Deepwell

Alex Abell is Managing Partner and Head of RCP Customized Solutions at RCP Advisors, a Chicago-based private equity firm focused on North American lower middle market buyouts, with over $16.8 billion in committed capital across fund-of-funds, secondaries and co-investments. He sits on the investment committee, serves as portfolio manager for the firm's SBIC fund-of-funds and helps lead its research efforts.

Before RCP, Alex founded Atlas Diligence in 2011, where he built GPScout, a research and analytics platform covering lower middle market managers. RCP acquired Atlas in 2015. Earlier he worked at BlackRock Private Equity Partners, Quellos's Private Capital Strategies Group and Hewlett-Packard's pension fund investment group.

Learn more about Alex and RCP below:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-abell-3a695

https://www.rcpadvisors.com

Subscribe to Deepwell: https://deepwellco.substack.com

Timestamps

0:00 Intro

0:49 Tracking deals at Quellos

2:18 Building GPScout

4:06 How RCP's data is built

6:22 Using GPScout to underwrite

14:39 Where AI fits in

18:49 Grading managers

22:06 Growing RCP since 2015

26:19 Inside RCP's strategies

32:35 The rise of independent sponsors

36:52 Benchmarking without a fund

38:52 The $3-25m EBITDA sweet spot

42:08 Why pensions partner with RCP

43:52 RCP at 30

#privateequity #lowermiddlemarket #fundoffunds

Patrick Kazley is CEO of One River Asset Management, a systematic risk mitigation firm managing around $3 billion for institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds and public pensions. He was named CEO in July 2026 after serving as President and Head of Solutions, and leads the firm's business operations and client solutions.

Before One River, Patrick spent six years at AQR Capital Management. He helped establish AQR's first presence in Asia from Hong Kong, then worked in Japan, spending about five years diagnosing the portfolios of Asian sovereign wealth funds end to end. Most recently he was a VP in AQR's Portfolio Management and Research division for the Global Stock Selection group. He joined One River in 2021.

Learn more about Patrick and One River below:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kazley

https://www.oneriveram.com

Subscribe to Deepwell: https://deepwellco.substack.com

Timestamps

0:00 Intro

0:41 Being a recovering quant

4:24 Chasing small, frequent wins

6:24 Long volatility

9:00 Hidden short vol

12:14 Bonds and the 60/40

15:25 Pensions when bonds fall

17:59 Holding long vol

22:07 Sovereign blind spots

25:13 Thinking in centuries

27:54 Total portfolio approach

32:21 Running a trillion-dollar sovereign fund

34:03 Buying LGT's quant team

37:50 Why expand now

#investing #hedgefunds #volatility

Ben Hunt is Co-Founder and President of Perscient, an AI research and software company that measures the narratives driving markets, and the creator of Epsilon Theory. Previously, he ran a long/short equity fund of around $1 billion, served as chief strategist and chief risk officer at Salient Partners, and was a tenured political science professor.

We discuss how he spotted the single assumption behind the mortgage crisis, why value investing stopped working, the common knowledge game that moves markets, the risks of narrative-driven funds, why you should choose your investors carefully, how LLMs made Perscient possible, and why AI has become too big to fail.

Learn more about Ben and Perscient below:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhunt/

https://x.com/EpsilonTheory

https://www.panoptica.com/?&from_src=epsilontheory

Subscribe to Deepwell: https://deepwellco.substack.com

(00:00) Intro

(00:47) Growing up in Alabama

(02:04) Political science and computer science at Vanderbilt

(03:54) Predicting conflict from newspapers at Harvard

(06:36) From professor to hedge fund manager

(10:47) The assumption behind the mortgage crisis

(12:35) Giving the money back and joining Salient

(16:04) Why he started Epsilon Theory

(19:28) The common knowledge game

(23:21) The Emperor's New Clothes and the Biden debate

(26:00) Narrative funds and the billion-dollar PDF

(32:23) Why scale is so hard today

(33:47) Raising money for Perscient

(38:46) Choosing investors on the same timeline

(39:21) Why LLMs made Perscient possible

(42:06) Is AI too big to fail?

(47:55) Story all the way down

Simon Krinsky is Regional Executive Managing Director at Pathstone, a partner-owned multi-family office with more than $185 billion in aggregate assets, where he oversees the New York and San Francisco offices.

Previously, he was a Managing Partner at Hall Capital Partners, which combined with Pathstone in 2024, and began his career at Goldman Sachs.

Learn more about Simon and Pathstone below:https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonkrinsky/https://pathstone.com/people/simon-krinsky/https://pathstone.comSubscribe to Deepwell: https://deepwellco.substack.com

(00:00) Intro

(00:45) From South Africa to Philadelphia

(04:09) Economics at Amherst

(06:12) Starting on Goldman's convertibles desk

(10:09) Private wealth in San Francisco

(13:09) Why he joined Katie Hall

(15:48) Why Hall combined with Pathstone

(19:15) Investment firm vs family office

(20:39) Running one firm, not regional businesses

(23:12) Why Willow Street stays independent

(25:27) Working alongside single family offices

(28:26) Why open architecture builds trust

(29:25) Building 15-year client relationships

(31:29) Their 40-person research team

(33:18) Moving fast on co-investments

(35:12) How Pathstone picks its acquisitions

(37:12) What they look for in a manager

(39:05) The path to a trillion-dollar firm

Shiloh Bates is the Chief Investment Officer of Flat Rock Global, an alternative credit manager with about $1.6 billion in assets under management across three interval funds. Previously, he was a Managing Director at Benefit Street Partners and Head of Structured Products at BDCA Adviser. He is the author of CLO Investing and host of The CLO Investor Podcast.

We discuss how CLOs work, why CLO equity has disappointed over the last two years, how to compare CLO managers, why captive equity funds have hurt the market, what private credit CLOs do differently, and why he sees value in CLO equity and BB notes today.

Learn more about Shiloh and Flat Rock Global:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shiloh-bates-186ab28/https://flatrockglobal.com

Read Shiloh's book, CLO Investing: With an Emphasis on CLO Equity & BB Notes:

https://www.amazon.com/CLO-Investing-Emphasis-Equity-Notes/dp/1642376566

Listen to The CLO Investor Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-clo-investor-podcast/id1738052032

Subscribe to Deepwell: https://deepwellco.substack.com

(00:00) Intro

(01:21) From political science to finance

(04:10) Learning CLOs on day one at First Union

(05:00) How a CLO works like a simplified bank

(07:43) When CLOs were a backwater

(09:11) Equity returns through leverage

(11:38) Why CLO equity has disappointed

(18:32) Six-month call protection, locked financing

(21:29) How to compare CLO managers

(29:02) How CLO equity gets marked daily

(33:00) The problem with captive equity funds

(38:11) What CLO ETFs mean for AAAs

(41:05) Why BDC and interval fund redemptions are rising

(45:32) Private credit CLOs vs broadly syndicated

(49:56) What he's watching into 2027

Stephan Roche is the Managing Partner of BanyanGlobal Family Business Advisors, a Boston-based firm that has guided more than 250 family ownership groups across six continents on succession, governance and family office strategy since 2012.

Roche first worked with Banyan as a client, joined as a partner in 2025, and was elected Managing Partner in May 2026.

He previously served as CEO of Walton Enterprises, the Walton family office, and COO of Cascade Asset Management, the investment office for Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.

As CEO of Sempervirens Fund, the venture firm that grew out of a family business whose board he sat on, he pushed the team to deliver cash rather than paper returns, reaching roughly 0.9x DPI on an eight-year-old vintage.

He began his career in brand management at Procter & Gamble and in strategy consulting, and holds a BA from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Learn more about Stephan and BanyanGlobal below:

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanroche/⁠⁠

https://banyan.global/⁠

Subscribe to Deepwell: ⁠https://deepwellco.substack.com

Stephan Roche is the Managing Partner of BanyanGlobal Family Business Advisors, a Boston-based firm that has guided more than 250 family ownership groups across six continents on succession, governance and family office strategy since 2012.

Roche first worked with Banyan as a client, joined as a partner in 2025, and was elected Managing Partner in May 2026.

He previously served as CEO of Walton Enterprises, the Walton family office, and COO of Cascade Asset Management, the investment office for Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.

As CEO of Sempervirens Fund, the venture firm that grew out of a family business whose board he sat on, he pushed the team to deliver cash rather than paper returns, reaching roughly 0.9x DPI on an eight-year-old vintage.

He began his career in brand management at Procter & Gamble and in strategy consulting, and holds a BA from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Learn more about Stephan and BanyanGlobal below:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanroche/https://banyan.global/

Subscribe to Deepwell: https://deepwellco.substack.com

Kristof Gleich is the President and CIO of Harbor Capital Advisors, a $70B multi-manager platform headquartered in Chicago that partners exclusively with external fund managers to build and distribute actively managed strategies – a model the firm has operated since 1986.

Gleich joined Harbor in 2018 after nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, where he ran a 60-person global manager research team overseeing $500B in assets. His focus has been bringing the firm's active management expertise from mutual funds into ETFs – translating what he describes as "potential energy into kinetic energy."

Since 2021, Harbor has launched 30+ active ETFs and grown ETF AUM from zero to $5B, anchored by long-standing partnerships like Jennison Associates (52-year relationship) alongside emerging managers like BlueCove (systematic fixed income out of London) and Quantix (commodities, founded by a former Goldman partner). The commodities ETF, HGER, surpassed $1B by rethinking index construction from first principles – building inflation sensitivity, backwardation capture, and debasement hedging into the methodology rather than tracking legacy benchmarks like BCOM.

Gleich is bullish on gold and commodities as structural portfolio holdings, arguing that record global debt, fiscal deficits in expanding economies, deglobalization, and central bank reserve diversification make the standard 60/40 allocation obsolete – advocating 10–20% alternatives exposure with commodities playing a central role. 2024 marked an inflection year with $4B in net inflows, and Gleich sees Harbor approaching the "superscaling" phase while emphasizing the cultural imperative to keep disrupting before competitors do it for you.

Learn more about Kristof and Harbor Capital below:

linkedin.com/in/kristof-gleich/

harborcapital.com

Alifia Doriwala is the Co-Chief Investment Officer at The Rock Creek Group, a $18B+ outsourced CIO platform in Washington, DC that serves as the full investment team for endowments, foundations, pensions, and family offices without internal portfolio management capabilities.

Doriwala joined Rock Creek when it was a 15-person, $2B multi-asset shop and helped build the OCIO business from inception roughly 15 years ago – a practice that now houses the majority of the firm's capital. She previously worked in investment banking at Merrill Lynch and equity arbitrage at Wolverine Trading.

Rock Creek constructs bespoke total-portfolio allocations for each client, calibrating alternatives exposure around spending objectives, drawdown tolerance, and organizational mission. Up to 10% of private equity exposure goes to co-investments and directs, selected thematically to align with client mandates – education foundations get education-adjacent deal flow, healthcare organizations get life sciences exposure. Commitment pacing is treated as "more art than science," with annual budgets flexed around distribution assumptions and opportunity quality rather than rigid targets.

Current deployment priorities span biotech venture (including oncology-specific funds), fintech focused on financial inclusion, AI infrastructure and applications, and middle-market buyout where AI tools drive efficiency across traditional industries. The firm runs longstanding emerging manager programs – including a 15+ year partnership with Connecticut's pension system – and has co-authored research with IFC on gender balance in private equity. Underpinning the platform is a proprietary technology stack built from day one, now on its tenth major iteration, housing 25 years of investment data.

Learn more about Alifia and Rock Creek below:

linkedin.com/in/alifia-doriwala

therockcreekgroup.com

Alan Mattamana is the Managing Partner at Fairview Capital Partners, a $10B fund-of-funds founded in 1994 as one of the largest minority-owned investment firms in the US. After Princeton engineering, McKinsey, and Polaris Venture Partners, he joined Fairview in 2009 and ascended to Managing Partner in 2024, leading the firm's co-investment program.

Fairview commits to 15-25 managers per vehicle using equal-weighted portfolios (~60% venture, ~40% growth/buyout), staged across 3-5 year tranches for vintage diversification. The firm's proprietary database tracks 600+ diverse and emerging managers, combining quantitative benchmarking with exhaustive reference checks. Mattamana allocates 10-20% to late-stage co-investments (Series B+) through GP advisory board relationships, concentrating capital in de-risked winners at reduced fee drag.

As anchor LP for first- and second-time funds, Fairview backs 300+ funds representing 10,000+ companies. Strategic partnerships include New York Life's 2024 minority stake, Steve Ballmer's $400M commitment for Black fund managers, and the Ford/Visa Foundations Emerging Managers Fund. Connecticut's Constitution Fund series delivered 30% IRR in top vintages, with fees compressed from 0.8% to 0.65% as the program scaled.

Learn more about Alan and Fairview below:

linkedin.com/in/alanmattamana/

Fairview Capital