Modern Capital: The Private Markets Podcast

About Modern Capital: The Private Markets Podcast

Conversations with leaders building the infrastructure of private markets.

Publisher

Marc Andrew

Category

business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

27 Nov 2025

Latest episode

29 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

26 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   29 Sept 2026

   Charlie Tafoya: Trust, Data and the Next Ten Years

   When it comes to data, private credit is where private equity was 15 years ago. After months of pressure on the asset class, LPs want more transparency. But credit managers don't have great tools to deliver it. Excel is still the default. By Charlie Tafoya's count, portfolio monitoring software has about 3% penetration in private credit, against roughly 40% among private equity GPs. Private equity went through this transformation after 2008. Charlie saw it from Pantheon, investing in secondaries when the whole market was $8 billion. It's about $170 billion today. LPs started asking for performance figures and valuation methodologies on a more regular basis. That demand helped the secondaries market grow. The technology to handle it didn't keep up. So Charlie, a self-described computer nerd, saw a way to bring all that data together. “I was up for VP at Pantheon, so definitely had the private equity career track laid out right before me. But yeah, I ultimately quit on a Friday, actually got married on Saturday, and then started coding literally on Monday. So my father-in-law didn't know that I had left my private equity job at the altar.” Ten years ago, Charlie co-founded Chronograph, which provides data management, valuations and analytics technology for institutional private capital investors. Eight of the 10 largest GPs now use its software, as do five of the 10 largest LPs. Seventeen years on Wall Street taught him that the whole system is built on trust. In a regulated, audited industry, he argues, that means a system of record has to show who can change a value and how it's changed over time. In this episode of the Modern Capital Podcast, Charlie and Marc cover: Raising $143 million at peak SaaSpocalypse fear, and why he asks his team to be 8% less comfortable Why there's no objectively right way to classify pre-IPO Uber, and why that's healthy Why the founder of a data company argues against industry reporting standards Who counts as a pure-play LP anymore, and what that does to the line between LP and GP software Why an RIA may not be equipped to pick managers, and what has to exist first Whether private credit resembles 2008, and the test Charlie applies whenever markets come under stress Private credit now faces the data demands private equity faced after 2008. Charlie has watched this movie before.

2. 

   15 Sept 2026

   Altin Kadareja: Get ABF Off Spreadsheets

   Asset-based finance started with credit cards, auto loans and trade finance. It now covers 70 to 80 kinds of collateral, with music rights and cell towers among them. Every party in a deal runs its own system, and those systems were not built to talk to each other. In a receivables facility, the originator reports what's in the pool, monthly or weekly, in a spreadsheet. Someone at the lender checks it against the invoice PDFs and the bank statement, by hand. On a $50 to $60 million line, that can mean 1,500 new receivables each week. Altin Kadareja spent his BlackRock years valuing the loan pools European banks were selling after the financial crisis, all of it on spreadsheets. Eight years ago, he left to build the software he could not buy. Cardo AI connects the originator, the lender and the bank, so every party reads the same numbers. Today, it runs inside some of the biggest names in private credit. In this episode of the Modern Capital Podcast, Altin and Marc cover: Why only 30% of the $40 trillion ABF market is new collateral, and where the real innovation sits Why banks underwrite on compliance and asset managers underwrite on return, and what that does to the loss curve Two months at a bank against 20 days with an asset manager: why borrowers pay a premium for private credit GPU financing, data centers and robotics: collateral the standard cash flow engines cannot model yet Why a chatbot is 2% of what AI can do for an asset manager, and what has to come first “I want to create a technology highway, which is software, data and AI, that everyone could work better in a standardized way, and could make the market scale faster.” Altin thinks the market cannot scale faster until every party reads the same numbers. The spreadsheet is what stops them. This is a conversation on how to fix it.

3. 

   2 Sept 2026

   Ken Fine: The Submarine Engineer Rewiring Private Capital

   The most opaque asset in private capital is a relationship. Every investment starts with a path to a CEO or a board. That path lives in one partner's head, inbox and calendar. Ken Fine spent five years designing propulsion systems for nuclear submarines, where a single error could sink a boat with the crew still aboard. Then more than a decade at Financial Engines, turning Bill Sharpe's Nobel-winning models into a product individual savers could use to run their 401(k)s. Today he runs Affinity, a CRM purpose-built for private capital. His first reaction: "a CRM? Hasn't that been figured out?" Then he saw the data set. For about a decade, the platform has ingested its customers' emails and calendar appointments, and mapped out the relationships inside firms and across them. Basically who knows whom, how and in what context. By Ken's count, roughly 40 to 50% of the venture capital market is on it. The map reaches past the firms themselves to the founders, board members and bankers they deal with. Private equity and private credit are now where the platform is growing fastest. Humans can only know so many people, and we recall fewer when it matters. Firms often end up waiting for a banker to run a process instead of finding the path they already had. In this episode of the Modern Capital Podcast, Ken and Marc cover: What designing nuclear submarines teaches you about ownership, and when software needs the opposite What the Financial Engines playbook means for putting private assets into 401(k) plans Why the line between a VC firm, a PE firm and a private credit firm is disappearing The three layers of what comes after the CRM: raw data capture, compliance, and agents for sourcing, deal qualification, IC prep and portfolio monitoring What is left for the human when the agents do the rest How Ken uses AI every day, from inbox triage to a thought partner he tells to be cynical "This space, as much or more than most, is relationship-driven. So if you're in the venture world, and you want to make an investment, you're going to need to find a way to get connected to the CEO, or get connected to board members. So leveraging networks is a critical piece of capital within these firms." Relationships as infrastructure. Ken is putting that currency on the books.

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

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