Liquid Courage

About Liquid Courage

Let's take a deep dive into the private capital secondaries opportunity! Hosted by David Snow in partnership with Upwelling and Piper Sandler. Produced in partnership with leading secondaries advisory firms Upwelling Capital and Piper Sandler, Liquid Courage is led by financial journalist David Snow, the former Editor-in-Chief of PEI Media. Liquid Courage is a video-podcast presenting thought leadership and research on the global private capital secondaries markets.  Liquid Courage delivers market intelligence and strategic insights into the $500 billion private capital secondaries market, where transaction volume has surpassed $160 billion per year. Liquid Courage is produced by market insiders to help investors succeed in this rapidly evolving and growing asset class. Whether you are an institutional investor hoping to up your portfolio management game, a limited partner in need of liquidity, or a general partner seeking cutting-edge liquidity strategies, Liquid Courage delivers what the smartest minds in private capital know about the vast and variegated secondaries opportunity.

Publisher

liquidcouragepod

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

2 Oct 2025

Latest episode

10 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

16 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   10 Sept 2026

   Demand Outstrips Supply For CV Trophy Assets

   Investors chasing high-quality continuation vehicle deals are running into a supply problem, says Zach Schneider, partner at Twin Bridge Capital Partners. Schneider joins Joncarlo Mark, a partner at Upwelling Capital, and Liquid Courage host David Snow to explain why a “flight to quality” is creating oversubscribed processes for trophy assets, even as many lower-quality CV transactions struggle to get done. He also explores what Twin Bridge looks for in a continuation vehicle, how competition is changing pricing and economics, and what could ultimately happen to the underperforming private equity assets that fail to find buyers. Among the key takeaways of this conversation: • Demand for trophy-asset CVs exceeds supply. When a high-quality sponsor brings a high-quality asset to market, Schneider says processes can become meaningfully oversubscribed, shifting negotiating leverage toward sponsors. Meanwhile, many lower-quality transactions never clear the market. • Competition for the best CV assets could intensify. More than 90% of existing LPs in CV transactions are currently choosing liquidity rather than rolling their stakes, creating room for secondary investors. But if that sell rate declines as traditional M&A recovers, capacity for new investors could shrink even as demand for trophy assets continues to grow. • Trophy assets are commanding stronger pricing and economics. Some are trading in the high 90s as a percentage of NAV or even above par, while sponsors of particularly attractive CVs are increasingly securing premium carry tiers of 25% or 30% when certain return thresholds are exceeded. • The market is separating winners from underperformers. In some multi-asset CVs, sponsors have tried pairing one strong company with weaker assets. Schneider says investors are increasingly rejecting those structures, sometimes forcing sponsors to carve out the trophy asset into a single-asset deal and leave the underperformers behind. Access the full transcript and a searchable library of content at the Liquid Courage Substack. #liquidcourage #continuationvehicles #secondaries #privateequity #GPled #privatecapital

2. 

   11 Aug 2026

   Why Investors are Clamoring for Evergreen Funds

   Evergreen funds have grown rapidly because they make private markets more accessible, according to Brian Gildea, Managing Director of Evergreen Portfolio Solutions at Hamilton Lane. In a wide-ranging conversation with Joncarlo Mark, founder of Upwelling Capital, and Liquid Courage host David Snow, Gildea walks through the investment sourcing and administrative mechanisms that make evergreen structures popular. Key Takeaways: - Evergreen funds shift the burden from investor to manager. Rather than committing capital that's drawn down over years, investors subscribe into a fully built portfolio on day one and choose their own timing for liquidity, subject to fund limits — while the manager takes on the ongoing work of portfolio construction and cash management.- Secondaries (including continuation vehicles, which now make up roughly half the secondary market) help evergreen funds buy into pools of assets closer to liquidity, creating earlier diversification and cash flow, especially in younger funds.- About two-thirds of Hamilton Lane's secondaries returns come from assets appreciating above NAV after purchase, with roughly a third from the initial discount to NAV captured at acquisition.- Evergreen funds complement, not replace, drawdown funds. Larger institutions are increasingly using evergreen vehicles to hit allocation targets faster or build exposure early in a program's life, while continuing to use traditional funds alongside them. Access the full transcript and a searchable content library at the Liquid Courage Substack. #liquidcourage #privateequity #evergreenfunds

3. 

   29 Jul 2026

   Avoid 'traps' in oil and gas, says Ares secondaries Investor

   Investors should be cautious about the oil and gas price resurgence, says Eddie Keith, head of infrastructure secondaries investing at Ares. Upstream oil and gas are fundamentally incompatible with infrastructure secondaries, Keith tells Liquid Courage. Keith draws on deep experience across energy cycles to explain what separates investable oil and gas opportunities from "traps," why midstream and LNG can sometimes fit an infrastructure mandate while upstream almost never can. Among the key takeaways of this conversation: • Upstream oil and gas contradicts the core promise of infrastructure secondaries. No matter how smart the buy, commodity prices will drive 70 to 80% of the outcome — which directly undermines the stability, predictability, and cash flow yield that infrastructure investors are trying to deliver. • Midstream is not automatically safe. The difference between a take-or-pay contract and an acreage dedication is the difference between infrastructure and a commodity bet. • The energy private equity universe still hasn't recovered from the 2015-2016 crash, leaving capital in the space well below what a natural level would look like today. • Renewables are no longer optional. The explosion of data center power demand means the math simply requires a healthy renewables market, regardless of the political environment. Access the full transcript and a searchable library of content at the Liquid Courage Substack #coolvector #infrastructure #oilandgas #lng #secondary #privateequity

4. 

   21 Jul 2026

   European Secondaries are Rapidly Evolving

   The European secondaries landscape mirrors its US counterpart in structure but diverges sharply in size, fragmentation, and the mechanics that govern how continuation vehicles get done, according to Sebastien Burdel, a Partner in Ares Secondaries Group and Oliver Altendorf, a Director at Piper Sandler. In a fascinating conversation with Liquid Courage's Joncarlo Mark (Upwelling Capital) and David Snow, Burdel and Altendorf paint the picture of a market in transition — thirty percent of European secondary volume is expected to come from CVs this year — while flagging structural friction points unique to Europe, from the fund-level waterfall to multi-jurisdiction tax complexity, that can derail deals that would close cleanly in the US. The episode also breaks new ground on private credit CVs, where a wave of 2019-vintage funds sitting at 0.6X DPI is quietly creating a new and fast-growing corner of the secondaries market on both sides of the Atlantic. Key Takeaways • CV and M&A markets in Europe are starting to 'blur' - the line between a traditional M&A exit and a continuation vehicle is increasingly porous in Europe, with Oliver Altendorf noting that assets now routinely switch channels mid-process — and in at least one recent case, the CV market actually cleared at a higher valuation than the M&A process, a near-unprecedented outcome that points to how competitive the buy side has become. • European waterfalls can 'twist the reason' for a CV - unlike the US deal-by-deal carry structure, the European fund-level waterfall creates a specific danger zone — a GP hovering just below their hurdle rate whose primary motivation for a CV is to de-risk their carry rather than unlock value for investors, leaving them, as Sebastien Burdel puts it, "neither a good seller nor a good buyer" of the asset. • Valuation disappointments lead GPs to the CV market - a recurring pattern Burdel flags is the GP who runs a full sale process, fails to attract a bid at their expected price, and then pivots to the secondary market as a last resort — a dynamic that has grown more visible as CVs now represent nearly twenty percent of all private equity exits, drawing in assets and managers with no legitimate place in that market. • The 'ideal candidate' for a CV is a successful company - contrary to the perception that CVs exist to manage problem assets, Burdel describes the archetypal European CV as a company held three to four years at a three-to-four-times return, where the GP simply believes it would be leaving money on the table to sell now — and the CV structure allows existing LPs to take liquidity while new capital funds the next leg of growth, whether organic, through M&A, or via geographic expansion into new European markets or the US. Access the full transcript and a searchable library of secondaries content at the Liquid Courage Substack. #privateequity #liquidity #secondary #europe

5. 

   16 Jun 2026

   Data Center Deals are Appearing on the Secondaries Radar

   Data center owners are turning to the infrastructure secondaries market for capital, and getting pushback over unrealistic valuations, says Eddie Keith, Partner and Head of Infrastructure Secondaries in the Ares Secondaries Group. In a fascinating conversation, Keith tells Liquid Courage how digital infrastructure has rapidly evolved from a fringe asset class into one of the most active and compelling corners of the secondaries market, driven by capital needs that outpace what traditional fund structures can accommodate. Keith draws on nearly two decades of secondaries experience to lay out what separates a smart infrastructure secondary from a trap, why the asset class rewards diversification, and the criticality of  mature cash-flowing assets anchored to a strong development pipeline. Among the key takeaways: • Troubled data center deals are of no interest to infrastructure secondary buyers. If a GP can't sell an asset through a traditional process, bringing it to the secondary market as a last resort is a signal to run — not a reason to look harder. • Data center execs have inflated expectations on value. Some data center owners have valued their platforms at 1.3 to 1.4 MOIC, but due diligence done by infrastructure secondaries buyers have revealed valuations more in the 0.8 to 1.0 range. A data center owner will be hard pressed to sell assets at strong multiples without future revenues supported by contracted cash flows. • Distressed secondary deals have been 'some of the worst.' The continuation vehicle market was born out of post-financial-crisis distress, and those early deals — broken assets from broken franchises that secondary capital was supposed to rescue — turned out to be some of the few reliable ways to lose money in a market with a thirty-year history of generating returns. • LPs should not overallocate to digital infrastructure. Infrastructure investing moves in waves — digital was considered fringe before COVID made it the belle of the ball — and the investors who stay diversified across the full asset class are the ones who don't get caught over-indexed to last cycle's darling. Access the full transcript and a searchable library of content at the Liquid Courage Substack: https://liquidcouragepod.substack.com/p/data-center-deals-are-appearing-on #coolvector #infrastructure #datacenter #secondary #privateequity

6. 

   9 Jun 2026

   GP Transitions: When and How to Install a Replacement Fund Manager

   The private equity market has a zombie-firm problem, and in some cases, chronic misalignment that develops between LPs and GPs can best be remedied by the removal and replacement of the GP team. But how is this complicated and sensitive task accomplished? James O’Donnell of Gibson Dunn, Joncarlo Mark and Eric Green of Upwelling Capital walk through the full lifecycle of a GP transition — from the early warning signs that a firm is in trouble, through the governance mechanics of building LP consensus, to the practical realities of installing a replacement manager. The conversation makes clear that GP removal is not always about bad actors; more often it’s a function of economic misalignment, deteriorated firm-level incentives, or founder dysfunction that leaves perfectly good assets stranded without competent stewardship. Key takeaways of this fascinating conversation include: • LPs are forming teams for problem funds Because zombie and tail-end fund situations consume a disproportionate amount of time relative to their portfolio weight, a growing number of LPs are standing up dedicated special situations teams to manage these risks professionally rather than absorbing them into the general portfolio function. • Sometimes a good GP should not run a problem investment A GP with a strong track record of sourcing and executing deals is not necessarily the right person to restructure a distressed portfolio — the skill sets are fundamentally different, and conflating them is one of the most common mistakes LPs make when evaluating their options. • Founders ‘falling out’ creates GP replacement need A significant proportion of GP transition situations have nothing to do with investment performance and everything to do with co-founder disputes — when partners are fighting over the money rather than for it, LP capital is at direct risk and the case for intervention becomes urgent. • How LPs can look for GP ‘alarm bells’ The clearest warning signs are a combination of a fund underwater and unlikely to clear its hurdle, a manager with no realistic path to raising a successor fund, and deteriorating reporting quality — individually inconclusive, but together a strong signal that the GP’s incentives have fundamentally shifted away from LP interests. • LPs must proactively get transparency from GPs Rather than waiting until year ten or twelve to act, LPs should establish early rights to communicate with fellow LPs, set proactive information request agendas with their managers, and treat a GP’s failure to answer questions as itself a meaningful data point. • LP vs LP conflicts are common Once LPs begin organizing around a potential GP transition, they frequently discover that the most intractable conflicts are not with the GP but among themselves — driven by differing exposure levels, co-investment stakes, and debt-versus-equity positions that create genuinely incompatible interests within the LP base. • How long does it take to remove a GP? A GP removal can take anywhere from several months to several years, and LPs should scrutinize their LPAs at the time of investment for time-limited removal provisions that could expire before a problem is even fully diagnosed. Access the full transcript and a searchable content library at the Liquid Courage Substack: https://liquidcouragepod.substack.com/p/gp-transitions-when-and-how-to-install #liquidcourage #secondary #secondarymarket #privateequity

7. 

   19 May 2026

   Why Bridgepoint and Newbury Combined for Middle-Market Secondaries

   What are the benefits of a private equity firm with a history of primary, direct investing combining with a secondaries specialist? Chris Jaroch and Pete Labbat of Bridgepoint count the ways. In a fascinating conversation with Liquid Courage’s Joncarlo Mark and David Snow, Jaroch and Labbat discuss the 2025 merger of Bridgepoint, a $98 billion private marketts asset manager, with Newbury Partners, a veteran secondaries specialist with $4 billion in assets under management. Jaroch and Labbatt argue the combined Bridgepoint-Newbury will create advantages for the secondaries platform as a middle-market investor, as well as advantages for the broader Bridgepoint platform. “On the GP-led side, we can bring our industry expertise across all the sectors we play in at Bridgepoint to facilitate and, in some cases, increase the knowledge advantage that Newbury has when evaluating a GP-led transaction in healthcare or business services,” Labbat tells Liquid Courage. Among the takeaways in this episode of Liquid Courage: • The acquisition of Newbury Partners was a natural fit because Newbury had already built its secondaries strategy around middle-market funds and assets — the same territory where Bridgepoint operates in its core business. • GP-led continuation vehicles have become a mainstream tool for extending the life of winning portfolio companies, though a high percentage still fail to close, primarily due to valuation disputes between GPs and their LPs. • Current market conditions — stalled M&A activity, a shut IPO window, and LP cash needs — are driving a surge in secondary transaction volume as investors take portfolio management into their own hands rather than waiting for traditional exits. Access the transcript and a searchable content archive at the Liquid Courage Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/liquidcouragepod/p/why-bridgepoint-and-newbury-combined?r=6l28kr&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web #privateequity #secondary #middlemarket

8. 

   1 May 2026

   How to Spot a Zombie Fund Before It's Too Late

   The best time to take on a zombie fund is early in its long, nearly interminable life, is the key finding of this deep dive into private equity and private credit zombie funds. Indeed, it is possible to spot the potential for long-term underperformance in private equity and private credit fund as early as year five, according to new research from Upwelling Capital, led by Joncarlo Mark and Eric Green, who share their findings in this episode of Liquid Courage. "How to Spot a Zombie Fund Before It's Too Late" offers market insights into zombie funds - how they perform relative to funds that are merely bottom-quartile, how to define and spot them, why it is important to remove them from your portfolio before the long-term value erosion kicks in, and how clawbacks complicate things further. Among the key takeaways of this episode: • Early action is the only antidote. LPs who identify underperformance by year five can limit new capital deployment, terminate the investment period, or pursue a secondary sale while the fund still has meaningful value — all options that become far less effective the longer they wait. • Year five is the decision point. Bottom decile funds peak at ~1.1x TVPI by year five and never meaningfully recover, making that the last realistic window to act before value erosion becomes irreversible. • Zombie credit funds perform no better than zombie private equity funds in the long term. • The costs are real, not just theoretical. Beyond opportunity cost, LPs in zombie-bound funds face hard dollar losses on multiple fronts — management fees charged well past their contractual end, monitoring fees extracted from portfolio companies, and the compounding damage done to the underlying businesses themselves, whose long-term value erodes when they are stranded inside a fund with no fresh capital, misaligned management, and no path to a disciplined exit. • Zombie status requires more than bad returns —Upwelling's diagnostic requires a pattern of fourth-quartile performance across multiple funds, a 50%+ fundraising haircut on subsequent vehicles, and contraction of strategy breadth, not just a single underperforming fund. • The secondary market offers a exit, but timing is everything.  The liquidity market has matured enough to provide a genuine escape route for LPs in deteriorating funds, but bottom decile positions are extremely hard to sell and will attract steep discounts, making year five or six — when the fund still has some TVPI — the optimal window to pursue a secondary before buyers lose interest entirely. Access the full transcript and a searchable archive on the Liquid Courage Substack: LIVE WEBINAR: Join a live Liquid Courage webinar, May 13, 12 noon ET, called, "GP Transitions: When and How to Install a Replacement Fund Manager." Join a live Liquid Courage webinar about GP transitions, May 13. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LanZkPuATXqZp59ORcM39w?_gl=1*92blus*_gcl_au*MTEzOTU1MjQ3OS4xNzc3MjQ5MTk1*_ga*OTg1MDI2MjUyLjE3NzcyNDkyMDQ.*_ga_L8TBF28DDX*czE3Nzc5OTUwNTAkbzEwJGcxJHQxNzc3OTk2MTM4JGo1OSRsMCRoMA..#/registration #privateequity #liquidcourage #privatecredit

9. 

   22 Apr 2026

   Continuation Vehicles are Here for Good, but Are LPs Ready to Roll?

   All about the rise of continuation vehicles in private equity from the limited partner point of view. This deep-dive Liquid Courage conversation includes Sarah Farrell, Managing Principal and Head of Private Equity Europe and Asia at Allstate, Katrina Liao, a Partner at Coller Capital, Joncarlo Mark, Founder of Upwelling Capital and host David Snow. CVs have given LPs genuine optionality at the asset level and a shift from passive blind-pool commitment to active portfolio decision-maker. That said, continuation vehicles carry real governance risks, in that the GP sits on both sides of the transaction and conflicts must be managed rigorously. When structured correctly, a CV achieves genuine alignment between GP and LP on a shared conviction about the next stage of value creation, with the GP pricing an asset they know better than any outside buyer and putting their own economics at risk alongside their limited partners. Some key takeaways from the conversation: Continuation vehicle valuations are rife with potential conflicts. GP self-pricing, subjective fairness opinions, and secondary funds incentivized to compete on terms rather than price create a structurally compromised valuation environment that only rigorous independent process can correct. “If you have 20 people competing to give you capital as the primary underwriter in a secondary situation, aren’t you competing to give better terms to get the GP to pick you?” asks Sarah Farrell of Allstate. LPs ‘all of a sudden’ are dealing with a flood of CVs. What was once an occasional portfolio tactic has become a major exit path, forcing LP organizations to rethink how they are resourced, governed, and mandated to evaluate single-asset decisions at scale. “You used to just do fund investing," says Joncarlo Mark of Upwelling. “You now have gotten a direction to go do co-investing. Now all of a sudden, every other week you’re getting presented with a CV from a manager in your existing portfolio.” In CVs, investors already know the asset and the GP. The embedded knowledge an LP carries from the original fund — the management team, the business model, the risks — makes a CV roll decision structurally more defensible than most co-investment opportunities, and the return data is beginning to reflect that advantage. “In a CV, you’re not really taking a bet on the company as much, because they’ve owned the asset before,” says Katrina Liao of Coller. “It’s almost like a known management team — you know the skeletons in the closet. I see it as a much better investment opportunity than a co-investment.” CV economics must ‘pass a sniff test’ Rolling LPs should expect identical terms to the fund they are exiting, and low GP carried interest rollover is the single most telling signal that a deal is structured for the manager’s benefit rather than the company’s next chapter. ILPA’s new continuation-vehicle course: The Institutional Limited Partner Association — representing nearly 800 LP organizations globally — is now building dedicated CV education into its professional curriculum is itself a market signal that the asset class has crossed the threshold from novelty to norm. “This is a major trend. There’s a lot more that is happening in private market portfolios and it’s requiring LPs to have a lot more level of knowledge, sophistication, and control,” says Mark Access the transcript and search the archive at the Liquid Courage Substack:https://liquidcouragepod.substack.com/p/continuation-vehicles-are-here-for #privateequity #liquidity #secondarymarket

10. 

    30 Mar 2026

    Credit Market Shifts Unlock Secondaries Value

    As the investing public is now learning, “credit” and “liquidity” do not always pair well. This and many other facets of the rapidly growing credit secondary market are discussed in this Liquid Courage conversation between Ed Goldstein, Partner and CIO of Coller Credit Secondaries, and Eric Green, a Partner at secondaries advisory firm Upwelling Capital. Among the key takeaways: • Credit secondaries is the fastest-growing corner of an already booming market. The private credit secondary market has doubled year-over-year, a growth rate that  outpaces the growth of the underlying primary market • The BDC volatility story is a liquidity mismatch narrative, not a credit crisis. Goldstein and Green are clear that the current stress in non-traded and private BDCs reflects some retail investors misreading “semi-liquid” as “liquid.” • The GP-led credit continuation vehicle is gaining in adoption. In just two years, the split in credit secondaries has flipped from roughly 80% LP-driven to nearly 50-50 GP-led, as fund managers sitting on nearly half a trillion dollars in unexited assets. • Mid-sized credit managers face a Darwinian moment as capital concentrates at the top. With institutional LPs consolidating commitments behind mega-firms, some credit managers are heading into 2026 facing a primary fundraising wall that will push many of them toward the secondary credit market. Follow Liquid Courage on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/liquid-courage-video-podcast/ #credit #liquidcourage #secondarymarket #liquidity #privateequity

11. 

    10 Mar 2026

    Ares Management's Nate Walton Says Secondaries are 'About Growth not Challenge'

    GP demand for private equity secondary solutions is more about upside maximization than liquidity, says Nate Walton, the head of Ares Management's $42 billion secondaries business. In a wide-ranging and enjoyable conversation with Liquid Courage's Joncarlo Mark and David Snow, Walton,  Partner and Head of Private Equity in the Ares Secondaries Group, talks about why his team looks for high-quality portfolios that can be tapped for further growth, and why Ares tends to avoid "rescue capital" situations. Walton, the son of basketball legend Bill Walton, also shares memories of is own athletic achievements as captain of the Princeton basketball team as well as, briefly, a professional basketball player in France. More key takeaways from this fascinating conversation: • The continuation fund has become a standard instrument, not an exotic one. With roughly 80% of top GPs having now used one, Walton sees the CV solution as permanently embedded in private equity's toolkit, and predicts continuation fund volume will hit records in 2026 even as traditional M&A and exit markets recover. • GP stakes and preferred financing are evolving into a sophisticated capital stack. Beyond simple equity stakes, Ares is structuring solutions using carried interest, management fees, and GP commitments as collateral, enabling succession planning, next-gen transitions, and fund-level capital formation in ways that didn't exist a decade ago. • Real assets — particularly data centers and infrastructure — are the next frontier for secondaries. Walton sees the same GP-led continuation fund logic that matured in private equity now migrating into digital infrastructure, where long build cycles and illiquid assets create a natural demand for vehicles that let sponsors retain assets and clip yield over a 10–20 year horizon. Access the full transcript on the Liquid Courage Substack: https://liquidcouragepod.substack.com/p/ares-managements-nate-walton-says #privateequity #secondarymarket #investing #liquidcourage #nba #basketball

12. 

    12 Feb 2026

    In the Booming Secondary Market, Structured Solutions are Going Mainstream

    In the booming structured-solutions segment of the private capital secondary market, “having your cake and eating it too” means gaining liquidity while also staying exposed to additional upside, say experts from Dawson Partners, Crestline Investors and Upwelling Capital. In this episode of Liquid Courage, we take a deep dive into preferred-equity solutions and NAV loans with Yann Robard, Founder of Dawson Partners, Dave Philipp, Partner at Crestline Investors, and co-host Joncarlo Mark, Founder of Upwelling Capital. Among the takeaways:• GPs and LPs increasingly are using structured solutions as an alternative to selling to create liquidity while keeping exposure. “Let's say an LP is sitting there and saying, ‘Look, I'm over allocated. I actually like this portfolio. I don't want to sell it,’” Robard tells Liquid Courage. “They can use a solution to essentially generate liquidity, deal with their temporary over-allocation, bring them back under allocation targets, but maintain the upside. They're not selling at a discount. They're not foregoing future proceeds.” • Demand for structured solutions specifically - and secondaries generally - has surged because slower exits have left investors hampered with long-in-the-tooth assets and reduced ability to generate cash for fresh opportunities. “In a slow environment like this, you're stuck,” says Philipp. “You still have your future and current capital commitments being called, and so you're stranded because you've got to find liquidity from elsewhere.” • After years of investor education and repeat transactions, adoption of structured solutions has reached a tipping point. “It is unbelievable the power of adoption,” says Philipp. “Many people look at what Yann and I offer and think it's great but maybe don’t want to be first. But as they see more and more transactions getting printed over the last three, five, seven years with really big blue chip names, it takes a lot of that first-mover risk off.” • NAV lenders are not motivated to gain control of portfolios. Quite the opposite, says Philipp: “The biggest misconception we get is that fund-level lenders are excited about accelerating and taking over portfolios. When something goes wrong, I can assure everyone that is the furthest thing from the truth.” Follow Liquid Courage on LinkedIn #privateequity #investing #liquidcourage #secondary #liquidity

13. 

    17 Dec 2025

    Venture Capital Has an $8 Trillion Liquidity Problem

    Venture capital is a massive, diverse market that has a massive, diverse liquidity problem, secondaries experts tell Liquid Courage. Employees of large, private tech companies are seeking liquidity for their shares; limited partners in venture capital funds want to be bought out; venture capitalists want to ride their winning investments further into the future while allowing investors to hop off the train. For all these challenges, the secondary market has a solution, say Matthew Ahern, Managing Principal of Knightsbridge Advisors, Andy Nick, Managing Director and Co-Head of Secondaries Capital Advisory at Piper Sandler, and Joncarlo Mark, Founder of Upwelling Capital. Some of the key takeaways from this lively conversation: • Like other areas of the private capital market, the global venture capital market has significant “backed-up NAV” due partly to weak exit markets as well as to the propensity for venture capital investments to take as long as two decades to become viable businesses, if ever. • The exit market for venture capital deals has eroded to the point where secondary transactions are now the second-most popular form of liquidity. • Venture capital fund performance tends to max out at year nine, after which funds on average see a steady erosion of value. This track record suggests LPs should consider selling on the secondary market when their VC fund has neared the end of its contractual life, and redeploying the capital into more promising situations. “ This might be shocking to some people, but there is conventional wisdom out there that it takes longer for venture-backed companies to really create real value and ultimately, returns for their investors,” says Mark. “But  the punchline is that this does not mean that funds that are older in the venture world create more value in the out-years beyond year nine, year ten.” • There is a difference between a VC-backed company with an impaired valuation, and an individual investment position within a VC-backed company that may have a diminished value because of where it sits in the capital structure. • Some VC managers mark up unrealized investments ahead of a fundraise, and these marks often fail to hold when the fund interests are put up for sale on the secondary market. Follow Liquid Courage on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/liquid-courage-video-podcast/?viewAsMember=true

14. 

    24 Nov 2025

    Downmarket Continuation Vehicles Have Many Upsides

    Continuation-vehicle investments are often more attractive at the smaller end of the private equity market, where capital for continued growth is scarce, GP alignment is material and exit routes are plentiful, secondary experts at Neuberger Berman, Piper Sandler and Upwelling Capital tell Liquid Courage. One key challenge with down-market CVs is that investors are simply less familiar with the many smaller managers.  "As a buyer, sometimes we see a very funny dynamic where there's less people willing to engage on those transactions, not because of the asset, but because of the manager," says  Ben Perl, Managing Director at Neuberger Berman and Global Co-Head of NB Secondary Private Equity. "They can't check the box that they know the group." Perl joins Joncarlo Mark, Founder of Upwelling,  Andy Nick, Managing Director and Co-Head, Secondary Capital Advisory at Piper Sandler, and host David Snow, in the Liquid Courage episode, "Downmarket Continuation Vehicles Have Many Upsides." Other key takeaways from this fascinating discussion: • Smaller CVs offer strategic flexibility that large-scale transactions rarely match, giving investors more ways to realize value. “They can be sold up market to financial buyers. They can be sold to strategics, and in certain cases, they ultimately could be IPO candidates," says Marks. • Downmarket CVs often attract stronger sponsor alignment because the underlying company is more central to the GP’s overall franchise. “We sleep easy knowing that what that manager thinks of when they get in bed is that company; when they wake up in the morning, what do they think about? That company," says Perl • Smaller GPs can use well-structured continuation vehicles to demonstrate the strength of their best asset, giving them a credible pathway to re-engage LPs and accelerate momentum toward their next commingled fundraise. “Continuation vehicles make a lot of sense and provide a continuum of capital for smaller managers who may not be able to go out and raise half a million billion dollars of commingled capital, but certainly can raise a few hundred million dollars for specific single asset or multi-asset CVs," says Mark. • Middle-market CVs can outsize their original funds and provide GPs with efficient capital solutions that would be harder to secure through traditional fundraising. “We’ve definitely seen that situation play out where the actual continuation fund was in certain cases 50% larger than the flagship fund that it came out of," says Nick. Follow Liquid Courage on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/liquid-courage-video-podcast/ #liquidcourage #privateequity #secondarymarket #investing #liquidity

15. 

    3 Nov 2025

    What's Ahead for Secondaries? 'Exponential Growth,' Says Piper Sandler

    Having been present at the infancy of private capital secondaries, John Robertshaw and Ryan Schlitt of Piper Sander nevertheless remain awe-struck at the continued growth of the market, they tell Liquid Courage. In this episode, Liquid Courage interviews the leaders of Piper Sandler's private capital advisory business to learn why they remain bullish on the growth of alternative investments generally and secondaries in particular. "We're in early innings in terms of all the different structures and capital that will have to come into the system in order for all of these assets to achieve distributions, find new owners, etcetera," says Schlitt. Robertshaw and Schlitt became well known to the private capital market during their years running Credit Suisse's placement agent division, which became the largest such fundraising business in the market. During that time, early exposure to clients Coller Capital and Strategic Partners (now part of Blackstone), introduced Robertshaw and Schlitt to the then-nascent demand among investors for liquidity solutions. The duo share with Cool Vector the reluctance among some GPs in the early days of the market to grant consent to secondary transactions. Now secondaries have become mainstream tools for portfolio management. In recent years, so many companies have come under private ownership that "pure math" will require many of these to seek liquidity outside of regular-way exit channels, says Schlitt. "Basically the rigid structure of private equity funds is a structural flaw," adds Robertshaw. They discuss the rise of continuation vehicles (CVs) and why these structures will not come to replace traditional exits. They also discuss the increased participation of private wealth channels in alternative investments, and the need for liquidity solutions that come with that evolution. Follow Liquid Courage on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/search-party-channel/

16. 

    2 Oct 2025

    Don't Worry About the Discount, Secondary Seller

    When should you sell your interest in a private equity fund? Around year nine, according to new research from Upwelling Capital. Allow Liquid Courage to explain. This fascinating conversation among secondaries market insiders includes Ryan Binette, Managing Director and Co-head of Secondary Capital Advisory at Piper Sandler, Tom Kerr, Managing Director and Head of Secondaries at Hamilton Lane, Joncarlo Mark, Founder of Upwelling Capital, and David Snow, veteran financial journalist and host of Liquid Courage. The topic: "Tail-end funds" - private equity funds that have reached a level of maturity at which point investors must decide whether to stay committed to the limited partnership or to sell their interests in the secondaries market and redeploy the capital - even if selling means taking a discount. The Upwelling research findings are clear: sell at a discount and redeploy. Among the findings discussed in this episode of Liquid Courage: • Private equity fund values tend to max out at nine years, then begin to decline• The weaker the fund performance, the earlier the valuation peak• Selling at at discount beats hold-and-pray, even after only a few years• LPs have a “selling window” during which they can sell a fund interest and achieve relatively similar long-term results• You should probably sell before the value of your distributions equals the total value of your investment “I don't think anybody initially thought that these particular funds would go out 15 to 20 years. It's definitely a concern for certain investors.” - Ryan Binette, Piper Sandler "The key for the investors to understand is you have to think about the opportunity cost of not selling positions, as opposed to, what is the discount that I'm gonna take?” - Joncarlo Mark, Upwelling Capital “There's definitely funds that are back into the nineties that are still going. We at Hamilton Lane invested in a fund in 1996 that liquidated in 2022." - Tom Kerr, Hamilton Lane Follow Liquid Courage on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/liquid-courage-video-podcast Access the Upwelling Capital report, "No Country for Old Funds:" https://upwellingcapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/No-Country-for-Old-Funds-Summer-2025.pdf #liquidcourage #privateequity #secondaries

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