Modern Capital: The Private Markets Podcast

In a tech company, AI is the magical pill that delights your customer. Nobody cares how it works.That thinking breaks completely in finance. At JPMorgan, there is no concept of a black box. No concept of "it works 80% of the time." You're making multi-billion dollar decisions a decimal point change in Excel destroys careers. AI either works 99.99% of the time, or it doesn't work. Full stop.Most firms importing AI from the tech world haven't made that mindset shift yet. Generic models hit 70% accuracy in controlled environments and fall apart when the stakes are real. Apoorv Saxena made the shift the hard way - building AI at JPMorgan where 95% accurate still means 100% wrong. Apoorv has built AI inside of three of the most consequential institutions. At Google, working for Fei-Fei Li, launching Cloud AI from scratch. At JPMorgan, where Jamie Dimon personally spent three hours in a meeting questioning first principles - not because he was testing anyone, but because he was genuinely curious about where the technology breaks. At Silver Lake, where he ignored internal operations entirely, went all-in on one portfolio company and proved the model before hiring a single person. That experience is what Obin AI was built on. This week, Obin came out of stealth with a seed round led by Motive Partners and Fei-Fei Li joining as an advisor - building AI agents operating at 99% accuracy inside some of the world's largest financial institutions, fully auditable, on open architecture, replacing core workflows end-to-end inside their controls.In this episode of the Modern Capital Podcast, Apoorv and Marc cover:What JPMorgan taught him about the difference between AI that delights and AI that can be trusted with a $200M decisionWhy the peanut butter approach (50 use cases, 10% productivity gains, great slide) destroys value instead of creating itThe Silver Lake playbook: one portfolio company, no hires, prove it works firstData readiness: why the buried knowledge in your deal rooms, IC memos and credit agreements has to be unlocked before any agent can workThe agentic workforce: not tools, not chatbots - agents that understand how your firm makes decisions and manages riskWhy the firms that win won't be the ones that move fastest, but the ones that build the right foundations in the right order"When you have transformational technology, incrementalism is a death spiral."Apoorv has seen AI transformation up close at three of the most consequential institutions in finance, and now he's building for the next one. His framework is clear, his examples are concrete, and the conviction behind Obin is hard-earned rather than theoretical.This one is worth your full attention.

In the early 1990s, Ed Brandman was at JP Morgan helping build FIX, the protocol that automated order flow between Wall Street's biggest buy-side and sell-side firms. It took years, regulatory pressure and a handful of 800-pound gorilla institutions to force the change. But it happened. And it reshaped public markets forever.He thinks private markets are heading to the same inflection point."You think about all the information that LPs want to get their hands on related to portfolio reporting every quarter end... that today, still for the most part, comes via PDFs."In 2026. PDFs.That's the problem Ed came out of retirement to solve. After 11 years as CIO at KKR - where he grew the tech team from 5 people to 140 - he founded ToltIQ, an AI-native due diligence platform built specifically for the complexity of private markets deal workflows.In this episode of the Modern Capital Podcast, Ed and Marc cover:Why due diligence hasn't changed since the days of boxes of documents - and why AI can finally fix itThe FIX protocol parallel: what private markets needs to do to scale to $30T+How ToltIQ is applying AI to VDRs, credit agreements and expert network callsWhy waiting 6-9 months on AI adoption is already a competitive disadvantageThe new ToltIQ + DealEngine partnership, and what it signals about where the market is going"There's really not upside to delaying it. And if anything, you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage."Ed is one of the most thoughtful voices in private markets technology - and one of the most generous with his thinking. This one is worth your time.

Tens of millions of trades are coming to private markets in the near term. In this episode, Andrew Tarver lays out math that should get everyone interested in scaling private markets very focused indeed:Tarver is one of private markets' most important builders. He's co-founded a unicorn, dozen other companies, ran Capco UK as CEO at 35, and now helps lead private markets strategy across Motive Partners' portfolio - including InvestCloud, which runs $4 trillion in managed accounts.Here's the problem:The industry is staring down a whole new version of the Paperwork Crisis with even a 7-8% model portfolio shift (it'll likely be higher). That's hundreds of billions in new allocations. And it's not just the initial orders. After a big public markets move, model portfolios automatically rebalance. Markets drop 15%, you're suddenly over-allocated to privates, and the system triggers a wave of redemptions to get back in line. Every quarter, every drift correction, every strat change generates more orders. At $10K-$20K ticket sizes, that's tens of millions of orders. Per year.Today's infrastructure handles about 1,000 orders per operational FTE annually. The industry's current NIGO (failed trade) rate sits at 8%.Do the math:At current staffing ratios, scaling this requires 48,000 new operational staffAt $200K–$300K per head, someone needs to find $10 billion to pay themAnd that's just one platform — before RIAs, 401(k)s, or fintechs like Robinhood and Revolut enterTarver's analogy is perfect: private markets today are where payments were 15 years ago: paper slips, manual processing, three copies of everything. The industry needs to go from imprinter to tap-to-pay.His answer: digital standards, rules-based infrastructure, and accountability at every node... the same playbook he ran at Goldman, UBS, and Merrill's for two decades."We are no longer in the Wild West."This is the most important infrastructure conversation in private markets right now.Congratulations to Tarver and the entire Motive team - including Rob Heyvaert - for leading this charge. Huge episode. Listen to the full thing!

Alex Robinson has spent a decade building the infrastructure private markets never had. Juniper Square now serves 2,500 GPs, supports trillions in capital, and has 700,000 LPs on its platform - likely the largest direct-to-private-markets LP network anywhere.In this conversation, Alex maps where private markets infrastructure is headed over the next 10-15 years. He shares his vision for what "done" looks like: factor ETFs, a FICO score for managers, near-zero trading costs, and diversified private markets baskets in your 401(k). We also dig into the origin story (a FedEx truck and a two-inch stack of paperwork), why standards-by-committee always fail, and how Juniper Square reached dozens of customers before it ever launched publicly.Key TopicsThe FedEx moment that launched Juniper SquareWhy private markets technology was overlooked for decadesWhat "next-gen fund administration" actually meansThe two tsunamis hitting private markets: AI and retailWhy standards will emerge from scale, not committeesAlex's end-state vision for private markets maturityThe coming flourishing of niche managersHow Alex uses AI personally (and which models for what)Time management with three kids and a billion-dollar startup

350+ lenders now finance cash-flow negative businesses. Five years ago, maybe a handful would.This shift is creating new opportunities - and new risks - that most founders and fund managers don't fully understand.John Markell of Armentum Partners and Matt Schwartz, Head of U.S. Finance at DLA Piper, join me to unpack growth credit: the segment of private credit quietly reshaping how technology companies scale.We cover:What growth credit actually is - and why it's different from the private credit you read about in the papersThe gap between bank capital (under 10% risk) and equity risk (north of 20%) - and who's filling itHow SVB's collapse changed underwriting, covenant packages, and deal sizesWhy enterprise software lending is "way, way, way saturated" - and where the white space isWhat founders get wrong when pitching lenders vs. equity investorsThe three things every founder should know before taking on debtWhy some funds net 19% to LPs while others struggle to clear 12%Whether you're a founder considering debt or a fund manager looking for origination opportunities, this conversation will change how you think about the gap between bank capital and equity risk.Follow Modern Capital on your podcast player of choice.

Introducing: Modern Capital, The Private Markets Podcast. Conversations with the leaders building the infrastructure of modern private markets. 

What happens when the man who engineered the clearing system for the euro at age 25 turns his full attention on private markets?Rob Heyvaert has spent three decades building the plumbing of finance: founding companies acquired by IBM and FIS, scaling Capco to 7,000 people across 21 offices, and now orchestrating a portfolio at Motive Partners that includes InvestCloud, FNZ, Daphne, CAIS, and others shaping how capital flows.In this inaugural episode of Modern Capital, Rob makes a striking claim: private markets are approaching their "Bezos moment" - the point where customer obsession finally becomes possible, and necessary.What you'll learn:The infrastructure gap: Financial services has spent decades building siloed systems that barely communicate. Rob explains why private markets now offer a rare opportunity to rebuild from first principles—and why legacy systems are the real barrier to customer delight.Why 60/40 portfolios are a historical accident. Institutional investors have 40% allocations to private markets. Retail investors have 2%. Rob argues this isn't about risk... it's about infrastructure that was never built to serve the individual investor.The volume problem that will determine winners. If model portfolios move to even 5% private market allocations, transaction volumes will increase 80-100x. Most providers aren't remotely prepared. Rob explains who will be.What your children's wealth management looks like. Will they use a "super app" that knows everything about them? Or will they still rely on Johnny the wealth advisor - who might be human, might be AI, might be something in between? Rob offers a surprisingly nuanced view.