Alt Goes Mainstream: The Latest on Alternative Investments, WealthTech, & Private Markets

Welcome to the 4th episode of a collaboration between iCapital x Alt Goes Mainstream.

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

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

• What iCapital is seeing in the market now.
• How the evolution of wealth management is coinciding with the growth of alts.
• How the rise of the “super RIA / aggregator” can help accelerate the adoption of alts.
• How improving equity markets could shorten fundraising cycles for funds.
• How the needs of the wealth manager has evolved as wealth management platforms have evolved.
• Why the need for high-quality — and uniform — infrastructure and end-to-end automation is so critical to enable wealth advisors to properly participate in private markets.
• How iCapital is endeavoring to build the operating system for private markets through automation.
• Where infrastructure innovation in private markets goes from here. 
• How and why alts will become a core part of an investors’ portfolio.
• How the evolution of various market structures — equities, fixed income, and products like ETFs and mutual funds — provides lessons learned for the evolution of alts market structure.

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

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Startup stories are often stuff of dreams — and today’s podcast is a story about one of tech’s most unlikely venture capitalists.

Journalist and professional soccer player turned immigrant turned self-proclaimed "best carwasher in San Jose" turned Persian rug salesman turned top Silicon Valley seed investor Pejman Nozad, the Co-Founder & Founding Managing Partner of Pear VC comes on the show to chronicle his journey that has crossed continents to back many of tech’s top companies. 

While his story has taken him many places, one thing has stayed constant — his ability to build relationships and connect with people. And that talent has enabled him to succeed in building a top seed fund in Pear with his partner and serial entrepreneur Mar Hershenson, where they have backed the likes of DoorDash, Gusto, Guardant Health, Aurora, and many more.

Pejman shares everything from how to build relationships to how to build a seed fund.

We discussed so many fascinating topics:

• What he looks for in founders.
• Why family is so important.
• How and why building relationships is so critical in early-stage investing.
• How Pear has built out a multitude of products and services for founders across pre-seed and seed.
• How companies can go from zero to product-market fit.
• Why some of the largest institutional LPs are interested in a dedicated pre-seed and seed strategy. 
• I also learned that he makes some really good Persian tea, which is apparently even better than Sadaf.

It was a pleasure to have you on the show, Pejman, to share a story for the ages and one that is still being written.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode features a pioneer in the sustainable investing world. Bill Orum, who is a Partner at Capricorn Investment Group, has proven that investors can do well and do good at the same time. Bill and his Partners have led Capricorn, a $9B AUM sustainable investment platform serving families, foundations, and institutional investors for over 20 years as a full service OCIO and investment platform.

Capricorn has been an innovator for a number of years and has evolved into a firm with three distinct but related investment strategies: an OCIO, a GP stakes business that backs asset managers focused on sustainable investing, and the Technology Impact Fund, a VC fund that manages both Capricorn capital and outside capital and is focused on backing companies providing climate solutions.

Capricorn has managed to navigate a complex investing strategy — impact or sustainable investing — and the many geopolitical and governmental challenges associated with climate focused investing in order to generate impressive investment results.

Bill and I had a fascinating conversation. We discussed: 

• The evolution of impacting investing.
• How and why generating impact and strong financial returns aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
• How to find and seed managers.
• Why it’s so important to allocate capital to solving the climate challenge. 
• How they’ve helped normalize sustainable investing.

Thanks Bill for coming on the show to share your wisdom and knowledge and for being a pioneer in the sustainable investing space, something so important for the future of our planet.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s show, we dive into the world of wealth management with one of the industry’s leaders, Haig Ariyan.

Haig has seen it all. He went from someone who grew up in the advisory world as a wealth manager at Dean Witter Reynolds to ultimately becoming President and CEO of Alex Brown, America’s first investment banking firm. At Alex Brown, he oversaw 220 financial advisors and $70 billion in client assets. When Alex Brown sold to Raymond James Financial, Haig became the Head of Global Wealth Solutions. Prior to Alex Brown, Haig was Head of Deutsche Bank Wealth Management in the Americas.

Haig is taking his expertise to build Arax Investment Partners. Together with RedBird Capital, an $8.6B private equity firm focused on financial services and sports and media, Arax is partnering with wealth and asset management firms and teams to build a differentiated platform that takes lessons learned and deep experience from running wealth management businesses.

Haig and Arax are well-capitalized and off to a flying start. They’ve already acquired their first few wealth businesses as well as a $1B AUM broker-dealer that will give them the foundation to build on as a hybrid platform.

Haig and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of wealth management and how alts are playing a big role in shaping the future of wealth.

We discussed: 

• What it means to be an advisor.
• Why Modern Portfolio Theory was such an important innovation for the industry.
• Why the hybrid brokerage and advisory model makes sense.
• How the wealth management space will continue to evolve.
• How alts can be a differentiator for advisor practices.
• How to build a platform that incentivizes advisor teams.

Thanks Haig for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wealth of wisdom.

Welcome to the 3rd episode of a collaboration between iCapital x Alt Goes Mainstream.

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

Watch the Monthly Alts Pulse

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

• What iCapital is seeing in the market now.
• The importance of developing long-term partnerships in business and life.
• Why there’s a need for advisors to understand how alts fit into overall client portfolios and innovations needed with technology and analytics through innovations like iCapital Architect.
• The path to including alts in model portfolios.
• Why alts are still sold, not bought — and how iCapital’s Marketplace may change that dynamic.
• How GPs needed to be educated on why and how working with the wealth channel made sense for their business.
• How the market has evolved to where many GPs are focused on working with the wealth channel.
• How things go slow and then they go fast, particularly in asset management.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today's show, we have a fascinating episode that combines the macro and the micro.

Nimble Partners Founder John Burbank and Partner Ken Wallace come on the show to share their unique perspectives and discuss both the nuances and intricacies of investing in private markets and early-stage venture.

Nimble Partners is a technology investment platform that invests into early-stage fund managers through their manager selection program and as well as direct and co-investments into breakout performers from their fund manager relationships.

John and Ken have had illustrious careers in both public markets and private markets, investing in many of the biggest technology trends and many top early-stage managers over the past 15 years.

John was a top macro investor from founding Passport Capital in 2000, where he was amongst the best hedge fund managers of his time. He’s been investing into early-stage fund managers for the past decade. As a long-time macro investor, he has consistently focused on sectors and investments where technology can be disruptive and accelerate change. He’s also an investor in the Golden State Warriors, the championship winning NBA team.

Ken joined John to build Nimble after a stellar career at Industry Ventures, backing a number of emerging managers, most notably Chris Sacca’s first-time Lowercase Capital fund, which at over 200x+ returns, was amongst the best performing venture funds in history. At Industry Ventures, he specialized in hybrid fund of funds strategy, originating, valuing, and managing primary fund commitments, early secondary LP investments, and direct co-investments.

We had a fascinating conversation that spanned a number of topics: 

• Why this is not the end of venture capital — and why the winners are still to going to win and win big.
• How global macro impacts venture capital.
• The framework that John and Ken use to evaluate technology trends and emerging managers.
• How the “portfolio manager” model can be applied to venture capital.
• How information is a huge edge.
• Why duration is the most important thing an investor can have.

Thanks John and Ken for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting a live podcast at the Allocate Beyond Summit, where I interviewed Avy Stein and Jordan Stein from Cresset.

Allocate’s founders Samir Kaji and Hana Yang brought together a fascinating and thoughtful group of allocators, family offices, and VCs for an engaging two days of discussion about private markets.

At the event, I interviewed father and son duo from Cresset. Avy Stein, the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Cresset, and Jordan Stein, Director of Private Capital at Cresset Partners, joined me on stage to discuss how their firm has achieved astronomical growth over the past few years, largely due to their business building acumen and in part powered by their focus on private markets.

Cresset is a client and family-owned award-winning multi-family office with over $40 billion in AUM that was built by founders and private equity professionals.

We had a fascinating discussion that covered everything from how and why Avy and Jordan built Cresset to the evolution of the wealth management space and how private markets is playing a large role in that.

Thanks Avy and Jordan for sharing your wisdom and thanks Samir and Hana for hosting such a fantastic event.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode dives into an important and growing part of the alts ecosystem: how investors can access and invest into alternatives through their retirement funds.

We have Eric Satz, the CEO of Alto, a self-directed IRA custodian, with us today to discuss how he’s on a mission to provide everyday Americans with the same investment opportunity long favored by institutional investors.

Alto provides custody for a wide array of alternative assets, including private companies, real estate, crypto, loans, and securitized collectibles. Alto has streamlined the process for companies, funds, and SEC registered investment platforms to include IRA investors in their offerings. They’ve partnered with firms across the alts space, including AngelList, Coinbase, EquityZen, Republic, Masterworks, and others, to enable investors to invest into private markets with their IRA.

Eric is a serial entrepreneur and former investment banker. He worked at DLJ / Credit Suisse First Boston before co-founding Currenex (acquired by State Street for $564M), Plumgood Food, and Tennessee Community Ventures. His passion for entrepreneurship led him to serve on the Board of the Tennessee Valley Authority from 2015 to 2018 and he teaches an entrepreneurship class to high school students.

On today’s podcast, Eric teaches us all about the merits of a self-directed IRA. He shares why and how it makes sense to use an IRA to invest into private markets investments and how he’s taking lessons learned from prior IRA businesses to build Alto.

Thanks Eric for coming on the show to share your knowledge and passion for alternatives.

Welcome to the 2nd episode of a collaboration between iCapital x Alt Goes Mainstream.

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

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

• What iCapital is seeing in the market now.
• How allocators are balancing strategies that make sense right now versus strategies, like venture, that may pay off in the future.
• How the alts space has evolved over the past 10 years.
• How the change in wealth management market structure and the rise of the breakaway broker has driven alts innovation forward.
• Some of the biggest challenges that iCapital has encountered over the past 10 years of growth.
• How Lawrence & iCapital have built a platform to serve different clients on the GP and LP sides.
• How iCapital took inspiration from prior market structure evolutions and innovations, like ETFs and mutual funds.
• What companies did iCapital look to for inspiration?
• The importance of UI/UX in B2B financial services — and how does this change with Millennials and Gen Z’s becoming customers or users?
• Building the desktop real estate for alts.
• What does a quote from a Dirty Harry movie have to do with the growth of iCapital?

Wealth managers are increasingly participating in private markets, and for good reason. Today’s podcast is with an expert allocator in the alts space, Phil Huber, who has not only been actively investing in private markets as the CIO of $18B Savant Wealth, but has also authored a book about how advisors can approach private markets.

This podcast is a must-listen for any allocator, particularly in the wealth management space, as Phil shares actionable insights for how LPs can go about building a strategy for investing in private markets and how GPs and alternative asset managers can work with the private wealth space.

Phil is the CIO of $18B Savant Wealth. He comes onto the show to discuss how he approaches allocating to alts on behalf of their clients. Phil has spent much of the past 15 years thinking deeply about alts. The has culminated in him authoring a book, The Allocator’s Edge, A Modern Guide to Alternative Investments and the Future of Diversification. 

Phil is a Certified Financial Planner professional, has attained his Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, and is a member of the CFA Society of Chicago. Phil has been featured in a number of notable media outlets, including the WSJ, New York Times, and Bloomberg TV, and Phil recently won RIA Intel’s CIO of the Year award. 

He produces his own investing blog, bps and pieces, in addition to authoring his book.

Thanks Phil for coming on the show to share your wisdom.