Carried Interest

What does it mean to occupy one of the most pivotal roles in the private equity industry, bridging the gap between high-level investment thesis and real-world technology execution?

Tristan Ratchford, hg catalyst’s Chief Technology Officer, joined Carried Interest host Sam Andersen to talk about how he operates on the front lines of portfolio value creation, evaluating software architecture, stripping away the AI hype, and building enterprise systems that turn technology into a measurable driver of margin expansion.

Catalyst is the in-house AI product incubator for Hg, which is one of the largest software specialist investors in the world, with $110 billion of AUM and a portfolio worth almost $200 billion.

Before joining hg catalyst as CTO, Tristan built his career at the cutting edge of practical AI engineering, from early NLP research at IBM and co-founding a startup acquired by Price Intelligently, to spending five years at Datadog, leading the team behind Bits AI SRE, their flagship autonomous agent.

Inside this conversation:
— Tristan explains why he traded one AI product with one channel at Datadog for the built-in distribution of a 60-company portfolio.
— He walks through how Catalyst embeds temporary tiger teams inside portfolio companies, and how its AI Academy and Jumpstart programs hand the baton over.
— Tristan and Sam dig into where AI creates real margin, from support deflection and tech modernization to regulated workflows like fair lending analysis and cash forecasting, and why engineering velocity shifts the bottleneck from writing code to verifying it.
— Tristan shares his advice for CTOs on change management and prioritizing evals over demos, what he looks for when hiring forward-deployed engineers, how he thinks about build versus buy (with a Ferrari analogy), and why nobody owns the AI problem when it's everyone's job.

If you work in private equity, or want to, this one is worth your time.

Carried Interest is a podcast by Affinity.

🔗 Affinity: https://buff.ly/11jDF7y
🔗 hg catalyst: https://hgcatalyst.ai/
🔗 Follow hg catalyst: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hg-catalyst/
🔗 Connect with Tristan Ratchford: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristanratchford/
🔗 Connect with Sam Andersen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samander/

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YouTube (product): https://www.youtube.com/@affinity_co
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/affinity.hq/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/project-affinity/

Disclaimer: The information in this podcast is informational in nature and does not take into consideration your personal circumstances. Therefore it is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. To determine which strategy or investment may be suitable to you, consult the appropriate qualified professional before making any final decision.

Billy Deitch has a rule for founders: sizzle over steak. Too much sizzle turns him off. He wants to see the steak first.

Billy Deitch is a partner at Oak HC/FT, one of the most respected healthcare-focused growth equity and venture firms in the country. Before joining Oak to open its West Coast office, Billy started his career in investment banking at UBS and then sharpened his skills at Francisco Partners and TPG Growth. In this episode of Carried Interest, Sam Andersen sits down with Billy to talk about what it actually means to be a "counselor" investor rather than a dealmaker.

Inside this conversation:
— Billy traces his path from a history major at Yale to investment banking at UBS to growth investing at TPG and Francisco Partners and explains why he jumped at the chance to open Oak's West Coast office and focus entirely on healthcare.
— He breaks down how growing up around a family of lawyers and marrying into a family of psychologists shaped his approach to being a board member, and where he draws the line between empathy and metrics-driven investing.
— Billy digs into what's actually changing in healthcare because of AI, from administrative automation to AI-assisted care delivery, and where the technology should and shouldn't touch the doctor-patient relationship.
— He tells the story behind Oak's investment in Candid, tracing it back to relationships the firm built over two decades in revenue cycle management, including co-founder Annie Lamont's early bet on athenahealth.
— Finally, Billy closes with what winning actually looks like for him personally, and why he thinks luck plays a bigger role in investing success than most investors will admit.

If you work in private equity—or want to—this one's worth your time.

Carried Interest is a podcast by Affinity.

🔗 Affinity: https://buff.ly/11jDF7y
🔗 Oak HC/FT: https://www.oakhcft.com/
🔗 Connect with Sam Andersen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samander/
🔗 Connect with Billy Deitch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billy-deitch/

Follow Affinity YouTube: @affinity_presents
YouTube (product): @affinity_co
Instagram: @affinity.hq
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/project-affinity/

• (00:00) - Cold open: sizzle vs. steak

Most people who spend two decades building one of the most consequential enterprise software investment platforms in private equity don't stop and start over from scratch. Brian Sheth did.

Brian spent his career defining what technology-focused private equity looks like at the highest level before founding Haveli Investments, now managing billions across enterprise software, gaming, and more. In this episode, Carried Interest host Sam Andersen sits down with Brian to talk relationships, AI, and what actually drives returns in private equity.

Inside this conversation:
Brian breaks down the mentors who shaped him early, Frank Quattrone and Gene Sykes, and a hard early lesson about alignment on one of his first deals. He explains why relationships, not transactions, win in tech-focused PE, and tells the story of the phone call that led to Haveli's Cohesity investment. The two dig into AI's real cost for portfolio companies, why "software is dead" is the wrong narrative, and what's driving the LP liquidity crisis right now. Brian also opens up about founding Haveli as an engine for giving, his conservation work in Manitoba, and what he wants his legacy to be.

If you work in private equity—or want to—this one's worth your time.

Carried Interest is a podcast by Affinity.

🔗 Affinity: https://buff.ly/11jDF7y
🔗 Haveli Investments: https://www.haveliinvestments.com/
Connect with Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samander/
Follow Haveli Investments: https://www.linkedin.com/company/haveli-investments/

Follow Affinity
YouTube: @affinity_presents
YouTube (product): @affinity_co
Instagram: @affinity.hq
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/project-affinity/

• (00:00) - Why management teams matter more than anything else

What does it take to manage a $2 trillion balance sheet through the worst financial crisis in modern history—and come out with your reputation intact?

Gary Crittenden's resume reads like a history of modern Wall Street. He was CFO of American Express during its golden years and CFO of Citigroup through the Great Recession/Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 before spending 16 years at private equity firm HGGC, solidifying his reputation as a leading architect of the PE space. Today, he still operates in the world of global finance as a private investor at Bear Mountain Ranch Asset Management.

In this episode, Gary and host Sam Andersen, who Gary has mentored for over a decade, trace a career built on one principle: return on capital. Here's everything they cover:

— Why the CFO role is strategic first, technical second (and why that's truer now than ever)
— The charge card vs. credit card insight that unlocked American Express's value creation
— How Citigroup ended up in crisis and what it took to weather that storm
— The liquidity discount problem private equity won't talk about—and why it's creating a logjam
— Why "we're good at working with management teams" isn't a differentiated PE strategy
— How mega funds and mid-market funds produce fundamentally different return profiles
— AI's impact on finance in three categories: process improvement, revenue generation, and full redefinition
— The Extra Space Storage story: how fee income and a management business built the highest return on capital in self-storage
— Gary's framework for evaluating a 2026 deal: basis of competition first, everything else second
— Concentration vs. diversification, and the Warren Buffett line Gary quotes to his kids
— Playing the long game in your career: compounding knowledge, reputation, and returns over decades

If you work in private equity—or want to—this one's worth your time.

Carried Interest is a podcast by Affinity.

🔗 Affinity: https://www.affinity.co
Connect with Gary: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garycrittenden/
Connect with Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samander/

Follow Affinity
YouTube: @affinity_presents
YouTube (product): @affinity_co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/project-affinity/

• (00:00) - Intro: Breaking the tyranny of selling your time

Perception: Investment bankers win mandates by pitching harder than their competition. Reality: The deal is usually decided long before anyone walks into a bake-off.

Brittany Skoda is the Global Head of AI & Software Banking at Morgan Stanley, where she's led over 75 transactions for companies including Amazon, Dropbox, Google, Tesla, and Zendesk. Before Morgan Stanley, she was VP of Investments at Workday and rose from analyst to SVP at Goldman Sachs. In this episode of Carried Interest, she and host Sam Andersen get into what it really takes to win mandates, build trust in private capital, and navigate today's IPO market.

What's inside this episode:
— How Morgan Stanley won the Hinge Health IPO—and why the relationship started 15 years before the deal closed
— How to build meaningful relationships without the forcing function of an imminent transaction
— The real state of the IPO window and what it actually takes to go public today
— Why most M&A fails—and what separates the deals that create value from the ones that destroy it
— How private equity is evolving as fund sizes grow and AI reshapes investment horizons
— Career advice for analysts stepping into banking: Growth lives outside your comfort zone

If you work in private equity—or want to—this one's worth your time.

Carried Interest is a podcast by Affinity.

🔗 Affinity: https://www.affinity.co
🔗 Morgan Stanley: https://www.morganstanley.com
Connect with Brittany: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittany-skoda-08354a7/
Connect with Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samander/

Follow Affinity
YouTube: @affinity_presents
YouTube (product): @affinity_co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/project-affinity/

• (00:00) - Introduction of Brittany Skoda

What does it actually take to close a deal before it ever hits the market—and keep it from falling apart before you sign?

In the debut episode of Carried Interest, host Sam Andersen sits down with Vladimir Andonov, Managing Director at Martis Capital—a healthcare-focused PE firm with $2.2B raised across four funds—to unpack the relationship-driven work behind private equity dealmaking.

Vladimir walks through Martis's investment in Centria, a behavioral health company serving children with autism. A competing firm nearly won the deal. Martis extended a bridge loan before anything was inked. And the founder eventually became an LP.

From there, the conversation opens up into how Martis originates deals thematically, what they look for in founders, where they're investing in healthcare today—pharma commercialization, revenue cycle management, and AI—and what the current LP liquidity environment actually looks like on the ground.

If you work in private equity—or want to—this one's worth your time.

Carried Interest is a podcast by Affinity.

Affinity: https://www.affinity.co
Martis Capital: https://www.martiscapital.com/
Connect with Vladimir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirandonov/
Connect with Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samander/

Follow Affinity
YouTube (product): @affinity_co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/project-affinity/

• (00:00) - Meet Vladimir Andonov and Martis Capital