What are the implications of consolidation in the private markets? The leading firms, which are mostly public companies, raised an insane amount of money last year, while the rest of the industry mostly struggled. What will this mean for private markets going forward? Have a listen to find out.

Read Ted’s blog here.

Michael Choe is the CEO and Co-Head of Flagship private equity strategy at Charlesbank Capital Partners, a $22B manager of middle-market private equity, credit, and technology opportunities that spun out of the Harvard Management Company in 1998. Our conversation covers Mike’s path from science to finance, including an immigrant story and a draw to decision-making at a young age. We discuss Charlesbank’s history and aspiration to manufacture sound decision-making as a path to investment success, applying its “fan of outcomes” thinking to talent, research, diligence, sourcing, and company operations. Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing list Access Transcript with Premium Membership

Ian Charles is a founding partner at Arctos Partners, a $10 billion private equity firm that strives to create valuable solutions to complex problems. In just five years, Arctos has become the leading institutional investor across the five major North American sports leagues. It also serves as a strategic partner to leading private market sponsors with bespoke capital and liquidity solutions. As part of its effort to support both ecosystems, Arctos publishes data-driven research and content under the Arctos Insights umbrella.

Ian is a repeat guest on the show. Our first conversation with co-founding partner Doc O’Connor describing the sports strategy is replayed in the feed.

This time around we walk through the changing competitive landscape of private equity, covering the most important narratives for GPs and LPs and how both sides are navigating the environment. We discuss Arctos’ taxonomy of private equity firms and the implications of its different levels to a GP’s strategic positioning and right to win. Ian has a long history serving the private equity market and is unusually insightful and blunt in describing the complex and evolving marketplace.

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Anthony Pompliano is an entrepreneur, media creator, and investor who has built one of the largest audiences of DIY investors. His following canvasses 1.6 million people on X, 560,000 on YouTube, and 260,000 on his daily The Pomp Letter. Anthony created Professional Capital Management, an investment company that builds and invests in early-stage companies by leveraging his audience. He’s not alone in his family in creating a following. Pomp’s wife Polina writes the popular blog, The Profile, and his brother Joe writes the sports business blog, Huddle Up. Pomp also recently published How to Live an Extraordinary Life, which shares life lessons through letters to his children. Our conversation covers Pomp’s passion for competing, leading, and problem-solving, formative business experience at Facebook, translating lessons to build a social media audience, and monetizing that audience through investing. We close touching on his wonderful book with a few anecdotes and lessons to share.

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Mitchell Green is the founder and managing partner of Lead Edge Capital, a growth equity firm with $5 billion in assets that invests in software, internet, and tech-enabled businesses. Lead Edge leverages its LPs, comprised of over 700 seasoned executives, entrepreneurs, deal makers, and celebrities to connect its portfolio companies with customers, partners, and talent. Unlike any other firm I’ve seen, the impressive list of LPs is publicly available on the firm’s website.

Our conversation covers Mitchell’s early exposure to business and finance, Lead Edge’s cold-calling strategies, investment criteria, and leverage of LPs to source, diligence, and add value to portfolio companies.

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Could 2025 be the year private equity fund flows return to normal? No. Not yet. Ted explains why in his latest post.

Read Ted’s blog here.

When you think of the greatest private equity deals of all time, names like Google, Facebook, Uber, Dell, and Hilton come to mind. After a recent episode of Private Equity Deals, you might also think about 3G’s acquisition of Burger King.

But I’d bet you wouldn’t think about an oil and gas play called CrownRock. Lime Rock Capital created CrownRock alongside a management team with $96.5 million of cash and assets in 2007. Seventeen years later, sold the business to Occidental Petroleum for $12.5 billion.

Lime Rock’s original investment made 79x its money, a net IRR of 18%, and $7.5 billion in gains, which ranks in the top ten fully exited private equity deals of all time. It also exited a continuation vehicle that generated 3x its cost over the last six years of the deal’s life.

My guests to discuss the firm and its grand slam CrownRock deal are Lime Rock Managing Directors John Reynolds, Jonathan Farber, and J McLane.

Our conversation covers Lime Rock’s investment approach and the example of CrownRock. We dive into the initial investment thesis around vertical drilling, the three extinction threats to the business, innovation of horizontal drilling, management excellence, exit options along the way, and the ‘forever hold’ mindset that allowed CrownRock to compound extraordinary amounts of capital.

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Mark Sullivan and Roberto Isch are Partners at Wellington Management, the $1.3 trillion privately owned firm. Mark is the Head of the Hedge Fund Group and Roberto is a Risk and Portfolio Manager. Wellington began its hedge fund strategies in the mid-1990s. Their activities started with a series of long-biased sector specialist strategies, added a multi-asset fund-of-funds, and most recently, built a market-neutral platform overseen by Mark and Roberto. Our conversation covers the history and current state of hedge fund investing at Wellington, including the client-led development of product offerings and the manager selection, portfolio construction, and risk management of the group’s third-generation strategy.

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Donald Miller is the CEO of StoryBrand and author of ten books that have collectively spent more than a year on New York Times Bestseller lists. Don helps businesses clarify their message so customers will listen. His latest book, Building a Storybrand 2.0, is a revised edition of one of the most succinct, impactful, and actionable books I’ve come across on storytelling.

Our conversation covers Don’s most important lessons in telling a story that resonates with customers, including the seven elements of story structure and key components of each.

Don wants to share his gift for taglines with you. He recently launched storybrand.ai, a free LLM trained on 120 pages of his insights. In just seven minutes, you can have Don write your tagline.

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