There’s a vast landscape of valuable but unconventional assets out there, but how do you find them, filter them, and properly value them? What frameworks can you use to understand them and how can you integrate them into a portfolio? Jeff Collins of Cloverlay, a seasoned investor in niche assets for decades, loves to explore these esoteric and overlooked opportunities. We delve into various topics, including litigation finance, data centers, the intellectual property behind Care Bears, refurbish...
Jul 12, 2025•56 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Joan Solotar is global head of Blackstone Private Wealth and a member of the firm’s management committee. Joan’s career tracks the fascinating evolution of Wall Street in the past thirty years. Joan worked on three notable IPOs: DLJ in 1995, Goldman Sachs in 1999, and Blackstone in 2007, and we discuss the strategic reasons behind them. She was tapped to lead the development of Blackstone’s private wealth group, which has since grown to $250 billion. We talk about the state of the industry she c...
May 04, 2025•56 min•Season 4Ep. 7
Mark Strauch is a founding partner and president of the private equity firm Alpine Investors, known for its unique CEO training program. With a background in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University and subsequent business studies focused on finance, his career spans operational roles at companies like Electronic Arts, entrepreneurial ventures such as the early cloud concept Desktop.com, and significant leadership challenges, including orchestrating a complex turnaround as CEO of Business E...
Apr 09, 2025•49 min•Season 4Ep. 6
Today we are going to hear the story of one of the most interesting firms to spring from a significant family office. JB and Tony Pritzker approached today’s guest, Paul Carbone, with the idea of expanding their direct investments into a free-standing firm called Pritzker Private Capital. Paul takes us through that journey and we discuss the importance of a well-defined value system, the benefits of family capital, partnering with other families, the difference between flexible and patient capit...
Mar 29, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 4Ep. 5
Jason Mudrick is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of the $3.4 billion Mudrick Capital Management, a firm renowned for its expertise in navigating complex credit situations and distressed opportunities. With a career spanning multiple market cycles, Jason brings a wealth of experience and a unique perspective on the evolving landscape of distressed investing. Forgoing a law career at Skadden, he did M&A at Merrill and then joined Contrarian Capital where he learned debt at the right-h...
Mar 16, 2025•55 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Today, we're charting the remarkable trajectory of a wealth management powerhouse: Pathstone. Joining us is Matt Fleissig, co-founder and CEO. Pathstone is a great case study for the major trends in wealth management over the last ten years. Pathstone’s DNA was from the well-known Harris MyCFO, which was the original dot-com family office formed by the founders of Netscape and WebMD. Pathstone has since grown into a firm managing and advising on a remarkable $162 billion in assets. Matt has been...
Feb 20, 2025•56 min•Season 4Ep. 3
Michael Fisch is a founder and the CEO of American Securities, a $23 billion private equity firm that originated in the Rosenwald family office. This is a great story of a fabled family office turning their investment DNA into a thriving private equity firm by buying market-leading businesses. William Rosenwald, son of Julius Rosenwald who built Sears Roebuck, started the family office back in the 1940s, investing in private companies. Michael’s mentor, Chuck Klein, took them to the next level i...
Feb 05, 2025•51 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Today’s guest is Jim Tananbaum of Foresite Capital. One of the most exciting places AI is revolutionizing is drug discovery, so I was very excited to have Jim on today. Jim Tananbaum is the founder and chief executive officer of Foresite Capital, a U.S.-focused healthcare investment firm founded in 2011 that has approximately $3.5 billion in assets under management. During the last three decades, Jim has been a thought partner for some of the most impactful and fastest-growth companies of their ...
Jan 17, 2025•47 min•Season 4Ep. 1
Today’s guest is Mark Gerson of 3i Members. Mark is a remarkable entrepreneur, philanthropist, and master at creating networks. He is most well known for founding Gerson Lehrman Group, the original and largest expert network in the world, and most recently, 3i Members, a global deal network for investors, all of whom have exited a company or led a family office. Mark is also the chairman of United Hatzalah, a network of volunteer medics in Israel, and the cofounder of the African Mission Healthc...
Dec 29, 2024•50 min•Season 3Ep. 17
David Salem has had a remarkable career. He did his undergrad at Middlebury, went to Harvard Business School where he sat next to Seth Klarman, then went to work with Jeremy Grantham at GMO where he became a partner. He started The Investment Fund for Foundations, a groundbreaking way for smaller endowments to benefit from professional investing and scale, and had David Swensen of the Yale Investment Office, Jack Meyer of the Harvard Management Company, and Seth Alexander of MIT, as well as many...
Dec 08, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Jennifer Prosek has built a powerhouse communications firm by focusing on asset management. She asked herself, "Why does the financial industry not care about its brand, and why are they so on the back foot about everything?" I was particularly keen to talk to her about how firms struggle to differentiate, especially as formerly low-profile parts of the industry, such as private equity funds, now look to expanding across the wealth channel and begin to look more like consumer brands. We talk abo...
Nov 11, 2024•57 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Zoe Cruz is a prominent figure in the financial services industry, known for her significant contributions and groundbreaking achievements as one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street. She was named one of the Forbes top 50 women in business four years in a row. With a career spanning over 25 years at Morgan Stanley, where she served as Co-President, Cruz played a pivotal role in managing major revenue-generating businesses, starting with her taking charge of the FX desk in 1993. Her exper...
Oct 29, 2024•52 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Michael Weisz has a real knack for finding unconventional opportunities and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. He cut his teeth in real estate, but quickly found his nuanced understanding of mis-priced risk prepared him for creative investments like litigation and receivable finance and strategies like loans to professional athletes during lockouts. We talk about the development of the Yieldstreet platform, how they think about the wide variety of offerings they have from fine art to CLO’s, the de...
Sep 16, 2024•51 min•Season 3Ep. 13
Today’s guest is Ted Seides from Capital Allocators podcast. I first did a print interview with Ted exactly seven years ago, when he had just completed his first book So You Want to Start a Hedge Fund? and had just started his podcast. Since then he has written two more books, Capital Allocators and today’s topic Private Equity Deals and now has one of the top investment podcasts in the world, with over 400 episodes. Private Equity Deals is a set of engaging case studies derived from his podcast...
Sep 06, 2024•53 min•Season 3Ep. 12
Greg Fleming is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Rockefeller Capital Management, a role he has held since the firm, formerly known as Rockefeller & Co., launched in March 2018. Greg and I discuss the pivotal Lehman weekend in September of 2008 when he was instrumental in the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, his thoughts on organic growth and mergers in wealth management, the founding of Rockefeller Capital with Viking and building on the legacy of the Rockefeller family ...
Aug 11, 2024•57 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Ken Kencel is the President & CEO of Churchill Asset Management, a $50 billion dollar platform serving over 700 institutional clients. He shared valuable insights on the growing private credit market, the evolution of the industry, his first job at Drexel, working at Carlyle and then going out on his own to start Churchill from scratch. We also discuss the nuances of the art of the covenent and finish with Ken’s desert island discs. Ken started his career in M&A at Drexel Bernham Lambert...
Jul 07, 2024•52 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Jason Schwarz is Deputy Chief Executive Officer and President at Wilshire, which currently manages over $100 billion in assets and advises on $1.3 trillion. Jason was raised in a legal family, but his path diverged from the expected, fueled by a desire to carve his own niche. He told me, “I think you see this with sons and daughters of successful parents," he mused. "One path is to follow in the same direction, the other is to go in one's own direction. And I chose that." This decision led him w...
Jun 27, 2024•41 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Anthony Scaramucci, is the founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital and the SALT Conference. We had a wide ranging and candid conversation about his new book, his path from Port Washington to the White House, navigating the cutthroat world of Wall Street and politics, adapting his investment style to survive, and the importance of non-transactional networking. Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital and founder and chairman of the SALT conference. Pri...
Jun 08, 2024•53 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Carin-Isabel Knoop is the founder and executive director of the Harvard Business School Research and Case Writing Division. This conversation was spurred by two things, one that I found out on the Business Breakdowns podcast last year that Harvard Business School Publishing is larger than Forbes, and two that I’ve also always been curious about how case studies are actually written. Anyone who has done security or competitive analysis will appreciate the level of detail that goes into a case. Th...
May 29, 2024•50 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Scott Sperling is the Co-CEO of Thomas H. Lee Partners. We had an excellent conversation about his time at Harvard Management Company under legendary figures like Walter Cabot and Jack Meyer, his thoughts on the evolution of private equity, the growth of THL, how the firm is structured, his top metrics and how to find new areas of growth. Scott is Co-CEO and co-chair of the firm’s management committee. Prior to joining Thomas H. Lee Partners, Scott was, for more than a decade, managing partner o...
May 03, 2024•49 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Michael Tiedemann is a founding partner and chief executive officer of AlTi Tiedemann Global, a publicly traded $70 billion investment firm. He is also a member of the firm’s board of directors and chairman of the firm’s internal investment committee. We talk about starting the business with his father, Carl Tiedemann, the former president of DLJ, spinning up a wealth manager from scratch after the dot-com collapse, the importance of having an operator mentality, finding great talent, and Mike’s...
Apr 05, 2024•58 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Alex Chaloff is the CIO of Bernstein Private Wealth Management. We had a great conversation talking about his personal litmus test for a manager, what to do with lagging funds, the advantages of scale, and the importance of having a sleep coach. Please enjoy my talk with Alex Chaloff. Alex Chaloff is the Chief Investment Officer of Bernstein Private Wealth Management. Before his current role, he served as head of Alternative Asset Strategies. Alex was also a Senior Investment Strategist and Co-h...
Mar 21, 2024•49 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Today we have Mark Hurley, who recently co-authored a white paper called Welcome to the Jungle: The Next Phase of the Evolution of the Wealth Management Industry. Mark has written several influential papers over the years, and makes some intriguing and provocative points. We go into the mechanics of the wealth management business, how to find talent, discuss the ten-year acquisition spree in the industry, and the challenges of a wealth management business which is transitioning from a club-like ...
Feb 22, 2024•59 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Steffen Pauls is a serial entrepreneur with a long background in the private equity industry. His career started at BCG; he started and sold a fintech company during the dot com era; worked at KKR when it was still a small firm and grew along with it; and then left to start his own company in 2016 called Moonfare - which is a private equity investing platform making top-tier funds available to retail and institutional investors at lower minimums. Steffen got his bachelor’s degree from the Univer...
Feb 08, 2024•53 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Casey Whalen has had a remarkable investing career starting at the Yale investments office, then Rockefeller University, the CIO of the New York Public Library, running three billion at Truuvo partners and now heading up Lazard’s family office partners. Casey and I talk about the many lessons she learned from David Swensen, and I especially liked her stress on getting alignment with all the players in an investment program. We also talk about the importance of the right frameworks, private inves...
Jan 25, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Today we are speaking to Ryan Eisenman, co-founder and CEO of Arch, a leading fintech startup that is a digital administrator for private investments. I thought it would be great to catch up with Ryan to get a look under the hood of a rapidly growing B2B SaaS company tackling one of asset management’s persistent back office issues such as K-1s and capital calls, as well as a look at how their focus on product and customer experience can help you stand out in the burgeoning fintech space. As some...
Nov 19, 2023•43 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Today we have Jon Hirtle, founder and executive chairman of Hirtle, Callaghan & Co, a $20 billion OCIO firm. I was especially interested to talk to Jon because he is a real process guy, and has been thinking deeply about managers and portfolios for over thirty years. John trained recruits at Paris Island, worked at Goldman, and left with no clients to become a pioneer in what came to become the OCIO business. We discuss prediction markets, what he learned from the Mellon family office, and h...
Oct 19, 2023•55 min•Season 2Ep. 9
AI for Portfolio Insight Jan Szilagyi is the CEO and co-founder of Toggle AI, a generative AI startup that uses machine learning to turn institutional-grade data into insights for investors of all stripes. Szilagyi spent most of his career with Stanley Druckenmiller at Duquesne Capital. He was co-CIO of global macro at Lombard Odier and also managed portfolios at Fortress under Michael Novogratz. Jan has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, and BA and MA degrees in mathematics and economics from Y...
Sep 10, 2023•54 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Stan Miranda is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Partners Capital, a global OCIO with $50 billion under management. Stan was previously a longtime director at Bain and chairman of their Worldwide Executive Committee and a co-founder of Evolution Global Partners, a venture capital firm affiliated with Kleiner Perkins and TPG. I was interested to talk to Stan about the very interesting DNA of Partners, and how they engage with their very talented clients, many of whom are private equity partners, en...
Jun 26, 2023•58 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Paul Edelman is a psychologist who has worked with some of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers. Today we take a deep dive into how psychological techniques can be used to look for investment managers, how Paul applied what he learned from great mentors to filter for the investment management skill set, the importance and uncovering of conceptual and probabilistic thinkers, and why you shouldn’t use Myers Briggs. We get a bit into some very interesting weeds including some history of ...
Jun 02, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 7
