Founder Notes with Nelson Chu and Prath Reddy

Gates are back — and this time it's BCRED. Nelson and Prath dig into why fund managers are choosing to gate rather than sell into a buyer-scarce secondary market, what Apollo's daily pricing initiative actually means (spoiler: mark-to-model, just more frequently), and whether the SpaceX IPO pop is a sign of healthy markets or peak froth. They close on the AI IPO pipeline — Anthropic and OpenAI are on deck — and why Nelson likes Anthropic's chances more than Prath does.

The US just lost its last AAA credit rating, and Nelson and Prath are not exactly shocked — but they are keeping score. This episode traces the economics of a bifurcating country where SpaceX employees are bidding $2M over ask on dilapidated San Francisco houses and everyone else is paying $7.29 for gas, then pivots to private credit: why $18 billion in annual secondary trading sounds impressive until you learn that corporate bonds trade $70 billion in a single day, and what it means that AI data center deals are now pricing inside public markets. Macro gloom, credit math, and an HVAC-on-Mars tangent. The usual.

Cerebras IPOs at $68 billion with 320 employees, SpaceX is reportedly eyeing a $1.5T tape, and Anthropic is racing to beat OpenAI to the public markets. Meanwhile a gallon of gas hit $7.50 near a California airport, the CPI print came in hot, and the stock market still closed at record highs. Nelson and Prath unpack the disconnect — and what it means when "trillion" stops meaning what it used to mean. Plus Apollo's daily marks announcement, Powell's last day, and why the next moat in private credit isn't technology — it's distribution.

Q1 is in the books and the board meeting is next week. Nelson and Prath get into what the quarter actually looked like: net flows flat, no gates, new AUM high, while the private credit headlines said otherwise. They also cover Anthropic’s $900B raise, where OpenAI and Claude actually stand in the model wars, Prath’s rate prediction coming in, and what “sell in May” means when the Nasdaq refuses to cooperate.

Bank earnings are blowing out, and every CEO is suddenly talking up private credit — the same asset class they spent last year warning about. Nelson and Prath break down why banks quietly need private credit to work, how back-leverage facilities keep banks winning either way, and what the new CDX Private Credit Index signals about an industry that still needs more maturity.

Prath comes off the road from back-to-back investor conferences in Deer Valley and Aspen with a read on where institutional sentiment actually stands. Then Nelson and Prath dig into the Blue Owl 40.7% redemption headline, why JPMorgan and Goldman building short tools is actually a sign of maturity, and what PIMCO, KKR, and J.P. Morgan are all saying about asset-based finance as the safe harbor in private credit. Plus: the Anthropic code leak, a Clippy comeback, and a Bonzi Buddy reunion nobody asked for.

The media is having a field day with private credit redemptions, but is the panic justified? This week, Nelson and Prath break down the barrage of gating headlines from BlackRock and Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan’s software loan markdowns, and why bad fund wrappers are causing more pain than bad underwriting. Plus, they unpack New York’s new Buy Now, Pay Later rules, early traction from Percent’s secondary market, and why the ultimate founder strategy is just surviving long enough to get lucky.

Blackstone processes $3.8 billion in record redemptions while its executives write $400 million in checks to cover the gap. Another double-pledging scandal surfaces, this time in the UK. Nelson and Prath break down why private credit's credibility crisis is creating a window for differentiated players. Then Prath finally goes down the AI rabbit hole, building tear sheets with Claude to spinning up a traffic ticket attorney agent.

This week’s theme is simple: the people who didn’t do the work got caught. Nelson and Prath cover First Brands, double-pledging, and why relying on PDFs is not monitoring. They also get into the semi-liquid BDC squeeze, the software concentration shell game, and why secondaries are becoming unavoidable.

While Prath’s in Arizona and Nelson’s battling an AI agent back in New York, the duo unpacks the AI-driven software selloff and what it could mean for private credit. They dig into BlackRock TCP’s write-down and why public markets keep calling private marks’ bluff, then close with the policy wildcard of a 10% credit card cap and what it means for a consumer already under strain.