E430: Goldman Sachs’ Michael Bruun on AI, Private Equity & The War for Talent

What if AI makes talent, not technology, the biggest competitive advantage in private equity? Michael Bruun is Partner and Global Co-Head of Private Equity within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. We break down how Goldman Sachs competes for the best middle-market assets, why Michael believes talent can move the needle more than almost anything else, and how higher rates have forced private equity back to the fundamentals of EBITDA and cash-flow growth. We also discuss how Goldman is implementing AI across portfolio companies, why transformation must start with the CEO, and why the war for exceptional talent may become even more important as every employee becomes AI-enabled.

E429: Dr. V on AI, Market Bubbles & Finding the Next Anthropic

What if the biggest mistake in venture capital is investing in what already looks like a great venture investment? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. V (Vaibhav Agrawal), Founder ODDBIRD VC, is a San Francisco-based venture investor who spent nearly a decade at Lightspeed, to explore why he believes the traditional venture playbook is changing. Sourcing has become a media and distribution business, companies are staying private longer, and investors increasingly need to think proactively about liquidity rather than simply waiting for their winners to go public.

E428: Michael Green on Peter Thiel, SpaceX, and Inefficient Markets

What if passive investing is actually one of the biggest active forces shaping markets today? In this episode, I sit down with Michael Green, Founder and CIO at Tier1 Alpha Asset Management. Michael challenges the conventional view that stock prices primarily reflect fundamentals, arguing that the transaction itself moves prices and that the rise of passive investing has fundamentally changed who trades, why they trade, and how markets respond to capital flows.

E427: AQR's Peter Hecht on AI, Market Bubbles & How the Best Investors Build Portfolios

Peter Hecht, Managing Director at AQR Capital Management, explains why diversification has to be measured by underlying risk rather than the number of investments you own. At AQR, diversification is a core principle: thousands of relatively small, uncorrelated investment decisions can collectively create an attractive return for a given level of risk.

E426: American Securities CEO on Warren Buffett, Private Equity & Playing the Long Game

What happens when a private equity firm refuses to chase every new opportunity and spends 30 years getting better at one thing? David sits down with Michael Fisch, co-founder and CEO of American Securities, to unpack how the firm grew from a $71.4 million first fund to $23 billion in AUM without abandoning the investment discipline that got it there. Michael explains how private equity evolved from a sub-$1 billion institutional market into a multi-trillion-dollar industry, why American Securities resisted the temptation to expand into every adjacent asset class, and why seeing more deals matters almost as much as knowing which ones to reject.

E425: What 30,000 Founders Taught Me About AI, Judgment & Top Founders

David sits down with Byron Ling of Twelve Below to unpack the judgment required to invest at the earliest stages of technology. After roughly 30,000 founder meetings over the past decade, Byron believes the strongest signals rarely appear on a résumé. He looks for an almost biological drive to win, second-level thinking, exceptional learning velocity, clear communication, authenticity, and a sense of urgency that makes a founder difficult to compete against.

E424: 32-Year Notre Dame CIO on Sequoia, Venture Capital & Concentration

What can 32 years as a university CIO teach you about identifying exceptional investors before everyone else does? David sits down with Scott Malpass, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Grafton Street Partners and former Chief Investment Officer of the University of Notre Dame, to discuss the patterns he learned from evaluating thousands of investment firms and building decades-long relationships with some of the world’s leading managers.

E423: Castelion CEO on Elon Musk, Hypersonic Missiles & the Future of Defense

David sits down with Bryon Hargis, co-founder of Castelion, to unpack why rebuilding America’s defense manufacturing capacity has become a national security imperative. Bryon explains why decades of consolidation and outsourcing weakened the defense industrial base, why America could struggle against an adversary with significantly greater manufacturing capacity, and why Castelion is betting that deterrence ultimately requires weapons that can be produced affordably by the thousands.

E422: Founding CIO of Berkeley Endowment on Track Records, Contrarian Investing & First-Time Funds

Why do so many GPs misunderstand what institutional LPs actually care about? David sits down with John-Austin Saviano, an Backing & Building Challenger Investment Firms and Former Endowment CIO, argues that one of the biggest mistakes GPs make is overemphasizing track record. Great LPs care less about the headline returns than how those returns were generated. They want to understand the investment process, whether it is repeatable, and whether the people and market conditions that produced past performance still exist today.

E421: Jack Purcell — Building an $11B Private Equity Firm

What if the biggest edge in private equity isn’t finding better deals, but designing better incentives? In this episode, I sit down with Jack Purcell, Managing Partner at Ridgemont Equity Partners, to unpack how alignment helped turn a Bank of America spinout with fewer than 15 people into a private equity firm managing more than $11 billion. Jack explains why Ridgemont invests significant GP capital alongside its LPs, why more than two-thirds of the team participates economically in its funds, and how a nine-person unanimous investment committee uses a proprietary 40-point scorecard to evaluate deals.

E420: Why Infrastructure Is a $40 Trillion Opportunity

What if the biggest AI investment opportunity isn’t AI companies, but the infrastructure required to make AI possible? David sits down with Stuart Waugh, Managing Partner of Northleaf Capital Partners, to explore why the AI boom is creating massive demand for power, data centers, communications networks, and other essential infrastructure. Stuart explains why Northleaf estimates roughly $40 trillion of infrastructure investment will be needed across its addressable markets over the next decade, and why governments increasingly need private capital to help fund it.

E419: Venture Capital Has a Liquidity Crisis

Venture capital was designed around a relatively simple model: invest in a startup, help it grow, and eventually exit through an acquisition or IPO. David sits down with Benjamin Black Powerlaw Corp. (Nasdaq: PWRL), Akkadian Ventures, Ben invests in growth-stage technology companies while providing alternative liquidity to founders, employees, angel investors, and venture funds. In this episode, Ben and David unpack the evolution of the venture secondary market, why great companies staying private longer creates an entirely different opportunity set, how sophisticated investors price illiquid private-company shares, and why liquidity itself is becoming a critical piece of venture capital infrastructure. The result is a different way to think about private markets: the investment opportunity doesn't end after the primary financing round.

E418: AI, Venture Capital & the Future of Investing

Most venture firms think AI is another productivity tool. David sits down with John Melas-Kyriazi co-founder and CEO of Standard Metrics—the AI-native portfolio management platform used by leading venture capital and private equity firms—to discuss how AI is transforming every stage of investing, from sourcing and diligence to portfolio management, follow-on decisions, and firm operations. John explains why the best venture firms are becoming AI-native organizations, how investors are using large language models today, why every investment memo should be "red teamed" by AI, the rise of MCPs, when firms should build software versus buy it, what Standard Metrics is seeing across more than 12,000 portfolio companies, and why human judgment will become even more valuable as AI automates everything else.

E417: $20B Investor on Risk, Uncertainty & Adaptability

Most investors spend their careers trying to eliminate risk. David sits down with Alec Litowitz the founder of Qstar Capital, founder and former CEO of Magnetar Capital, and one of Citadel's earliest partners to explore the difference between risk and uncertainty, why adaptability is becoming the world's most valuable skill, how elite investors make decisions when there is no model to follow, and the cultural principles behind building one of the world's leading hedge funds. Alec also shares lessons from building Magnetar, working alongside Ken Griffin during Citadel's early years, hiring exceptional talent, creating organizations that continuously learn, why ego destroys great investing, and the core ideas behind his upcoming book The Adaptability Quotient.

E416: Ares Investor on Data Centers, Investing Moats & Lessons Learned

Why do the largest investment firms keep getting bigger? David sits down with Joel Holsinger, Co-Head of Ares Alternative Credit, to discuss why scale has become one of the biggest competitive advantages in investing, how Ares evaluates multi-billion-dollar opportunities, why data centers and AI infrastructure are reshaping private credit, and how great investors think about downside protection. Joel also shares the leadership principles behind building world-class investment teams, why reputation compounds like capital, the power of Kaizen, and how Ares' Pathfinder funds have connected institutional investing with large-scale philanthropy through Promote Giving.

E415: Why Every VC Is Suddenly Investing in Defense

For years, defense investing was considered off limits for most venture capital firms. Today, billions of dollars are flowing into defense startups as AI, drones, autonomy, advanced manufacturing, and national security become some of the biggest investment themes of the decade. David sits down with Jake Chapman, Managing Director at Marque Ventures, to discuss why defense became mainstream, how government procurement is changing, why Anduril and SpaceX transformed venture investing, where the biggest opportunities still exist, and why the next generation of iconic venture-backed companies may be built around national security rather than consumer software.

E414: How LPs Evaluate GPs in the AI Era

For decades, fundraising was driven by relationships. Today, it increasingly starts with AI. David sits down with Lex Suvanto, Global CEO of Edelman Smithfield, to discuss how artificial intelligence is changing fundraising, why reputation is becoming one of the most valuable assets for investment firms, how GPs can differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded market, and why authentic thought leadership may become the biggest competitive advantage in private markets.

E413: How AI Will Reinvent Venture Capital

Most venture firms are experimenting with AI. Footwork rebuilt the entire firm around it. David sits down with Nikhil Trivedi, Co-Founder & General Partner at Footwork, to explore what an AI-native venture capital firm actually looks like, how autonomous agents are changing sourcing, diligence, portfolio management, and investment decisions, and why judgment and relationships may be the last true competitive advantages in venture capital.

E412: UPENN Endowment: Why AI Will Create a New Generation of PE & VC Firms

AI isn't just changing technology—it is reshaping how investment firms create value, evaluate managers, and generate alpha. David sits down with Thomas Scriven, Managing Director University of Pennsylvania Office of Investments, institutional investor with experience across private equity, endowment management, and investment banking, to discuss why AI-native investment firms may outperform traditional firms, how great LPs evaluate GPs, why concentrated portfolios often outperform diversification, and the investing frameworks that separate elite allocators from everyone else.

E411: How AI Is Creating a New Generation of Venture Firms

Most venture firms are using AI to save time. Earlybird is using it to generate alpha. David sits down with Andre Retterath, General Partner at Earlybird, to discuss how his firm built an AI-native venture platform, why proprietary data is becoming venture capital's biggest competitive advantage, how machine learning improves investment decisions, and why the future of venture belongs to investors who combine technology with exceptional judgment.