical center, and an extraordinary music library that also includes thousands of historic 78 RPM records. We'll see one of Tennessee's earliest Audio over IP installations, built around Axia Livewire technology and operating for about 15 years. Tim also maintains more than 20 analog and digital amateur radio repeater sites throughout East Tennessee. Join us for a fascinating look at preserving broadcasting's rich history while planning the technical upgrades that will carry WUOT into the future.

This week's video transcript summary is here. You can click on any bulleted section to see the actual transcript. Thanks to Granola for its software.EditorialIntelligence: Who Owns it?This week the word “AI” feels too small.AI is a technology. Intelligence is its product. And if intelligence is the product, the question is no longer just: Which model is best? Who has the cheapest tokens? Who owns the weights? Who controls the data center? Those are important questions, but they are lower in the stack.The bigger question is simpler and more political:Who owns intelligence?That sounds abstract until you make it concrete. Intelligence is becoming something companies can capture, package, serve, meter, route, improve, and sell.It can write code, answer questions, design molecules, automate offices, run agents, draft legal work, advise scientists, serve consumers, and reshape workflows. It is not merely software. It is a general-purpose capability. And all humans could benefit from more of it.General-purpose capabilities have a habit of becoming public questions. But the default answer, that public good is best delivered by government, is the wrong answer in this context.The Product Is IntelligenceWe should stop talking about AI as a feature and start talking about intelligence as the universal thing that is delivered as an input to the world.Water is an input. Electricity is an input. Literacy is an input. Connectivity is an input. Once a society depends on them, access stops being optional. Nobody needs government to build every well, power plant, school, or network. But everybody understands that a civilization cannot be organized around less than universal and reliable access to foundational inputs.Intelligence is reaching that level of importance now that we all know it is real.Government should not own it, operate it, or develop it. Quite the opposite. Companies are the right actors to build fast, compete hard, improve models, serve customers, and discover the real use cases. Self-interest is a useful framing here. Markets are good at finding demand, reducing costs, and turning invention into services people actually use.Companies are the right operators, developers, and owners. But that does not settle the real question of who owns the benefits. That is an economic question.If intelligence becomes metered infrastructure, what happens to the value it creates?The Ownership StackThis week's articles keep circling the same issue from different directions but in the nature of ‘circling' never quite nail it.Jamin Ball's “Own Your Weights” starts with the enterprise version of the question. Owning a model file is not enough. The durable asset is the loop: the data flywheel, the evaluations, the reinforcement system, the workflow learning, and the operating context that lets capability compound.Benedict Evans' “Ways to Think About Token Pricing” adds the market layer. Tokens may become essential, abundant, and cheap, like mobile data. But being essential does not guarantee that the token layer captures the value. The money may move up the stack to whoever owns the workflow, the customer, the distribution, or the application.Alex Karp's fight with the labs, reported in “Alex Karp Is Saying What Every Angry CEO Is Thinking About AI”, is the same argument in sharper enterprise language. Companies are afraid that model providers will not just sell intelligence, but learn from customer workflows and then move into the markets where those workflows create value. The “All-in” group are echoing Karp's view.And “What Is Loop Engineering, and Who Owns It?” names the new contested terrain. The loop is where intelligence meets the world. Whoever owns the loop owns the learning. Whoever owns the learning owns the compounding asset.That is why “who owns intelligence?” is not a slogan. It is the question under the model layer, the application layer, the enterprise layer, and the economic layer.Because intelligence is the product, the tools creating it are fragmented and competitive. So there is no logic in trying to discuss this at the level of a single company or set of tools and models.The Old Promise Was That Commerce Would Tame PowerThe essays this week give the historical backdrop.Deirdre McCloskey, in “What Really Caused the Industrial Revolution”, argues that modern growth came not simply from capital accumulation, but from a change in permission: ordinary people were allowed to innovate, trade, build, and be honored for it.That matters because intelligence could be another expansion of permission. It could make more people capable of building, learning, creating, coding, researching, translating, selling, and coordinating. It could lower the cost of competence.But only if access is broad.Paul Krugman's “AI in an Age of Oligarchy” warns that the same technology lands differently in different political economies. A new general-purpose technology entering a broad, open, upwardly mobile society is one thing. The same technology entering a concentrated economy, with extreme wealth and weak counterweights, is another.Tim O'Reilly's Economist essay, “Elon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hate”, makes the governance point more directly. The old liberal hope was that commerce would tame arbitrary power. Markets, boards, courts, shareholders, disclosure, and competition would discipline the prince.But what if the prince uses markets to escape discipline?Henry Farrell's “political economy of billionaire derangement” pushes the same point. Founder culture, monopoly ambition, peer rivalry, weak correction mechanisms, and vast private control can amplify appetites rather than restrain them.The danger with intelligence is not that companies build it. They should. Companies build it, meter it, use public tolerance and public infrastructure to scale it, learn from everyone who uses it. All of those things are inevitable and healthy. Market forces will sort out winners from losers. The real danger is that the winners treat all of the surplus produced as purely private.Metered Intelligence Creates SurplusIf metering is not the problem, what is?The problem is pretending that metered intelligence creates value only for the metering entity. Metering water is only tolerated as a public good. If the public were blackmailed by a private water company with the threat of no water we would all rebel.Once we understand that the product of AI is intelligence we can see that every time intelligence is used, there is the immediate transaction: the user pays, the provider serves.But there is also system value. Usage creates signals. Workflows reveal patterns. Prompts, corrections, failures, preferences, integrations, edge cases, and business processes all help define where intelligence is useful and how it should improve. Intelligence breeds intelligence.Even when customer data is contractually protected, the market learns. The platform learns where demand is. The product team learns which workflows matter. The ecosystem learns which jobs are vulnerable, which tasks are automatable, and which parts of the economy can be reorganized around machine intelligence.So the surplus is not born in a vacuum.It rests on public science, public education, public data exhaust, public law, public infrastructure, public energy systems, public tolerance for data centers, and billions of human interactions. It is served by companies, but it is not made only by companies.This is why “Americans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies' Riches” belongs at the center of this week's issue. The detail can be debated. The principle is harder to dismiss. If intelligence becomes a new foundational resource, then some part of the wealth it creates should flow back to the people whose society makes it possible. Intelligence did not suddenly appear. AI is built on the entire history of human intelligence. It benefits from it and at the same time evolves it.Not Nationalization. A Human Wealth Fund.If intelligence belongs to everybody, some conclude that government ownership of intelligence is the right outcome.Governments are not well suited to build, operate, or improve intelligence. They will move too slowly, regulate too early, politicize the wrong things, and confuse economic participation with operational control.Andrew McAfee's “Why I Didn't Sign the AI Open Letter” is useful here. His objection is not that the technology is unimportant. It is that steering too hard before we understand the shape of the change can become its own failure mode. Marc Andreessen's satire of AI regulation is less policy than temperament, but it captures a real Silicon Valley fear: that regulation can become permission, capture, and incumbency before it becomes wisdom.That fear should be taken seriously.But it does not answer the economic question. It answers only the operational one.How can the economic benefits of intelligence be distributed? The better answer is a sovereign human wealth fund.Call it a sovereign wealth fund if you must, but the phrase is too national. Intelligence will not respect borders. The leading companies are global. The models, chips, data centers, agents, platforms, and workflows will be transnational from the beginning. If the value created by intelligence is global, then the mechanism for sharing some of that value should begin with the companies global enough to capture it. The nice thing about xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic is that they are supranational.These companies own and operate intelligence. Let them compete. Let them profit. Let them keep the incentives that make the system improve. But if intelligence is the new water, the wealth it creates cannot belong only to the companies that meter it. And they, themselves, have the power to fix it, even more than governments.Access will become a Human Right; Ownership Is the Economic DesignThis is where human rights come in. There is no right to access an AI model, yet. But there will soon be a need to change that.Not as a claim that every person is entitled to every frontier model at every moment for free. That is not serious. Capacity has costs. Models have costs. Inference has costs. Data centers have costs. Although those costs will decline over time, possibly quite quickly as self-learning models address costs.The claim is more basic: in a world where intelligence becomes a primary input into education, work, health, science, citizenship, creativity, and economic agency, baseline access to intelligence starts to look like a civic requirement.That could mean public access layers. It could mean education credits. It could mean open models. It could mean AI dividends. It could mean public-interest compute. It could mean taxes on rents. It could mean a company-initiated human wealth fund that returns some of the upside to society without handing the operating system to the state. The latter could couple wealth growth with universal distribution of ownership.The exact mechanism matters. But the distinction matters more.Government should not own intelligence. It should be universally available. And people should have a claim on the wealth intelligence creates.The Frontier Is Also PhysicalThe abstraction is not weightless.“The Fight Against AI Data Centers Is Just Beginning”, “New York becomes the first state to enact a data center moratorium”, Reuters on pollution from Musk's xAI power project, and DataGravity's “Who Captures Value in AI Infrastructure?” all say the same thing from the ground up.Intelligence uses land. It uses power. It uses water. It uses chips. It uses grid capacity. It uses neighborhoods. It uses public patience.That makes the value question unavoidable. A society can accept the buildout if the buildout is legible as shared progress. It will resist it if the costs are local, the profits are private, and the benefits feel enclosed.Who Owns the “Loop”?The week ends where it began.“Anthropic and Blackstone” are betting that implementation is the next trillion-dollar business. “Vint Cerf” is working on identity for agents on the open internet. “GPT-Red” points toward systems that improve their own robustness. “Kimi K3” adds another open frontier model to the global mix.The model race continues. The deployment race is accelerating. The governance race is behind.My view is this:The central product of this era is intelligence. Companies have figured out how to capture it, package it, serve it, and meter it. That is good. It should stay in the hands of builders who have the incentive to make it better.But intelligence is too foundational to become just another private toll booth. A significant part of it will turn out to be free to users.As intelligence becomes a general-purpose resource, then access to it becomes a human-capability question, and the surplus from it becomes an economic-justice question. Not because government should run it. Because government should not run it. The operating layer belongs with companies. The wealth question belongs with everyone. But companies are best placed to turn that into a process of distribution.The question is not whether companies should build intelligence. They should.The question is whether humanity gets a stake in the wealth created by the thing that may soon become its most important shared input.Contents* Essays* Deirdre McCloskey on What Really Caused the Industrial Revolution* AI in an Age of Oligarchy* Elon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hate* Murky Mirror: Truth and Consequences* The political economy of billionaire derangement* Is there any “oligarchy” to fight?* AI* Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats* Why I Didn't Sign the AI Open Letter* Own Your Weights* Ways to Think About Token Pricing* Alex Karp Is Saying What Every Angry CEO Is Thinking About AI* The AI Agents Are Coming for Microsoft Office* What Is Loop Engineering, and Who Owns It?* The Fight Against AI Data Centers Is Just Beginning* 6 months to live for open models* Americans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies' Riches* Who Gets to Define the Frontier?* GPT-Red: Unlocking Self-Improvement for Robustness* Anthropic, Blackstone bet the next trillion-dollar AI business is implementation, not just models* Vint Cerf is working on a plan to unleash AI agents on the open internet* xai-org/grok-build, now open source* The Pulse: What can we learn from Bun's rapid Rust rewrite with AI?* Orphan risks at the frontier of artificial intelligence* The Lab of the Future Should Feel Like a Data Center* Why AMI Labs' Alexandre LeBrun won't call his AI “AGI” or “superintelligence”* Kimi K3 Tech Blog: Open Frontier Intelligence* Venture Capital* Three Years In* Venture Has Rarely Looked More Bifurcated* The Best Angel Investors in the US: Who Backs the Most Unicorns, and Who's Active Now* Are Prediction Markets Doomed to Fail?* Regulation* Exclusive: The Next Frontier of the Deportation Wars: College Campuses* The Supreme Court Broke Independent Agencies. Here's a Way to Slow the Damage.* India's crackdown on a new WhatsApp feature risks setting a global precedent* Let's build a children's public internet* Computer cops* Google is better at playing the AI regulations game* Infrastructure* Who Captures Value in AI Infrastructure?* New York becomes the first state to enact a data center moratorium* Pollution from Musk's unpermitted xAI power project hits hardest in Black communities* Interview of the Week* The End of the End of Geography* Startup of the Week* Radical AI's Joseph Krause: The Scientist Building The “Waymo” Lab For New Materials* Post of the Week* Marc Andreessen on AI RegulationEssaysDeirdre McCloskey on What Really Caused the Industrial RevolutionYascha Mounk and Deirdre McCloskey | Persuasion | July 11, 2026Yascha Mounk interviews Deirdre McCloskey about her argument that the modern world's economic liftoff came less from capital accumulation than from a change in ideas. McCloskey says both left and right versions of the conventional story rely too heavily on investment: the left stresses exploitation and surplus value, while the right stresses virtuous saving by capitalists. Her objection is historical and economic. Human beings had always invested, from irrigation works and Roman roads to seed grain, and simple accumulation quickly runs into diminishing returns.McCloskey's alternative is that northwestern Europe, first Holland, then Britain and Scotland, and then the North American colonies, developed a liberal ideology that changed who was allowed to innovate and be honored for it. The conversation links that shift to the erosion of inherited hierarchy, the spread of dignity for ordinary commercial life, and a moral vocabulary in which liberalism is not merely procedural but connected to virtues and values. The point is not that machines, coal, trade, and institutions did not matter, but that they do not explain the scale and timing of modern enrichment without a cultural permission structure for innovation.The interview also turns to the contemporary defense of liberalism. Mounk frames the series around the worry that liberalism is often treated as too thin to command allegiance, while its opponents speak more directly to moral passions. McCloskey's case is that liberal societies became rich because they dignified experimentation and ordinary enterprise, and that liberals need to recover the moral language behind that claim.Read moreAI in an Age of OligarchyPaul Krugman | Paul Krugman | July 12, 2026Paul Krugman frames AI as a major technological shock arriving inside an already unequal political economy. The post says AI's economic and social effects may take years to understand, but argues that the setting matters now: America has much greater wealth concentration and political inequality than it did in the 1950s and 1960s, when progressive taxation, stronger regulation, and more active antitrust might have contained some of the destructive effects of a new technology.Krugman's opening claim is that the same technology would likely have different consequences in a more level society. In today's United States, he writes, extreme wealth is both a cause and effect of policies that favor a small elite, including low effective taxes on capital and high incomes, weak enforcement of worker protections and antitrust, and cuts to programs that benefit ordinary Americans.The article is explicitly more about oligarchy than AI. Krugman says the paid sections document the rise of the “.0002%,” the economics and politics of extreme wealth, how oligarchy will shape AI's impact, and possible policy paths. His caveat is that AI itself may still produce a pushback against oligarchy, but absent that, he expects the pre-existing concentration of wealth and power to magnify AI's downsides.Read moreElon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hateAuthor: Tim O'Reilly Published: July 12, 2026Tim O'Reilly argues that Elon Musk is using the legal forms of shareholder capitalism to escape the restraints that shareholder capitalism was supposed to impose. The article begins with SpaceX's public-market structure: ordinary public investors get little meaningful governance power, Musk keeps roughly 85 percent of the votes through super-voting shares, buyers waive jury trials and class actions, the company qualifies as controlled, and removal of Musk depends on the share class he controls. In O'Reilly's framing, that is not ordinary founder control; it is a design for being answerable to no one, possibly beyond Musk's own lifetime.The killer detail is the article's turn through Albert Hirschman, Montesquieu, James Steuart, Adam Smith, and Keynes. Older defenses of commerce held that markets would tame princely passions because the self-interest of merchants was safer than arbitrary rule. O'Reilly says Musk reverses that hope. The market discipline that was supposed to cage the prince has become the lever by which the prince raises capital, removes feedback loops, and carries private power into politics, government, Mars, robots, AI, or whatever ambition comes next.The pull is the link to AI governance. O'Reilly says corporations are already a kind of artificial intelligence: narrow-input systems that act at a scale no individual human can match. Their partial controls include independent boards, shareholder votes, courts, disclosure, regulators, public pressure, and activism. If the leaders building frontier AI strip those alignment mechanisms out of their own companies, the governance of the company becomes a preview of the governance of the machine.Read more: The EconomistMurky Mirror: Truth and ConsequencesAuthor: Esther Dyson Published: July 14, 2026Esther Dyson argues that today's institutional crisis is better viewed through the 14th century than through recent political history. Using Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror as her frame, she compares a world of famine, plague, church schism, feudal predation, and purposeless war with a present in which institutions again feel brittle, incentives are badly aligned, and power is shifting into forms that are hard to govern.The killer detail is the historical analogy between land, corporations, and AI. Dyson moves from nobles who controlled serfs and territory, to the East India Company as a quasi-sovereign business, to today's AI systems and data centers as a possible new sector that crosses and weakens both nation-states and companies. The question is whether AI becomes a new kind of private land, owned by a new nobility, or an open prairie that many people can cultivate.The pull is human attention. Dyson says the central question is not what AI will do to people, but how people will react to it: whether they can value love, kindness, embodied attention, and artisanal human presence in a world of seductive artificial offerings.Read more: SourceThe political economy of billionaire derangementAuthor: Henry Farrell Published: July 15, 2026Henry Farrell argues that the visible political radicalization of some Silicon Valley billionaires is not a random personality quirk, but a product of the political economy that made them. Starting from Tyler Cowen's dismissal of “billionaire derangement syndrome” and Tim O'Reilly's warning that Elon Musk is using shareholder capitalism to escape shareholder restraint, Farrell flips the phrase: the question is why billionaires themselves can become deranged.The killer detail is Farrell's use of Peter Thiel as both theorist and example. Thiel's Stanford lectures described startups as monarchies and founders as figures vested with unusual power, while Silicon Valley culture rewarded eccentricity, monopoly ambition, and founder exceptionalism. Farrell says those ideas combined with dense founder-investor networks, peer rivalry, and weak correction mechanisms to amplify rather than discipline princely appetites.The pull is the ideological problem for classical liberals who once saw tech wealth as an ally of markets and freedom. Farrell says commerce did not tame the passions; in parts of Silicon Valley, the passions have begun to devour markets, institutions, and the liberal story that justified them.Read more: SourceIs there any “oligarchy” to fight?Matthew Yglesias | Slow Boring | July 16, 2026Matthew Yglesias argues that “oligarchy” is a rhetorically powerful but analytically loose way to describe American politics. The post begins from Bernie Sanders' “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, Amy Klobuchar's warning about a MAGA “broligarchy,” and the long afterlife of the Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page paper that was widely summarized as showing that only the rich matter in policy outcomes. Yglesias says the evidence supports a weaker claim: affluent people and business leaders have unusual access and influence, but that is not the same as rule by a small cabal.His main distinction is between inequality and oligarchy. The Gilens-Page measure treated the top 10 percent of households as “the wealthy,” and later critics found that rich and middle-class preferences usually align; in the cases where they differ, the rich win about 53 percent of the time. Yglesias also says business executives get special access partly because their decisions are materially important to communities, jobs, investment, and local tax bases, not only because of campaign donations.The post preserves Jerusalem Demsas' counterpoint from their podcast discussion: privileged donor and business access can still violate democratic equality even if the oligarchy label overstates the structure of power. Yglesias' narrower claim is that Democrats should be precise about what problem they are trying to solve, because donor influence can also push the party left on climate and cultural issues in ways that alienate many voters.Read more: Slow BoringAINearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. ThreatsAuthor: Ben Casselman Published: July 13, 2026Ben Casselman reports on “We Must Act Now,” a statement warning that artificial intelligence could transform the economy faster than any previous technology and that policymakers need to move faster to understand and respond. The statement says AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years, bringing risks such as large-scale job displacement as well as opportunities such as higher living standards. Nearly 200 people signed, including 15 Nobel laureates, the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.The killer detail is who joined the warning. Casselman notes that the signatories include economists who have historically been skeptical of Silicon Valley's most dramatic AI job-loss forecasts, including Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, the MIT professors who won the 2024 Nobel in economics. Erik Brynjolfsson, who helped organize the statement, says there has been a notable change in the profession and that economists and policymakers are not ready for the “tsunami” he sees coming.The pull is the measurement problem. The statement does not offer a specific policy menu, but calls for economists, policymakers, and industry leaders to understand the economics of transformative AI and steer it toward complementing humans. Brynjolfsson says one high priority is better data on AI's spread and impact, because current measures tell conflicting stories about job losses and which workers are most exposed.Read more: The New York TimesWhy I Didn't Sign the AI Open LetterAuthor: Andrew McAfee Published: July 13, 2026Andrew McAfee explains why he did not sign “We Must Act Now,” the AI economy statement organized in part by his longtime collaborator Erik Brynjolfsson. McAfee agrees with the letter's starting point that AI is likely to become radically more powerful over the next decade and that it is a general-purpose technology. His objection is not to urgency or to studying AI's economic effects, but to the framing of risk, displacement, and institutional steering as the first move.The killer detail is McAfee's line edit. He says the original letter comes close, then “bounces off the crossbar” by calling for incentives, guardrails, and institutions to steer AI before we know enough about its actual impacts. He points to mixed current evidence: labor-market canaries, but also rising software job postings, low unemployment for younger workers, rising real median income, and claims that AI-adopting companies are adding workers faster than low-adopting peers. His worry is that the letter leans toward upstream governance and dirigisme when the evidence may call for capability building instead.The pull is his replacement statement. McAfee keeps the three-paragraph structure but changes the emphasis: AI is likely to become radically more powerful; like earlier world-changing technologies it will raise living standards while also bringing harms and shocks; and economists, policymakers, and technology leaders should build the capabilities to respond quickly and effectively. It is a concise version of the permissionless-innovation case inside the AI policy debate.Read more: The Geek WayOwn Your WeightsAuthor: Jamin Ball Published: July 10, 2026Jamin Ball argues that the enterprise AI debate about whether companies should “own their weights” or rent models from frontier labs is asking too narrow a question. A model weight file gives a company control over a point-in-time artifact, but not durable control over the capability stack. In his framing, the weight file is a melting ice cube: it does not get worse in absolute terms, but it falls behind as frontier systems improve and enterprise needs change.The killer detail is what Ball says companies really need to own: the data flywheel, reinforcement learning infrastructure, and evaluation harness that produce and improve the model. Simply deploying an open-weights model and declaring sovereignty leaves the enterprise with yesterday's capability and no way to compound workflow-specific learning.The pull is that enterprise AI control may be less about model ownership than operating ownership. The defensible layer is the system that turns company data, edge cases, business definitions, and evaluations into continuously improving performance.Read more: Clouded JudgementWays to Think About Token PricingAuthor: Benedict Evans Published: July 9, 2026Benedict Evans argues that today's AI token prices are a temporary signal from a supply-constrained market, not a reliable guide to long-term value capture. The open question is whether foundation models keep durable pricing power or become commodity infrastructure as data-center capacity, inference efficiency, and model competition all shift. His current read is that the visible market dynamics point toward commoditization unless something materially changes.The killer detail is the mobile data analogy. Evans says cellular networks became a trillion-dollar industry with hundreds of billions in capex after data usage exploded, but carrier stocks went nowhere because value moved up the stack. Tokens may behave similarly: an opaque unit tied to marginal cost, sold through bundles, essential to everything, yet not necessarily where profits accrue.The pull is uncertainty, not prediction. Evans lists paths to model dominance, including network effects, less competition, regulation, export controls, or a lab pulling ahead on execution, but says each requires a new fact not yet visible. Without that change, the model layer looks more like infrastructure beneath the products that capture value.Read more: SourceAlex Karp Is Saying What Every Angry CEO Is Thinking About AIAuthor: Tim Higgins Published: July 11, 2026Tim Higgins reports that Palantir CEO Alex Karp has turned corporate frustration with AI labs into a public argument about enterprise control. Palantir released a white paper, “Institutional Sovereignty in the Age of AI,” laying out steps companies and governments can take to protect themselves from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other foundation-model providers. The article links that paper to Karp's CNBC appearance, where he said “something has gone completely wrong” in the relationship between AI labs and customers and argued that enterprises are paying for tokens that create little value.The killer detail is the value-capture question. Higgins writes that Karp's critique has resonated because AI labs may gain power and insight from customer data, workflows, and decision-making, even when enterprise policies say customer data are not used for training. David Sacks amplified the concern by arguing that Anthropic is moving from the model layer into vertical applications such as science, security, legal, and coding, raising the fear that model providers will watch where value is being created and then move into those markets directly.The pull is that Karp is not alone, even if his style is unusually combative. Higgins notes that Satya Nadella has also warned that companies need to retain the learnings created when they use AI models, while Mark Zuckerberg has framed Meta's new model release partly around lower-cost frontier intelligence. The article presents Karp's campaign as one sign that established technology companies and large enterprises are trying to define where they fit when AI labs become central infrastructure, application competitors, and potential IPO giants at the same time.Read more: The Wall Street JournalThe AI Agents Are Coming for Microsoft OfficeAlex Wilhelm | Cautious Optimism | July 11, 2026Alex Wilhelm argues that one of the week's quieter AI questions is whether the productivity market that Microsoft successfully moved into subscription software is now being attacked by agentic tools. The piece begins with the infrastructure backdrop: SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in a U.S. listing while building U.S. HBM and advanced-packaging capacity, and memory, chip, and foundry companies are now priced for sustained AI demand.Wilhelm then says the AI conversation has shifted quickly from raw capability to cost per task. He cites new model releases and vendor language emphasizing cheaper agentic and coding models, faster performance, and lower dollars per task. That matters because lower costs make it more plausible for AI systems to take on routine knowledge work at scale rather than remain a premium coding assistant market.The core of the article is Microsoft Office. Wilhelm notes that Microsoft turned Office from a one-time purchase into Microsoft 365, a large recurring revenue business with tens of millions of subscribers and a major productivity segment. Now, he says, late-stage unicorns and AI labs are pushing into the same territory: Anthropic's Cowork was reportedly used mostly outside software development, OpenAI merged ChatGPT and Codex into a tool for creating sheets, slides, docs, web apps, and long-running work, and other companies are building agentic coworkers that connect business data to documents, workflows, schedules, alerts, and apps.The article's caveat is that Microsoft has survived major platform shifts before. The argument is not that Office disappears quickly, but that the definition of office software is broadening from documents and spreadsheets into AI systems that can create, monitor, and act across workplace data.Read moreWhat Is Loop Engineering, and Who Owns It?Author: Nilesh Barla Published: July 11, 2026Nilesh Barla argues that “loop engineering” is becoming a distinct discipline because production AI agents now fail less at single prompts than at runtime: when to stop, what state to preserve, and how to recover after a bad step. Prompt engineering shapes one model call, and context engineering shapes what the model sees, but loop engineering shapes what a sequence of calls actually does.The killer detail is the three-primitives frame. Barla says a real agent loop needs halt conditions, state carryover, and recovery paths, then maps teams across five maturity levels. At the lowest level, an agent is just a model call in a for-loop with a step cap and raw history; by the higher levels, the system has structured state, explicit planning, replay, evaluation, and self-repair.The pull is organizational. If agents are becoming production systems rather than demos, someone has to own the runtime itself. The loop engineer is the role Barla gives to the person responsible for making long-running agent work dependable.Read more: Adaline LabsThe Fight Against AI Data Centers Is Just BeginningEmma Roth | The Verge | July 12, 2026Emma Roth argues that community resistance to data centers has moved from an early warning sign into a national political fight as AI facilities grow larger, more power-hungry, and more visible to nearby residents. The article starts with Apple's failed 2015 plan for a $1 billion data center in Athenry, Ireland, where a small group of residents challenged the project over noise, light pollution, flooding, traffic, and wildlife effects until Apple abandoned it in 2018.The current data-center buildout is presented as much larger and more contentious. Roth writes that residents now cite rising energy costs, water quality, noise, light pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, while the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects commercial energy demand to surpass residential demand this year because of AI data centers and Goldman Sachs expects data-center power demand to double by 2027.The central evidence comes from Data Center Watch, which says protesters blocked or delayed at least 75 U.S. projects worth $130 billion from January to March, with active opposition groups more than doubling from 396 at the end of 2025 to 833 by the end of the first quarter of 2026. Roth also cites QTS abandoning a $12 billion Wisconsin campus, Delaware City regulators blocking a 580-acre project under the Coastal Zone Act, opposition stopping a QTS project in Prince William County, and pressure that pushed Kevin O'Leary to downsize the proposed 40,000-acre Project Stratos in Utah.The policy section describes a split between federal acceleration and local resistance. President Trump has treated data centers as part of the AI race with China and fast-tracked construction, while some Republican candidates are distancing themselves from that position ahead of midterms. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have proposed a moratorium until price and environmental protections exist, bipartisan lawmakers are backing ratepayer-protection measures, and states including Florida, Idaho, and Washington have passed rules on cost shifting, water use, and tax breaks. Roth's caveat is that the policy patchwork is still incomplete, leaving many communities to fight project by project.Read more6 months to live for open modelsAuthor: Nathan Lambert Published: July 12, 2026Nathan Lambert argues that open-weight AI models are facing their most serious policy test so far because U.S. officials are beginning to discuss concrete controls rather than abstract safety concerns. He says reported White House conversations about a new executive order may initially target Chinese-origin models and government use, but could create a broader review habit for frontier open models. His forecast is that a model above the capability range of GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.8, or GLM-5.2 could trigger a ban or indefinite delay within six months.The post separates two policy fights that are becoming intertwined: distillation and frontier capability. Lambert says the distillation campaign against Chinese models has become a form of regulatory capture because Anthropic and other closed-model companies would gain economically if Chinese open models were banned. He does not dismiss IP protection, but argues that if a closed model's capabilities are dangerous enough to justify restricting open models, the lab also has to explain why those capabilities are exposed through a queryable API. He cites unauthorized access to Anthropic's Mythos private beta as evidence that APIs are not automatically secure.The broader claim is that a unilateral U.S. ban would hurt positive actors more than bad actors if comparable open models remain available elsewhere. Lambert says the only durable ceiling would require global agreement, which does not exist, and that open models can improve safety by allowing broad inspection, adaptation, and understanding. His proposed near-term off-ramps are a strong U.S. open model release from companies such as Microsoft, Meta, or Reflection, and a broader coalition of open-source beneficiaries lobbying for safe rollout rather than prohibition.Read more: SourceAmericans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies' RichesAuthor: Scott Stanford Published: July 14, 2026Scott Stanford argues that proposals to give the government a stake in AI companies miss the point unless ordinary citizens directly receive and control the upside. Sam Altman has discussed giving up equity in OpenAI, Washington already owns a stake in Intel, Nvidia is sharing China chip revenue, and Bernie Sanders wants large AI labs to contribute half their stock to a sovereign wealth fund. Stanford says those ideas all park value with the state, not with people.The killer detail is New Carlisle, Indiana, where AWS's Project Rainier is turning cornfields into one of the world's largest AI superclusters. The project is planned to run up to a million chips, draw more than two gigawatts of power, and represents an investment that has grown from $11 billion to $13.8 billion. Stanford uses that local transformation to argue that AI's public bargain should be visible at the household level.The pull is design. A citizen AI dividend would have to specify who earns a stake, how they hold it, and when they see cash. Without that mechanism, the AI wealth debate remains a fight over government balance sheets rather than public ownership.Read more: SourceWho Gets to Define the Frontier?Author: Mark Daley Published: July 14, 2026Mark Daley argues that Demis Hassabis is right to call for a serious institution to verify frontier AI systems, but that the power to test models is also the power to govern them. Hassabis's proposed Frontier AI Standards Body would get privileged pre-release access to advanced models, testing compute, held-out evaluations, support from national labs and security agencies, third-party auditors, and eventually authority to block models from the American market or coordinate a slowdown.The killer detail is Daley's constitutional objection. He says the proposal sometimes looks like a scientific lab, a standards body, an industry regulator, a licensing authority, and an emergency security council at once. Combining those roles because each requires technical expertise would be like putting the central bank, auditor-general, and Supreme Court in one building and calling it efficient.The pull is standard-setting. Daley's concern is not that verification is unnecessary, but that whoever writes the tests, decides what passes, adjudicates disputes, and grants market access may end up defining the frontier itself.Read more: SourceGPT-Red: Unlocking Self-Improvement for RobustnessOpenAI | OpenAI | July 15, 2026OpenAI describes GPT-Red as an internal automated red-teaming model trained to find prompt-injection vulnerabilities at a scale human red teams cannot match. The post says AI systems increasingly encounter third-party data through browsers, connected apps, local files, and tools, creating opportunities for malicious instructions hidden in emails, webpages, tool responses, or code repositories. Human red-teaming remains part of OpenAI's safety process, but the company says it is time-intensive and cannot generate enough diverse adversarial examples for model training.The system is trained through self-play reinforcement learning, with GPT-Red rewarded for eliciting valid failures and defender models rewarded for resisting attacks while still completing their tasks. OpenAI says the training environments specify threat models across settings such as local files, webpage banners, email bodies, and tool outputs. The model is kept separate from deployed production models because it is intentionally trained with malicious capabilities.OpenAI reports that GPT-Red generalized beyond its training set, including an internal replication of the indirect prompt-injection arena from Dziemian et al. (2025), where it found successful attacks in 84% of scenarios compared with 13% for human red-teamers. The post also says GPT-Red transferred attacks from simulation to a live autonomous vending-machine agent, causing price changes and order cancellations, and outperformed a prompted GPT-5.5 baseline against a Codex CLI agent on held-out data-exfiltration tasks.The article's main robustness claim is that OpenAI has used GPT-Red and predecessor models in training since GPT-5.3, with later GPT releases becoming more resistant to prompt injections. It says GPT-5.6 Sol has six times fewer failures on OpenAI's hardest direct prompt-injection benchmark than the best production model from four months earlier, that a “Fake Chain-of-Thought” attack class fell from more than 95% success against GPT-5.1 to below 10% against GPT-5.6 Sol, and that GPT-5.6 Sol fails on only 0.05% of GPT-Red's direct prompt injections. OpenAI says general capabilities and targeted over-refusal evaluations were not harmed, and says a preprint with more details will follow.Read moreAnthropic, Blackstone bet the next trillion-dollar AI business is implementation, not just modelsRebecca Bellan | TechCrunch | July 15, 2026Rebecca Bellan reports that Ode with Anthropic is the $1.5 billion AI implementation company launched by Anthropic with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, and other backers. The article says the venture reflects a growing belief among frontier AI labs that enterprise adoption requires more than better models: customers need engineers who can embed inside businesses and turn AI into working systems.Ode was originally conceived by Blackstone after it used both large consulting firms and smaller AI services boutiques across its portfolio companies. TechCrunch reports that Fractional AI, an AI engineering services startup, stood out and was acquired by the joint venture shortly after the venture was announced. Fractional now forms the foundation of Ode, which has 100 engineers and works closely with Anthropic's applied AI team to identify where the technology can affect specific businesses.Ode CEO Chris Taylor tells TechCrunch that the company could someday become a trillion-dollar business if it scales without losing quality. He says an ideal customer is one whose CEO treats the AI project as a top one or two priority, whether it is a major product feature or the reworking of a core business process. Ode will operate under a “Claude-first” principle, using Anthropic technology whenever possible, but the article says it can use rival AI products when needed.The article's central implementation argument comes from Ode chief technologist Eddie Siegel, who says model selection matters but is not where most of the engineering effort goes. He compares it to the choice of programming language in software: one ingredient in a system that still has to be engineered. Bellan writes that Ode's challenge is hiring and training enough elite generalist engineers, many of them former founders, while competing with OpenAI's The Deployment Company and consulting giants that have built their own forward-deployed engineering teams.Read moreVint Cerf is working on a plan to unleash AI agents on the open internetTim Fernholz | TechCrunch | July 15, 2026Tim Fernholz reports that Vint Cerf, after leaving Google, is advising Innovation Labs on an open architecture for identifying AI agents online. Innovation Labs is a subsidiary of Identity Digital, a DNS registry company, and its proposal is to use domain-name infrastructure as part of a system for agent identity, accountability, and auditability. The premise is that agents will need a way to identify themselves if they move beyond proprietary systems and begin interacting across the open internet.The concrete proposal is DNSid, a registry that links an AI agent to an existing internet domain and uses cryptographic proofs to log its registration over time. Innovation Labs says it is trialing the standard with unnamed hyperscalers and identity companies. Cerf frames the problem around authority and accountability: what authority an agent has, where that authority came from, who is accountable for the agent's behavior, how its identity is established, and why anyone should trust it.The article's caveat is that standards are still emerging and agents are more active than static domains. Cerf says the period may be both fascinating and exasperating because the functionality is powerful and interoperability is unresolved. He compares the adoption problem to TCP/IP: competing systems may not work together until users push for functional interoperation. He also says an agentic economy is not inevitable, but that people will try to build it because delegating work to agents will be easier.Read more: TechCrunchxai-org/grok-build, now open sourceAuthor: Simon Willison Published: July 15, 2026Simon Willison argues that xAI's decision to open-source Grok Build is best understood as a trust repair move after a severe privacy failure. The CLI had triggered backlash when users realized that running it in a directory could upload the entire directory to xAI's Google Cloud buckets, including one user's reported SSH keys, password manager database, documents, photos, and videos. xAI disabled the feature, said previously retained coding data would be deleted, and released the code under Apache 2.0.The killer detail is what the codebase reveals. Willison counts 844,530 lines of Rust, only about 3% of which appears vendored, and finds remnants of the upload system still present but disabled: gcs.rs contains Google Cloud upload code, while upload_session_state() now returns a hard-coded session_state_upload_unavailable error. He also notes copied or ported tool implementations from Codex and OpenCode, prompt files, and a terminal Mermaid renderer.The pull is that terminal coding agents are becoming large, intricate software systems in their own right. The privacy failure mattered because these tools operate inside the directories where developers keep their most sensitive work; the open-source release matters because trust now depends on inspecting what an agent can see, send, and do.Read more: SourceThe Pulse: What can we learn from Bun's rapid Rust rewrite with AI?Author: Gergely Orosz and Ivan Klaric Published: July 16, 2026Gergely Orosz and Ivan Klaric argue that Bun's AI-assisted rewrite from Zig to Rust is a practical sign of how software engineering changes when models can take on large, bounded migrations with clear feedback loops. The piece does not treat the rewrite as magic: Jarred Sumner first spent hours turning design judgment into a detailed porting guide, then used adversarial review, parallel agents, compiler errors, and tests to force the work toward correctness.The killer detail is the scale. Bun had 535,496 lines of Zig, 1,448 files, and 22 million monthly downloads, making a conventional rewrite a year-long freeze the team could not justify. Using Fable, Sumner split the work across 64 agents, produced about 6,500 commits, and got the migration done in 11 days at an estimated API cost of $165,000.The pull is economic, not theatrical. If a one- or two-year migration can become an 11-day project, AI coding is not just faster autocomplete; it changes which technical debts are worth paying down.Read more: SourceOrphan risks at the frontier of artificial intelligenceAuthor: Andrew Maynard Published: July 16, 2026Andrew Maynard argues that frontier AI safety frameworks are creating “orphan risks”: harms that companies can see, but do not formally own because they are hard to quantify, do not fit catastrophic-risk thresholds, or fall outside audit-friendly compliance machinery. His target is not existing frontier safety work, but the narrowing effect that happens when private companies decide which risks count as governable.The killer detail is Maynard's contrast between measurable model dangers and threats to value. He points to Meta's three-day Galactica collapse, OpenAI's 2023 board crisis, safety-team departures, and wellbeing litigation as examples of risks that damaged trust, culture, legitimacy, or users without fitting cleanly into conventional model-risk categories. The proposed fix is an orphan-risk register: a public record of risks a company considered and chose not to manage, with reasons.The pull is accountability. Frontier developers' internal scoping choices have become a de facto layer of public governance, so the question is no longer only which risks they manage, but which risks they quietly leave outside the frame.Read more: SourceThe Lab of the Future Should Feel Like a Data CenterLatent.Space with Andy Beam and Rafa Gomez-Bombarelli | Latent.Space | July 16, 2026Latent.Space interviews Lila Sciences CTO Andy Beam and chief science officer for physical sciences Rafa Gomez-Bombarelli about the company's attempt to build an AI-run science factory. The post describes Lila's thesis as treating the lab itself as an “infinite token generator”: if internet data drove the first era of AI scaling, experimentally verified scientific data may be the next scarce training source. Lila is trying to produce that data with robotics, lab instruments, orchestration software, and AI models wired into the wet lab.The central analogy is the lab as data center. Instruments are nodes on a graph, a magnetically levitating transport layer moves materials between them, and experiment scheduling looks like a compute queue. Beam says Lila is not simply an automation company, because the point is not just throughput; it is flexibility, generalization, and experiment capture. The post says Lila has built more than 10 trillion experimentally validated “scientific reasoning tokens,” not internet text or biological sequences.The interview ranges across biology, chemistry, drug discovery, materials science, and the limits of automation. It notes that Lila rebuilt one gas-sorption measurement to run roughly 2,500 times faster, claims its general models can transfer priors from small-molecule chemistry to metal-organic frameworks for carbon capture, and describes model-suggested platinum-group-free electrocatalysts that moved from looking boring or wrong to becoming strong performers. The caveats are physical: experiments have runtimes, biology cannot always be accelerated, chains of thought can be unreliable narrators, and reward hacking becomes more dangerous when a model controls a real lab.Read more: Latent.SpaceWhy AMI Labs' Alexandre LeBrun won't call his AI “AGI” or “superintelligence”Kate Park | TechCrunch | July 16, 2026Kate Park interviews AMI Labs CEO Alexandre LeBrun about why Yann LeCun's world-model startup avoids the language of “AGI” and “superintelligence.” LeBrun says the terms are not useful because they lack stable definitions: “We never used the word AGI. And I just noticed that nobody is using it anymore; they switched to superintelligence.” His argument is that the practical frontier is not a label, but whether AI systems can understand and predict real-world states.The article explains the world-model thesis by contrasting language prediction with physical-state prediction. A large language model predicts the next word; a world model predicts the next state, such as what happens when a glass tips over. LeBrun says LLMs remain complementary and efficient for language, but the physical world is where current AI is weak. Robotics is the clearest case: hardware has advanced quickly, but robots are still brittle outside controlled routines because they lack context and situational understanding.AMI is still pre-product, but TechCrunch reports that LeBrun was in Seoul looking for industrial partners, researchers, and global companies. He says world models cannot be built entirely inside a lab because they need access to real environments. That is why South Korea appeals to AMI: robotics, semiconductors, manufacturing, and fast adoption create the kind of hardware-heavy context that software-only AI has barely touched.Read more: TechCrunchKimi K3 Tech Blog: Open Frontier IntelligenceKimi | Kimi | July 16, 2026Kimi introduces Kimi K3 as an open 3T-class frontier model aimed at coding, knowledge work, reasoning, multimodality, and long-context agentic use. The source describes the model as a 2.8T-parameter system built on Kimi Delta Attention and Attention Residuals, with native multimodality and a 1M-token context window. It says Moonshot AI plans to release model weights by July 27.The post presents K3 through benchmark and use-case sections rather than as a general product announcement. It reports results across coding, productivity, agentic, and multimodal evaluations, including DeepSWE, Terminal-Bench 2.1, Program Bench, SWE Marathon, FrontierSWE, PostTrain Bench, OfficeQA Pro, SpreadsheetBench 2, MCP Atlas, AutomationBench, BrowseComp, GDPval-AA v2, AA-Briefcase, MMMU-Pro, MathVision, BabyVision, OmniDocBench, and PerceptionBench. The source says all reported K3 results use maximum reasoning effort with temperature and top-p set to 1.0, and that different benchmark comparisons use KimiCode, Claude Code, or Codex harnesses depending on the test.Kimi's caveats are unusually concrete. The limitations section says K3 was trained in preserved thinking-history mode, so quality may become unstable if an agent harness does not pass historical thinking content correctly or if an ongoing session switches to K3 midstream. It also says K3's emphasis on long-horizon tasks can make it excessively proactive when it encounters minor issues or ambiguous intent, and recommends imposing explicit behavioral constraints for applications that require strict boundaries. The post adds that K3 remains behind Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol in user experience despite being competitive overall.Read moreVenture CapitalThree Years InAuthor: Tomasz Tunguz Published: July 10, 2026Tomasz Tunguz marks Theory Ventures' third anniversary by arguing that AI's central market effect is time compression. In his telling, model release cycles, company revenue milestones, enterprise adoption, and venture categories have all accelerated. Seed, Series A, and Series B still exist as financing labels, but they no longer cleanly describe company maturity when some seed rounds are larger than IPOs and the best AI companies can mature much earlier than prior software companies.The killer detail is the shift from models to inference. Tunguz argues that inference has become the dominant AI market because workloads and buyer preferences are fragmenting: video, batch, local, agentic, and real-time tasks each create different infrastructure needs. He compares this to databases splitting into OLTP, OLAP, vector, and streaming categories, with AI pushing the same specialization into inference infrastructure.The pull is that Theory sees the AI-native venture firm as part of the same pattern. The firm says it has analyzed twice as many investment opportunities with three investors working alongside a nine-person intelligence organization, using agents and research systems to map markets, source companies, and support diligence. The piece is both a market map and a statement about how venture itself is being rebuilt by the technology it funds.Read more: LinkedInVenture Has Rarely Looked More BifurcatedAuthor: Beezer Clarkson Published: July 14, 2026Beezer Clarkson points to PitchBook's Q2 report as evidence that the U.S. venture market has split into two very different realities. AI now accounts for more than 60 percent of all U.S. venture deal value, meaning the headline market can look active and well-funded even while much of the non-AI market is dealing with a much colder liquidity and fundraising environment.The thread uses that split as the setup for Clarkson's latest Origins episode with Alec Litowitz, founder of Magnetar and QStar Capital and one of Citadel's original founding partners. Clarkson says markets like this are periods of genuine uncertainty, not merely ordinary risk, which is why Litowitz's Adaptability Quotient framework is relevant.The embedded clip makes the liquidity point concrete. Litowitz says DPI is “the resolution of uncertainty” because it converts an uncertain investment into actual cash returned to LPs. In his framing, a realized dollar is a real mark, while TVPI remains uncertain until it is realized.The killer detail is the distinction between pricing risk and resolving uncertainty. Litowitz's perspective matters because QStar is a SpaceX investor and Clarkson says the conversation happened just before one of venture's most consequential IPOs. The episode's stated questions are why venture remains a way to gain exposure to innovation, how AI is changing what is investable, why liquidity is ultimately a function of time, and why uncertainty requires a different decision framework from risk.Read more: XThe Best Angel Investors in the US: Who Backs the Most Unicorns, and Who's Active NowAuthor: Ilya Strebulaev Published: July 10, 2026Ilya Strebulaev ranks angels, angel groups, accelerators, and incubators by lifetime U.S. unicorn investments, counting checks written before a company reached unicorn status. The top of the combined list is dominated by organizations: Y Combinator leads with 113 unicorn investments, followed by Plug and Play at 52 and 500 Global at 41. Sand Hill Angels is the highest-ranked angel group at 31.The killer detail is how quickly the list changes below the biggest accelerators. Strebulaev says 271 of the 304 investors in the Top 200 are individuals, or 89%. In the top 100, individuals are 91%. That makes the market underneath the large accelerator counts look much more personal: mostly operators and individual angels writing early checks from their own networks.The pull is the ranking's own caveat. Strebulaev writes that every lifetime leaderboard has a blind spot because many of the unicorns behind those totals were founded a decade or more ago, and some angels have since moved into formal funds, slowed down, or stopped investing. His post therefore separates lifetime performance from recent cohorts, including companies founded in 2015 or later and 2020 or later. For founders or allocators making current decisions, that distinction matters: a career record and a current record are not the same measure.Read more: Ilya StrebulaevAre Prediction Markets Doomed to Fail?Author: Contrary Published: July 16, 2026Contrary argues that prediction markets' current boom depends on whether platforms can prove they are more than regulated gambling with exchange-style branding. Kalshi and Polymarket have reached mass cultural, investor, and regulatory attention, but the article says the underlying idea is old: academic markets, corporate forecasting tools, Intrade, PredictIt, and other predecessors all struggled with the same linked problems of liquidity, legality, and user appeal.The killer detail is the comparison with sportsbooks. Prediction markets present themselves as peer-to-peer, transparent, and non-house-based, but sports contracts reportedly account for more than 90 percent of Kalshi trading, and the article says the platforms keep a much thinner slice of volume than sportsbooks. A market can therefore show sports-betting-scale handle while generating far less revenue.The pull is that the product's hardest problem may be distribution of wins. If a small group of sharp traders captures most profits while casual users lose interest, prediction markets may become valuable data feeds and professional tools before they become durable consumer networks.Read more: SourceRegulationExclusive: The Next Frontier of the Deportation Wars: College CampusesAuthor: Adrian Carrasquillo Published: July 11, 2026Adrian Carrasquillo reports that college campuses are becoming a new front in the fight over immigration enforcement because automatic license plate readers can turn ordinary campus security infrastructure into searchable location data. His thesis is that Flock Safety's camera network, even without direct ICE or DHS contracts, can feed deportation enforcement through local police partnerships and data-sharing practices.The killer detail is the campaign target. The Emergency Campaign to Support Higher Education, working with Schools Drop ICE, is focusing on 75 colleges and universities publicly identified as having Flock contracts. Flock says it has no ICE or DHS contracts, but activists argue the risk comes through local agencies that coordinate with federal authorities and run searches on their behalf.The pull is broader than immigration. Carrasquillo notes that license plate readers have already been abused by officers for stalking, and that Flock's AI search features can identify more than plates, including bumper stickers. A campus safety tool can become a political surveillance system when the data layer is searchable.Read more: The BulwarkThe Supreme Court Broke Independent Agencies. Here's a Way to Slow the Damage.Author: Todd Phillips Published: July 12, 2026Todd Phillips argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Slaughter damaged independent agencies by ending for-cause removal protections, but did not leave Congress powerless. The ruling weakens the old model in which commissioners at bodies such as the FTC, NLRB, CPSC, SEC, and CFTC could be insulated from dismissal over policy disagreements. Phillips says the next fight is whether presidents can turn nominally bipartisan commissions into one-party instruments.The killer detail is the procedural fix: quorum rules. Phillips proposes that Congress require bipartisan slates of commissioners to be seated before independent agencies can act. A president could still fire commissioners, as the Court now permits, but if those firings broke quorum, the agency would be unable to proceed until replacements were confirmed. The guardrail would

Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha's top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: A look at the cool tech investors seeking sustainable solutions to help billions beat the heat; why impact LPs are buying and selling stakes in the secondaries market; and, debriefing this week's call, which asked whether faith-aligned investors can become known for what they are for, not just what they're againstTo try ImpactAlpha Edge, ⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠. RSVP for next week's Call.This week's stories:“Cool tech fund looks to India for sustainable solutions to beat the heat,” by Jessica Pothering“Liquidity for sellers, discounts for buyers in budding impact secondaries market,” by Amy Cortese“Helping faith-aligned investors direct their assets toward ‘human flourishing,'” by Erik Stein. Watch the full video replay.

Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha's top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: A look at the cool tech investors seeking sustainable solutions to help billions beat the heat; why impact LPs are buying and selling stakes in the secondaries market; and, debriefing this week's call, which asked whether faith-aligned investors can become known for what they are for, not just what they're againstTo try ImpactAlpha Edge, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠RSVP for next week's Call⁠.This week's stories:“⁠Cool tech fund looks to India for sustainable solutions to beat the heat⁠,” by Jessica Pothering“⁠Liquidity for sellers, discounts for buyers in budding impact secondaries market⁠,” by Amy Cortese“⁠Helping faith-aligned investors direct their assets toward ‘human flourishing⁠,'” by Erik Stein. Watch the ⁠full video replay⁠.

What does it take to write the very first check into a company that has almost nothing to show yet, sometimes not even a finished idea?Afore Capital helped invent the pre-seed category. When Gaurav Jain and Anamitra Banerji started the firm ten years ago, "pre-seed" was almost a slight, a label for founders who couldn't raise a proper seed round. They set out to build the world's largest pre-seed fund anyway, closing $47 million on a $40 million target, and every fund since has closed above plan. Afore now runs more than $500 million across four funds, with top-quartile DPI on the first three. The idea has become so mainstream that when Sequoia launched its latest fund, it said, "I guess we're pre-seed investors too."The real substance of the conversation is how Gaurav thinks. He is clear about what matters most in venture, and the order tends to surprise people. Being in the very best companies matters more than anything else, ownership comes after that, and the entry price that so many investors fixate on matters least, because fifty per cent of zero is still zero. He is also convinced that the genuine bottleneck is talent. There is a great deal of money in the world and very few people who can build something truly large, which is why at the earliest stage founders tend to choose their investors as much as investors choose them. You give a founder a million dollars with no collateral, and then you still have to convince them to take it. A pre-seed pitch, he says, is almost entirely storytelling with very little data behind it.If you want to understand how the earliest checks actually get written, and what it really costs to say no, this episode is worth your time.00:00 - Trailer01:00 - From Dehradun to Google to starting Afore02:08 - The Waterloo co-op that talked him out of every job03:18 - Back when "pre-seed" was an insult05:44 - When Sequoia said "I guess we're pre-seed investors too"07:26 - Afore's three products, and the experiments that failed09:01 - Hightouch was a travel company when they invested11:02 - Goldcast: no visa, no money, funded anyway12:07 - The through line is always the team14:44 - The Ramp miss17:24 - "Founders pick us more than we pick them"18:45 - The constraint isn't capital, it's talent22:24 - The Solana miss, when it was still Loom Protocol24:46 - Ramp's Super Bowl ad, the buses, his wife's business25:32 - What he looks for in founders28:50 - Coachability, happy ears, and the Mom Test31:28 - The biggest mistake: falling in love with the idea35:04 - The three things that matter, and "50% of zero is still zero"39:25 - "100% storytelling, 0% data"41:25 - Investing in India, and the fear of being dumb capital44:41 - "Sign the deal before Monday"47:26 - One engineer now does the job of 2051:43 - Raising from LPs, the undiscussed part of VC-------------India's talent has built the world's tech—now it's time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It's about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that's done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we're doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

This week on Swimming with Allocators, Earnest and Alexa welcome Senia Rapisarda of HarbourVest, who walks through her journey from Italy and Wall Street to leading venture and growth efforts in Canada, first at BDC and now as a major LP. She explains how Canada's venture ecosystem has evolved, the creation and impact of the Venture Capital Action Plan, and why innovation capital is critical to national sovereignty. The conversation covers what makes great Canadian fund managers (curiosity, humility, team-building, and agility), how emerging managers should approach institutional LPs and avoid basic fund management mistakes, and why valuation discipline and non-greedy founders matter in down cycles. Also, Nick Cassin explains how continuation vehicles (CVs) give LPs a choice between liquidity and extended exposure to high-conviction assets when a fund's term and capital are running out. He describes how the market has broadened to more types of investors and fund sizes, and outlines the conflict-of-interest controls that make these GP-led secondaries work. Highlights from this week's conversation include: Senia's Background, Global Career, and Move to Canada (0:21) Moving to HarbourVest and Designing Canada Growth Strategy (4:00) Canada's “Perfect Storm” and Agriculture vs Geology Metaphor for Venture (5:42) What Canada Needs to Fully Capture Innovation Opportunity (8:04) How US Allocators Should Approach Canada and Diversification Benefits (11:21) Expectations of Emerging GPs and Importance of Fund Management Basics (17:59) When Continuation Vehicles Make Sense for Venture (21:39) Trends in New Money Capital and Expansion of CV Market (23:40) Managing Conflicts of Interest in GP-Led Continuation Vehicles (26:29) LP Behavior: Who Rolls vs Sells in CV Transactions (31:14) Four Filters for Durable Companies and Role of Founder Non-Greed (34:29) Longevity as an Asset Class and Implications for Pensions (37:03) Applying Longevity and Defense-Tech Themes in Manager Diligence (41:00) Innovation Capital as Part of Canada's Sovereignty and Late-Stage Capital Gaps (44:33) How Emerging Managers Should Approach HarbourVest and Build Track Record (47:12) Connecting with Senia and Parting Thoughts (51:01) HarbourVest Partners is a global private markets investment firm managing approximately $150B in assets, with a 45-year history and venture as a core part of its franchise. The firm operates as a multi-strategy, multi-manager platform — primary fund investments, secondaries, direct co-investments, and credit — across North America, Europe, and Asia. Senia Rapisarda leads HarbourVest's Canadian strategy from Toronto, deploying capital across funds and growth-stage companies and serving as a bridge between the Canadian ecosystem and HarbourVest's global LP and GP network. Sidley Austin LLP is a premier global law firm with a dedicated Venture Funds practice, advising top venture capital firms, institutional investors, and private equity sponsors on fund formation, investment structuring, and regulatory compliance. With deep expertise across private markets, Sidley provides strategic legal counsel to help funds scale effectively. Learn more at sidley.com. Swimming with Allocators is a podcast that dives into the intriguing world of Venture Capital from an LP (Limited Partner) perspective. Hosts Alexa Binns and Earnest Sweat are seasoned professionals who have donned various hats in the VC ecosystem. Each episode, we explore where the future opportunities lie in the VC landscape with insights from top LPs on their investment strategies and industry experts shedding light on emerging trends and technologies.  The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this podcast are for general informational purposes only. HarbourVest Partners, LLC is a registered investment adviser under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. This material is solely for informational purposes and should not be viewed as a current or past recommendation or an offer to sell or the solicitation to buy securities or adopt any investment strategy.  The opinions expressed herein represent the current, good faith views of the author(s) at the time of publication, are not definitive investment advice, and should not be relied upon as such. This material has been developed internally and/or obtained from sources believed to be reliable; however, HarbourVest does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy or completeness of such information. There is no assurance that any events or projections will occur, and outcomes may be significantly different than the opinions shown here.  This information, including any projections concerning financial market performance, is based on current market conditions, which will fluctuate and may be superseded by subsequent market events or for other reasons. The information contained herein must be kept strictly confidential and may not be reproduced or redistributed in any format without the express written approval of HarbourVest. Nothing herein should be construed as a solicitation, offer, recommendation, representation of suitability, legal advice, tax advice, or endorsement of any security or investment and should not be relied upon by you in evaluating the merits of investing in HarbourVest funds or in any other investment decision. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode #281 See what others have to say about the deal and join the conversation: https://passivepockets.com/forums-listing/discussion/new-deal-dlp-capital-preferred-credit-fund/ Check out the DLP Preferred Credit Fund for yourself: https://passivepockets.com/directory/deals/dlp-preferred-credit-fund/ This Episode In this special LP Deal Review episode, Chris Lopez is joined by Adam Cranmer and Pascal Wagner to evaluate DLP Capital's Preferred Credit Fund with Don Wenner, founder and CEO of DLP Capital. Don walks through the fund's strategy, target return profile, underwriting process, borrower standards, and how DLP approaches development, construction, bridge, mezzanine, and preferred equity lending in today's market. The discussion digs into why DLP focuses on housing that is affordable for working families, how the firm thinks about lending in high-growth Sunbelt markets, and what separates its Preferred Credit Fund from a senior secured lending fund. Don also addresses several of the key diligence questions LPs should be asking right now, including geographic concentration risk in Florida and Texas, loan-to-value and loan-to-cost metrics, borrower concentration, third-party validation, fund administration, internal controls, and how rising interest rates could affect the fund's risk profile. After Don leaves the conversation, Chris, Adam, and Pascal break down the fund from an LP perspective. They discuss what they like about DLP's track record, reporting, borrower quality, and institutional infrastructure, while also highlighting the risks they are watching closely, including mezzanine exposure, state concentration, self-dealing concerns, fees, macro uncertainty, and whether the return spread is attractive enough compared to risk-free alternatives. The episode closes with a broader conversation about how LPs should think about risk, liquidity, debt versus equity, and portfolio construction in an uncertain investing environment. Key takeaways: How DLP's Preferred Credit Fund targets monthly income through private real estate credit Why DLP focuses on housing affordability, experienced borrowers, and Sunbelt growth markets How Don compares mezzanine and preferred equity risk to senior secured lending fund risk What LPs should ask about loan-to-value, loan-to-cost, borrower concentration, and fund-level controls Why third-party audits, appraisals, loan tapes, and investor reporting matter in debt fund diligence How experienced LPs think about DLP's strengths, yellow flags, fees, concentration risk, and macro exposure Why each investor needs a clear portfolio thesis before choosing between cash, Treasuries, debt funds, or equity deals Join a community of passive investors. Start your FREE 7-day trial: https://passivepockets.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=none Listen to the PassivePockets Podcast Anywhere: https://lnk.to/passivepockets Subscribe to the Passive Investing Newsletter: https://www.biggerpockets.com/email-subscribe?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=none Join BiggerPockets for free: https://www.biggerpockets.com/signup?utm_source=owned_media Disclaimer The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk, so use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This podcast may contain paid advertisements or other promotional materials for real estate investment advisers, investment funds, and investment opportunities, which should not be interpreted as a recommendation, endorsement, or testimonial by PassivePockets, LLC or any of its affiliates. Viewers must conduct their own due diligence and consider their own financial situations before engaging with any advertised offerings, products, or services. PassivePockets, LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising out of reliance on information and advertisements presented in this podcast.

In this special episode of Tank Talks, recorded live during Toronto Tech Week at Moomoo Canada's flagship store in Yorkville, Matt Cohen sits down with two of venture's sharpest data and investment minds for an unfiltered conversation on the state of private markets.Peter Walker, Senior Director of Insights at Carta, brings the hard numbers from 60,000+ companies and 3,000+ US venture funds, revealing the stark reality behind valuation markups, unicorn deterioration, and the widening dispersion between top-tier and median deals.John Rikhtegar, Vice President at Northleaf Capital Partners and former RBC investor, offers the LP perspective on why trust matters more than ever, why emerging managers are bearing the brunt of capital allocation challenges, and how disciplined pacing and vintage diversification separate winning funds from the rest.Together, they tackle the 4.3 trillion-dollar NAV overhang, the brutal graduation rates for 2021 vintage funds, whether valuations have permanently shifted, and why the ATM analogy might be the best way to understand AI's impact on venture careers.If you're a GP raising capital, an LP sorting through manager pitches, or just trying to make sense of where venture is headed, this episode is a must-listen.The Great LP Reset: Trust Over Performance (08:05)* Why LPs are letting go of newer relationships while sticking with 15-year partners.* The COVID furlough analogy: why junior and newer team members are the first to go.* How trust became the ultimate table stakes in today's fundraising environment.The 4.3 Trillion Dollar NAV Problem (12:33)* Why SpaceX's IPO would return only 10% of capital deployed over the last decade.* The staggering number of unicorns still sitting on stale marks from 2021.* What happens when 50% of unicorn down rounds become the new normal.Valuation Dispersion Is Breaking the Model (17:38)* Seed valuations jumped from $15M post-money (2022) to $24M (2025).* Series A went from $46M to nearly $80M in the same period.* Why the gap between the top decile and the median has never been wider.* How GPs must adapt ownership expectations or get priced out of deals.The Unicorn Graveyard: Stale Marks and Deteriorating Assets (19:28)* December 2021: 640 unicorns on Carta; 85% of current US unicorns.* 30% have raised new up-rounds; of the rest, half raised down rounds of 50% or more.* How GPs are forced to tell LPs that their “trophy assets” are no longer real.Pacing, Reserves, and Portfolio Construction (22:53)* Why disciplined 3-4 year deployment beats 18-month “firehose” strategies.* The 80/20 reserve debate: why leading rounds can become a net negative.* How “deal 13” is just as likely to succeed as “deal 12”, and why slightly larger portfolios make sense.LP Diligence: It's Not About the Marks (31:55)* Why TDPI and DPI are just 2 of 100 mosaic factors in LP decision-making.* How LPs now go company-by-company, not fund-by-fund.* The importance of founder references, especially from failed companies.Canada vs. The US: A Fractal Problem (40:44)* Why every market (Toronto, Sydney, London, Seattle) faces the same “Silicon Valley problem.”* The importance of domestic liquidity and secondary markets over chasing US LPs.* Why returns, not international capital, will ultimately scale Canadian firms.AI and the Future of Venture Careers (44:44)* The ATM analogy: AI will eliminate tasks, not jobs.* Why the role of the investor becomes more important as noise and froth increase.* How family offices are shifting their mix between fund investing and direct deals.Retail Access to Private Markets: Feature or Bug? (53:27)* Why illiquidity in private markets is a feature, not a bug.* The absurdity of allowing crypto “shitcoins” but blocking friends from investing in startups.* Why “401k-entrance” to private equity is a bigger story than retail venture access.About the GuestsPeter Walker is the Senior Director of Insights at Carta, where he leads the team responsible for analyzing data from over 60,000 companies and 3,000+ venture funds. His work on valuations, liquidity, and fundraising trends is widely cited across the venture ecosystem. He is a regular speaker at industry events and writes extensively on LinkedIn about the intersection of data and venture capital.Connect with Peter Walker on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/peterjameswalkerLearn more about Carta: carta.comJohn Rikhtegar is a Vice President at Northleaf Capital Partners, joining in early 2026 after a distinguished career at RBC and as an operator at Shopify and in the UK. He brings a unique blend of LP and operational perspectives, with deep expertise in due diligence, portfolio construction, and the dynamics of emerging manager investing.Connect with John Rikhtegar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrikhtegar/Learn more about Northleaf Capital Partners: https://www.northleafcapital.com/Connect with Matt Cohen on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/matt-cohen1Visit the Ripple Ventures website: https://www.rippleventures.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

In this episode we sit down with Justin and Sean from Sweeney's Tavern. Located in the historic Franklinton neighborhood, this community bar boasts creative craft cocktails, classic beers (aka "Dad" beers), a record player and plenty of shenanigans. And there is Malört, lots of it; Malört shots, Malört infusions, Malört cocktails. So dig out your LPs and head to Sweeney's for a good time and Malört, if you dare.

This Episode Pat Zingarella joins Chris Lopez to share the story behind Invest Clearly, a platform built to bring more transparency to the private real estate investing world. Pat's journey started like many BiggerPockets listeners: learning through podcasts, buying his first small multifamily property, making painful mistakes, and slowly realizing how hard it can be for LPs to know who they can trust. Pat walks through the lessons from his first fourplex, including inherited tenants, COVID-era nonpayment, poor screening decisions, and the difference between blaming real estate versus recognizing where his own due diligence fell short. He also shares how a later experience working under a high-profile real estate figure exposed him to the darker side of the industry and helped shape his view that LPs need better tools, better transparency, and better ways to validate sponsors before wiring capital. Chris and Pat dig into how Invest Clearly works today: a directory of GPs, verified LP reviews, proof-of-investment requirements, and a growing database designed to help investors compare sponsor experiences in one place. They also discuss why reviews matter, what happens when operators try to suppress negative feedback, and why community-driven transparency can help separate strong sponsors from bad actors. Key takeaways: How Pat went from BiggerPockets listener to active investor to building Invest Clearly What his first fourplex taught him about screening, reserves, trust, and due diligence Why private real estate needs more transparency around GP track records and LP experiences How Invest Clearly verifies reviews and helps LPs research sponsors Why negative reviews, legal threats, and transparency are becoming bigger issues in the industry How communities like PassivePockets and tools like Invest Clearly can help LPs make better-informed decisions Join a community of passive investors. Start your FREE 7-day trial: https://passivepockets.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=none Listen to the PassivePockets Podcast Anywhere: https://lnk.to/passivepockets Subscribe to the Passive Investing Newsletter: https://www.biggerpockets.com/email-subscribe?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=none Join BiggerPockets for free: https://www.biggerpockets.com/signup?utm_source=owned_media Disclaimer The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk, so use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This podcast may contain paid advertisements or other promotional materials for real estate investment advisers, investment funds, and investment opportunities, which should not be interpreted as a recommendation, endorsement, or testimonial by PassivePockets, LLC or any of its affiliates. Viewers must conduct their own due diligence and consider their own financial situations before engaging with any advertised offerings, products, or services. PassivePockets, LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising out of reliance on information and advertisements presented in this podcast.

This Week In Startups is made possible by: CLA - www.claconnect.com/withyou Northwest Registered Agent - www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Agree.com - www.agree.com Today's show: Forget the triple-triple-double-double-double; the new bar for startups hoping to raise venture capital has reached the stratosphere, though our venture panel is worried that startups are focusing too much on today's problems that may not become companies tomorrow. During a lively VC roundtable, Cowboy's Aileen Lee, Floodgate's Mike Maples, and Lerer Hippeau's Ben Lerer joined Alex to dig into exiting pre-AI startups, rising valuations, token spend, why they are keeping their funds small, and whether the government just tripped OpenAI and Anthropic! Guest Links: Aileen Lee https://x.com/aileenlee Cowboy VC https://cowboy.vc Mike Maples https://x.com/m2jr Floodgate https://www.floodgate.com Bene Lerer https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjlerer Lere Hippeau https://www.lererhippeau.com Timestamps: 0:00 Aileen Lee, Mike Maples, and Ben Lerer join the show 5:13 Venture liquidity returns: what SpaceX/Stripe distributions mean for LPs 9:13 Bending Spoons prices IPO at $29/share, roughly $18.4B valuation 10:31 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life! 12:09 "Companies get bought, not sold" — Ben on taking first offers seriously 17:41 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 19:34 Mutiny's burn-the-boats AI pivot with Jaleh Rezaei 20:19 Northwest Registered Agent - Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist 22:15 Mike's KeepSafe story: the "rule of 70" and profit-first companies 25:12 The new growth bar: 5x, 4x replaces triple-triple-double-double 28:55 Fund size is your strategy: why Floodgate and Lerer Hippeau stay small 30:11 CLA - Innovation takes balance. CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at https://www.claconnect.com/withyou 37:39 The $100M Series A: Starcloud, General Intuition, Scale Cognition, Scout AI 40:35 King-making rounds and why mega-seeds destroy optionality 54:11 Open-weight models: the GLM-5.2 moment and going model-agnostic 55:30 Why fine-tuning open models is a treadmill, with Cursor/Kimi as an example 1:03:28 Grading the Trump administration on Mythos and Fable 1:06:33 Rising anti-AI sentiment, the wealth gap, and lessons from social media 1:11:43 Raising kids in the post-intelligence era 1:12:35 Where to find the panel and what each firm is investing in Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com