July 7, 2025 • 63 mins
Ron Biscardi is the Co‑Founder & CEO of iConnections, a fintech platform reshaping global capital introduction. With 25+ years in the alternative investment space, Ron has facilitated 36,000+ LP/GP meetings since launching iConnections in April 2020. He previously co-founded a boutique seeding firm, deploying over $600M in capital via 20+ deals.
From a philanthropic start—with Funds4Food raising $1.9M in 2020 targeting pandemic relief—to anchoring flagship “Global Alts Miami” events, Ron discusses the strategy of building trust, technology, and community in capital formation.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So tell me about Rahul Mudgal.
So Rahul is a very good friend of mine, and inmy opinion, one of the, if not the best
fundraiser in the alternative investment world.
Rahul has raised just south of I don't want toget the number wrong, but I know he's just
(00:20):
south of about $100,000,000,000 which in forthe size fund he's working with, that's a
pretty incredible number.
And what I love really is the ethos with whichRahul kind of approaches his work.
He pays it forward all the time, And he'sincredibly good at just helping his friends in
(00:48):
a million ways, especially when it comes tounderstanding what else is happening in the
market and just educating people by way ofsharing information in a systemic way that I've
really never seen any single marketer do aseffectively as Rahul does.
(01:09):
But that combined with the fact that he's justone of the best human beings I've ever met, it
it becomes really a deadly combination when youput it all together.
I had to look it up.
A $100,000,000,000 is the larger than GDP ofboth Uzbekistan and Bulgaria.
(01:29):
Pretty good for one guy.
And you mentioned that he's systemicallyhelpful.
How does he productize his value add to LPs?
He has access to an incredible amount ofresearch.
And if you become part of his network, he'sincredibly generous in that he shares all of
(01:49):
this research with his network.
It's a fairly exclusive email club that I'm apart of.
But he is very, very disciplined about takingin information and sharing it with this group
he's created in his email thread.
And it's research related sometimes broadly tocategories like hedge funds or private equity.
(02:16):
Sometimes it's extremely narrow aboutsubsectors that those particular funds are
investing in.
It's a really wide range of things that he'ssupplying data on.
He's built this little machine that he manageshimself, and it's incredibly valuable stuff.
I mean, it's it's really, really useful.
I've never in my career, I've never come acrossanyone who's doing this across such a wide
(02:41):
swath of topics as systematically as Rahul is.
If you know Rahul, it's not really thatsurprising that of all the people I've met,
he's the one doing it.
He's just incredibly generous with his Rolodex,with his time, with leads in terms of trying to
be helpful to people, whether it's an LPlooking for an interesting strategy that they
(03:04):
need to add into their portfolio or someone inhis network who maybe is in the middle of a job
change and is trying to figure out wherethey're gonna go next.
Rahul is just really always there for thepeople in his network, and that's his main
focus.
He's never really focused on selling.
He's mostly focused on how he can be helpful tothe people around him, and then the selling
(03:26):
just takes care of itself.
It's very impressive.
We both know a lot of generous people.
Not everybody have been able to translate intosuch such large businesses.
Is Rahul just playing a mid and long term game,or is he fundamentally doing something very
different that other marketers are doing?
What I described is fundamentally differentthan what most marketers are doing.
(03:48):
And and it is 100% the long game.
It's not even the mid game.
He he's always really thinking, if I'm helpful,if I'm good to the people around me, I'm
helpful to the people around me, and I takecare of my network, my network will take care
of me.
And I think that's the philosophy with which heapproaches not just his work.
(04:13):
I think that's how Rahul approaches life.
Is it different than other marketers?
I think it's dramatically different than thevast majority of marketers.
I think the best marketers in the world areprobably doing something that is closer to what
Rahul is doing.
It's a it's a tough business.
There's a tremendous amount of pressure.
(04:34):
Fundraising is hard.
It takes you know, it's it's one of the longestsales cycles in our economy.
You don't have a meeting and get a ticket thenext day.
It just doesn't work like that.
It takes a long time of getting to know people,building relationships.
And LPs want to track you generally for aperiod of time.
(04:55):
They wouldn't really get to know you.
It's definitely a long sales cycle.
But I have found too many marketers are reallyfocused on what you can do for them instead of
spending time understanding what is the LP'sreal need?
What is it that they're looking for?
I think some of the best sales advice I've evergotten is to really approach selling more like
(05:23):
how a doctor approaches diagnosing a problem.
They don't go in and say, well, here'severything you need to know about me.
Here is something I think you should be doingbefore they ask you any questions.
A doctor starts with questions.
And I think that the best salespeople in theworld approach it more like a doctor than
(05:46):
starting with their pitch.
It's tell me about yourself, tell me about yourfirm, what is it that you're trying to
accomplish, where are you having problems.
Understand what the LP situation is first, andthen you can find out, do they even need what I
do?
It's very likely, in most cases, probably theydon't.
(06:06):
So you're spending all this time pitching whenyou should be spending that time understanding.
And that that is definitely core to who Rahulis.
And I I think it's the piece that a lot ofmarketers really miss.
And it takes a certain amount of courage to dothat because when you do that, you're
oftentimes going for the no, as they say.
(06:28):
You're selling a hedge fund and you hear an LPsay, right now the holes in my portfolio are in
private credit or private equity.
Well, are things hedge funds don't do.
So you probably don't have a solution for whatthey currently need.
But if you at least knew what it was that theyneeded, you could then offer to make
(06:48):
connections and be helpful to them, which willpay dividends down the road.
And look, everyone's portfolio is constantlyevolving.
So they may not need you today, but it's greatto have that relationship already built and
solidified so that when they do have a need inan area where you can be helpful, they're
thinking of you.
That that, in my opinion, is really the rightway for fund managers and fund marketers to
(07:13):
think.
I think a lot of human behavior could beexplained through evolutionary biology lens.
And there's a famous, Capuchin monkey, studywhere they were giving Capuchin monkeys
cucumbers in order to create ta to completetasks, and then they started giving half of the
monkeys grapes and the other half of theCapuchin monkeys would not actually eat the
(07:36):
cucumbers.
They revolted and they said, I'd rather not eatthan be treated unfairly.
So it's not it's even more than a human traitof fairness.
It's even deeper.
It's even more evolutionarily wired than usthan than even at the homo sapien level.
It's really biological.
That's very interesting, and not reallysurprising.
We talk about this game selection, the gamethat Rahul plays, the game that top allocators
(08:00):
play.
What game are you playing as the founder andCEO of iConnections?
The game iConnections is in is helping in asmany ways as possible GPs and LPs build and
scale their businesses.
And the thing that we are best at, and and it'swhere we started the business, is this cap
(08:22):
intro area.
Because fundamentally, cap intro is whereeverything starts in relationship building for
GPs and LPs.
First, LPs are interested in meeting GPs whocan run money for them because they're trying
to generate returns.
And for GPs, they're looking for AUM to add totheir fund because their business is is running
(08:45):
the money that's in that fund.
So that's where it started for us.
What we're now evolving into is a full blowninvestment platform.
So we are constantly thinking about ways thatwe can help the LPs build and scale their
business and same thing on the GP side.
How can I help the GPs build and scale theirbusiness?
(09:07):
And throughout this process, throughout theinvestment process, there is a tremendous
amount of interaction that takes place betweenthese two parties.
So we're trying to find ways to just reallyhelp both sides make that process run more
efficiently in whatever it is they're trying todo, whether it's additional meetings that are
(09:28):
now taking place outside of events.
We started with a core focus on physicalevents.
But we have a whole roadshow module, forexample, that helps the community get together
outside of events when they're traveling aroundthe world trying to meet each other.
We have an investor portal that enables them toshare information and follow each other as
(09:50):
returns are generated and as reports arecreated and they're trying to educate each
other and share information with each other.
We have a meetup area within our system thatenables GPs and LPs to just bring a group
together.
We have this community of thousands of peoplenow.
So as a center hub of this community, we're ina really good position to help people create
(10:15):
educational moments, marketing moments, andbring them together on the fly in virtual
settings.
That's what our meetup area of the platform isabout.
So everything we do is really about helpingthese two primary constituents build their
businesses.
(10:35):
And when you started iConnections, you had thislarge Rolodex of LP relationships, and you did
what everybody is afraid to do, which is youbasically gave them to the market and you
started to compound that.
How difficult was that?
And what was the initial thesis on kind ofgiving up all your relationships to the
community?
You know, I never I never really thought of itas giving up our relationships.
(11:00):
I I always thought of it as paying it forward,that if we if we created a community that
enabled people to meet each other in a way thatwas useful to everyone in the community, that
that would evolve into a good business.
And I I think we were right about that.
Actually, this guy right here, this littletombstone is the tombstone from the event that
(11:26):
we used to start the business.
We started iConnections through a large globalcharity event in the height of the pandemic.
This was June of 'twenty.
And we brought together about 400 LPs and about300 GPs.
Collectively, they did about 3,000 meetings.
And we did it all for free and donated all ofthe proceeds.
(11:49):
We did it free in terms of our time.
We charged the managers.
But what the managers paid, a 100% of that wentto benefit food banks around the world.
And I'm sure you remember food insecurity was ahuge issue in the midst of the pandemic.
So it was great to start that way because notonly did we give away our relationships in the
(12:11):
way you described it, but we also gave away allthe money to the food banks.
But it was was such an amazing way to just makea bang in the industry really fast, really
effectively.
It was done at a time when the industry was indesperate need of a new way to connect because
(12:31):
it's such a face to face business and thatopportunity didn't exist, especially at the
start of COVID.
So it was a huge pay it forward moment for us.
And I just can't tell you how much that cameback to us in spades.
A few months later, you know, on the back ofthat event, we realized, wow, there there's
(12:53):
definitely a business opportunity here becausethe industry can't get together in person.
They clearly need a virtual platform.
They had a great experience in the Funds4Foodevent.
How can we now turn this into a business?
We were able to go right back to that communityand we got a ton of great feedback as we built
(13:13):
out our platform and a ton of early subscribersto the software.
So for us, it's very much the Rahul way ofthinking.
In today's digital world, online privacy isn'toptional, it's essential.
That's why I use NordVPN.
It's one of the fastest and most reliable VPNson market.
(13:35):
It helps me protect my personal data, blockmalware, and keeps me secure when I'm
connecting to public Wi Fi networks.
Whether I'm traveling, at my local coffee shop,or just browsing at home, NordVPN keeps my
Internet connection encrypted and myinformation safe from hackers.
But here's where it really comes in handy: changing my virtual location. (13:49):
undefined
When I travel abroad, I could easily accesscontent or services that are available in The
US, whether it's financial platforms, newssites, or even just streaming my favorite show.
With NordVPN, I can instantly switch my virtuallocation to The US or over 125 other countries
and get seamless access as if I never lefthome.
(14:10):
To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan,go to nordvpn.com/invest.
Our link will give you four extra months on thetwo year plan, and you could try NordVPN risk
free with NordVPN's thirty day money backguarantee.
Once again, that's nordvpn.com/invest.
That's n0rdvpn.com/invest.
You could also find the link in the show notesfor this episode below.
(14:31):
And I wanna double click something because Ithink it is actually mid a midterm game in that
you have to have a long term perspective, butthe fact that you've been able to scale this
much in five years shows how quick, quoteunquote, quickly long term games compound.
It's a paradox.
If you play long term games, they couldcompound much more quickly than people realize.
(14:54):
It might not happen six months.
It might not happen eighteen months, but itcould happen in three to five years.
It's not like it's a game that could only beplayed in decades.
100%.
You can't see the connection of the dots movingforward.
I think in in the famous Steve Jobs talk, hekind of went through this, and he said, you
(15:15):
can't you can only connect the dots lookingbackwards.
You can't really connect them moving forward.
Thinking about how to be helpful and just ingeneral, playing the long game leads to
opportunities that you could never possiblypredict.
(15:38):
Playing the short game, you kind of always knowwhere that's gonna get you because it's just
it's more obvious.
It's a transaction.
So you know how much you're gonna make.
Sell something for 10,000,000, you know you'regonna make 500,000.
That's the the ceiling of what you couldpossibly make.
That's absolutely right.
And, like, an another example of where weplayed the long game.
(15:58):
As the tech platform began to, sort of takehold, a lot of other groups needed a tech
solution for their events.
So we quickly pivoted and created a way for ourtech platform to be used by other industry
(16:19):
events.
We thought, hey, here's an event that's there.
And again, in the midst of COVID, all of theseevents were going through a really, really
tough time.
For some, it was a near death experience forsure.
Having a tech platform that enabled them to doa virtual event really fast was a game changer
(16:41):
for a lot of them.
I don't think we charged anyone.
I'm trying to think back, but I can't rememberany of these events where we actually tried to
make money on it.
We basically thought, hey, the event needs thehelp.
Our community wants to connect.
There's pretty big overlap between whateverthat event is and our community.
(17:03):
Let's just find a way to do this and give it tothem for free, because they probably don't have
the budget for it.
Everyone's going through a tough time.
And again, it's just helpful to everyone and wecan do it probably better than anyone else and
do it fast.
It's not worth trying to figure out how we'regonna charge XYZ event to do this.
(17:26):
That became a whole element of the businessthat when we made those first few decisions, I
never would have known where it was gonna lead.
Well, fast forward five years, we are on thecusp now of rolling out an annual meeting
element to the platform.
So think about it.
(17:47):
We have about 1,100 funds who are or managerswho are members of the platform.
A huge number of them are doing annualmeetings.
And and the annual meetings AGMs.
COVID.
AGMs.
Exactly.
Those AGMs post COVID are more complex becausethere's a huge virtual element and there's the
(18:11):
in person element.
Well, before COVID, there wasn't a lot of videoat an AGM.
You showed up at the AGM, you attended,everyone attended in person.
There wasn't usually Maybe they did aconference call, but it was terrible.
Now these things have a much bigger productionelement to them than they did in the past.
(18:31):
People want to be able to attend virtually ifthey can't be there in person.
And they wanna have close to the sameexperience that you would have, which means you
need multiple cameras, you need decent qualitystaging and lighting and audio and all the
elements that go with creating a high qualityproduction, which of course we do at all of our
(18:54):
events.
So we thought, okay, we have the tech platform,we've done a lot of third party events now,
we're really good at AV, why don't we create abusiness line to support AGMs?
Because we know it's probably close to 50% ofour fund clients that are doing AGMs every
(19:14):
year, or at least every other year, not everyyear.
That's an opportunity that we would not be in aposition to do that had we not supported third
party events.
And if we hadn't paid it forward and looked atdoing that largely as a way to just be helpful
to the community, we probably wouldn't be in aposition to launch this thing that we're about
(19:38):
to launch.
So again, it's hard to know where how it's allgonna come together, but in my experience,
playing the long game is always it's really theonly game.
Have you ever googled yourself and found yourhome address, phone number, or other sensitive
information online?
That's not an accident.
Data brokers collect and sell your personalinformation, leading to spam, identity theft,
(19:59):
and loss of control over your personal data.
And with data breaches up over 70% in recentyears, the issue is only getting worse.
That's why I'm using Incogni, a service thatautomatically contacts more than two thirty
data brokers on your behalf into personal dataremove.
All you have to do is sign up, and they do allthe work.
Incogni also keeps your data off the market bydoing repeated removals, taking it down if it
(20:20):
shows up again.
You can get 60% off an annual Incogni plan bygoing to incogni.com/invest and using the code
INVEST at checkout.
Trying Incogni is risk free with their thirtyday money back guarantee.
Once again, that's incogni.com/invest,inc0gni.com/invest.
You can also find the link in the show notesfor this episode.
(20:40):
Your data belongs to you.
Take it back with Incogni.
It's it's the brand, which I like to say thebrand is the brand promise.
The successful kind of cycle with the customerof providing something, then being pleased with
it, and then wanting to come back.
And oftentimes, if you're doing the right way,customers should be asking you for product
extensions and should be saying, we would loveto partner with you guys on the AGM.
(21:04):
Sometimes they are not able to conceptualizethat, but it's the first product that you serve
and having a wonderful experience for thecustomer that gives you this optionality of of
providing new products.
And what you just said is literally whathappened.
We a a client who heard, had experienced theevent, saw how how well we run the Miami event
(21:25):
in particular, and had their AGM coming up andthought, hey, why don't we ask iConnections to
help with this?
We know they do third party events.
They have the tech platform.
They have the event know how and operationsinternally.
Why don't we approach them and see what theysay?
So they did.
And we said, God, we'd love to do this becauseit'll give us a really solid pilot that we can
(21:50):
build a whole new business line on.
So, yes, we are very, very good at stayingclose to our customers.
We are in incredibly good contact.
And the events that we do also create momentsin time when we really get incredibly good face
to face time with our customers over a coupleday period.
(22:12):
Our New York event that we just ran earlierthis month, it was 45 or 50 demos slash surveys
with customers where we're really, like,clicking through screens and getting their
input and saying to them, what do you like?
What do you not like?
And what what isn't even here that you wish wehad?
(22:34):
All of those moments are incredibly valuevaluable when you're trying to build something
that's ultimately gonna serve your clients in amore strategic way.
And it that like, all of that is nottransactional at all.
It's really we're really trying to build astight a relationship with that community and as
useful a relationship for the community aspossible.
(22:58):
One of the trends that I see is basically thepodcast of conferences and conference leaders
and conference organizing organizers realizingthat that's essentially content.
So the the panel, instead of just making itkind of this traditional panel, making it
interview style, are you finding that iniConnections, and is that one of the trends
(23:22):
that that, you know, you foresee in yourfuture?
It's funny.
We have a lot of content because, you know, weprobably ran 50 to 60 sessions in Miami.
We probably had 25 to 30 in New York.
We'll do another 25 to 30 at our event inSingapore.
And even with all those, I find myself wishingwe had more.
(23:47):
There seems to be an insatiable demand forthese educational moments.
And we're in an interesting spot in that wereally have the smartest people in the world on
stage at our events.
The last event, the one person who really comesto mind as a huge name in our industry is Cliff
(24:10):
Asness.
So Cliff did a little private session with agroup of maybe 15 or 20 LPs.
And then he did a session on stage, incrediblywell received.
And he's a brilliant guy.
The idea that if you're a kid in school andyou're majoring in finance and you're
(24:31):
interested in getting into the fund business,and now you can go to YouTube and listen to
what Cliff thinks about what's happening in themarket today.
And there are so many of those moments nowavailable.
Like, the the amount of education you can getcompared to when I was starting in the
business.
I mean, it's really night and day.
(24:52):
The only place you could have that opportunityis if you went to the conferences, which of
course early in your career, they're veryexpensive.
It's hard to do.
You probably can't even afford the flights andthe rooms, let alone the ticket to the event.
But now YouTube has made it possible to sharelots of social media platforms, but YouTube in
(25:14):
particular has made it possible to really sharethis.
So for us, it is an absolutely criticalcomponent of our brand building and our growth.
We want the market to see our association withthe smartest people in the world in this
industry.
So definitely, I I am not personally apodcaster and I am but but the event is
(25:40):
absolutely providing a form of what you'regetting from, you know, the podcast industry.
As a matter of fact, and you should takeadvantage of this in Miami, we have a whole
podcast studio that we set up at our Miamievent.
We had a small version of it in New York.
But in Miami, we have it fully blown out, adesk, multiple cameras, you know, beautiful
(26:06):
background, TV screens.
And we're encouraging people who want to createcontent at our event.
Take advantage of the fact that you havesomeone like a Cliff who's speaking at an
event.
If you can convince him to jump on yourpodcast, the setup is right there.
You can just get in the seats and get rightdown to business.
(26:27):
We feel like there's just such a demand for allof this.
Anything we can do to help facilitate more ofit, it's good for us.
It's good for our clients.
So, yeah, we're we're definitely leaning intoit in a big way.
I I got to spend two hours with Cliff on apodcast that I did a couple months ago.
So I've been collecting questions for a secondsecond shot.
(26:47):
You know, thing that comes to mind is the TEDcase study where they were a private
organization, high end, very expensive, andthen they did this paradoxical idea of of
posting all their TED talks online.
And a lot of people thought it was a very riskymove, they ended up getting hundreds of
millions of views and growing the platformconsiderably.
(27:08):
So people don't just go to conferences for thecontent.
They also go for the community aspect as well.
For sure.
And what we're seeing is that the number ofviews taking place after the event is dwarfing
the number of people who are watching the eventlive.
(27:28):
Many of our sessions have been posted onlineand gotten anywhere between thirty, forty
thousand views all the way up to half a millionviews, you know, depending on what the topic is
and and how pertinent it is to current events.
But it's it's really an incredibly powerfulmechanism that I think if you're if you're at
(27:52):
all in the content game, it's kind of crazy notto be leaning into it.
I I Ted obviously was way ahead of everyoneelse.
So I wanna really double click on value add toLPs.
You had an interesting conference in 2022around crypto craze at the time.
So tell me about how LPs leveraged iConnectionsto learn more about crypto.
(28:17):
So when we think about content, the what, ofcourse, comes to mind for everyone is who's on
stage?
Is it a fireside chat?
Is it a panel discussion?
Is it a keynote presentation?
What we learned over time was that LPs reallywere viewing their one on one meetings.
And we do a tremendous number of on onemeetings.
(28:40):
Our events have world class content on stagelike many others.
But what's really unique to iConnections is theone on one meeting element of our events where
we're running thousands and thousands of theseat each event.
The LPs are using those meetings to educatethemselves in every imaginable way.
(29:01):
They're using it to educate themselves on themarket.
They're getting educated on specific investmentstrategies.
Referencing back to 'twenty two and what we sawin the crypto area.
Crypto was exploding in late 'twenty one, early'twenty two.
Our event in January of 'twenty two saw we onlyhad 17 fund managers that were in digital
(29:26):
assets.
Those 17 funds collectively got over 800meetings, meaning LPs agreed to meet with them,
even though this was not at all considered tobe an institutional category yet.
And I think even today, it's still not reallyan institutional category.
It's a whole lot closer, but but it's not quitethere yet.
(29:48):
Well, back then, it was viewed as the WildWest.
LPs were not telling us they wanted digitalassets, but then when we looked at the meeting
counts and we saw that concentration, and wehad never seen anything even close to that
level of concentration with such a small numberof funds achieving such a huge meeting count.
(30:08):
It became obvious to us that LPs were usingthose meetings to learn everything they could
about Bitcoin, about meme coins.
You know, back then NFTs were still all therage.
So they were running through these meetingsabsolutely just coming up to speed on how it
all worked.
And we thought, wow.
(30:30):
That's really, really interesting.
And we actually quickly did a survey of LPs andsaid, hey, if we did a dedicated digital assets
event, would you attend?
And the response was overwhelmingly yes.
And we actually ended up doing one for thatyear.
Unfortunately, later in the year, the bubbleburst in crypto and then you had the whole FTX
(30:52):
mess.
And so that was all a big setback.
But I think digital assets has absolutelyrebuilt.
And now it's also being built in a much better,more sustainable and stronger way.
I think this administration is very focused ongetting the right regulations in place so that
you can invest safely and invest in it in waysthat's much closer to how we all invest in
(31:18):
stocks and bonds.
And I think that's the right way to go.
Our ability because of this meeting element tosee where LPs are headed as opposed to what
they looked at retrospectively is verypowerful.
And we're working on multiple data products toreally bake that into the iConnections platform
(31:43):
so that we can be more helpful in predictingwhere the LPs are going next.
There's lots of platforms that will tell you,hey.
Here are the mandates that exist out therebecause LPs have said, yeah.
This is something I need in my portfolio.
Those things could be six to twelve months old.
They're not good indicators of what's coming upnext and what the next mandate is gonna be.
(32:06):
But when we see how they behave in thesemeetings, it's very often that the meetings
they take are different from what theirmandates are at a given point in time.
Yeah.
800 LPs, 17 managers.
And I bet a large amount of those 800 LPs, likeyou mentioned, didn't have a mandate or
couldn't even write a check.
(32:26):
And yet many of those ended up probablyinvesting into some of those managers couple
years later to kind of go back to long termaspect of it.
And also probably some of them that didn't evenhave a mandate somehow magically found a
mandate if if there was a compelling enoughmeeting.
It kind of goes back to this principle that Ithat I use is you can't spend too much time
(32:46):
with a billionaire or with a $100,000,000,000institution.
No matter how much time you invest into largecheck writers, it's just efficient.
You could spend two, three years.
It's just much more efficient than trying to betransactional kind of with smaller investors.
There's just you really have to focus on thelarge check writers and really focus on, you
know, putting in the time with those investors.
(33:09):
Absolutely.
And those are the check writers who cancompletely change the trajectory of your
business.
If you get even if the check isn't the biggestcheck, just they're so well regarded in the
marketplace, just getting any size check fromthem pretty much creates you know, it it's a
(33:29):
vote of confidence on your business and on yourinvestment strategy.
So I I completely agree with you there.
Look.
There is a place for getting the small checks.
So I'm not I'm not anti focusing on the smallchecks.
And kind of a combination of them is what I'veseen work the best where you're you're building
that long term relationship with a larger firm,and it's great to be able to say to them, hey.
(33:54):
Our AUM went up by $5,000,000 in the lastquarter.
Hey, it went up by $10,000,000 in the lastquarter.
And that can be coming through small checks.
All of that good news helps to influence thatbigger player to continue continue to spend
time with you, take you seriously, and, youknow, hopefully, you can get something across
the line.
There's a nuance there.
A lot of people say, don't worry about the sizeof the check.
(34:17):
But, course, if you take that to extreme, ifyou have a a $100,000,000 checks, it's just a
difficult business to run.
Double click on what the most effective GPs doat iConnections that a lot of GPs do not do.
We'll get right back to interview.
But first, we're looking for the next greatguest.
If you or someone you know is a capitalallocator and would make for a great guest,
(34:38):
please reach out to me directly atdavid@wisperdcapital.com.
So the number one thing is they put in thetime.
This is an event where you're doing the averagefund did about 20 meetings at our event in
Miami this year.
And collectively in that event, we ran about19,000 meetings.
So it's an enormous event.
(35:00):
The funds that do the best are the ones who putin the time in the lead up to the event.
So the event was in late January.
We opened our software, making it possible forGPs and LPs to see each other in the software.
That opened in, like, mid to late November.
The GPs who got the most meetings are generallyspeaking, the ones who, as soon as the system
(35:25):
opens, they're already completely set up in thesystem.
They purchased access to the event a monthahead of time.
They loaded their returns and all theirmaterials into the system so that when that
system opens, they're ready to go.
And then as soon as it opens, they're in therelooking at which LPs are coming, using the
(35:46):
filters to determine, okay, who are the onesthat are really a fit for me?
And then sending meeting requests to those LPs,hoping that LPs will see those requests,
confirm meetings with them, and then they getto go make more requests.
We limit the number of requests so LPs aren'toverwhelmed.
But you basically once a request is eitherdeclined or confirmed, a GP gets that credit
(36:12):
back, if you will, and they can go make anotherrequest.
So they are generally working with 50 to 100 ofthese at any given point.
You'd be shocked at how many GPs spend.
This is not an inexpensive proposition.
Our software is expensive.
The event is expensive.
A lot of them don't really spend the time inthe system doing the work, sending the meeting
(36:37):
requests.
And then in early January, we start to get thepanic phone calls.
Hey.
I don't have any meetings.
And then we go and look, and we say, well, yousent five requests.
You have a 100.
Go go send the other 95, and then we'll take alook at where you are.
And, of course, you know, we have clientsuccess department that helps people to
(36:59):
navigate the software.
And we want people to come and have a goodexperience.
But it's ultimately on the GPs to do this work.
Now the LPs are in there doing their own workas well.
And the LPs may also go through the system andsay, hey, here are the 20 people that I wanna
meet.
They send their own requests.
Most of those requests, of course, are gonnaget confirmed because people are always happy
(37:22):
to get a request from an LP.
But but this it like, this is not rocketscience.
It is not complicated.
It's really just a matter of staying on top ofit.
It's the hard work of the lead up to the eventand making sure that you're organized and every
day you're in the system looking at, okay, whoaccepted my request?
(37:46):
Who didn't accept my request?
You know what?
These requests are now a week and a half old.
They feel stale.
I'm just gonna withdraw them all and send awhole new batch of requests.
The the marketers who are really on top of allof these elements, they're the ones who leave
having gotten twenty, thirty, 40 meetings.
I mean, we had some funds last year whoachieved fifty, sixty meetings.
(38:11):
And at that level, you're having to sendmultiple teams usually because you can't
possibly do them all in two days.
The cap intro element is just two days long.
So it it's it's really taking the lead up tothe event very, very seriously.
If you do that, you're gonna have a greatexperience.
(38:32):
I mean, we there's too many LPs for you not tohave a great experience.
If you come and you do the basic behaviors andyou really try and you don't get meetings, it's
almost always because performance has reallybeen bad.
If your performance is just not good in yourpeer group, it can be tough.
There's no, you know, there's no denying that.
(38:55):
But if you if you come and you do the basicsmore often than not, you're gonna leave this
event pretty happy because you've got we alwaysmake sure there's more LPs than GPs.
Last year, we had 25 more LPs than we did GPs.
So it was a very healthy ratio between the twogroups.
(39:16):
And and GPs came away thrilled.
I mean, the number of positive comments,emails, text messages that I got coming out of
this Miami event was off the charts.
I mean, very, very few GPs came away feelingsad.
But I'm telling you, ninety five percent of thetime when a GP is sad, it's it's always because
(39:38):
they just didn't do the basics.
You go to iConnections.
You have a great first meeting.
Let's say it's 10 out of 10.
What's the right cadence and strategy to buildthat relationship post conference?
My advice would always be move at the pace thatthe LP is comfortable with.
If you're using our software to if you're usingthe investor portal, you can keep your
(39:59):
information in front of that LP Because ifyou've had a meeting with them, the LP now has
a folder in their side of the investor portalfor your fund.
So every time you load a market update, aperformance update, whatever whatever
information you think is useful for LPs to see,you can put it into the system, and it will
(40:23):
stay in front of the LP.
That's, like, the bare minimum.
At least quarterly, you wanna be trying to getin front of that LP again.
They're not gonna meet with you quarterly, butI think it's important that you're at least
trying to get in front of them quarterly.
It's definitely a business where you shouldnever ever be offended.
(40:45):
People are super busy.
LPs in particular are being approached from somany different angles.
It's really hard to break through that noise.
And and also, every time you come back toanother iConnections event, if it's someone
that you really clicked with, do anothermeeting with them at the next iConnections
event.
Some of the bigger funds who attend our events,a third of their meetings are usually existing
(41:10):
investors.
The process of getting together is so efficientbecause everyone gets you know, we do the
calendaring for you.
Every meeting is a half hour long.
It becomes a great moment to just touch basewith an audience that you're trying to stay
connected to.
So it's not all new relationship discovery.
(41:31):
I mean, that's the biggest component.
But every event, you should absolutely betrying to reconnect with people that you
thought you had a good moment with.
So I would say definitely use the investorportal to keep your materials in front of them.
Absolutely try and get together with them inperson quarterly.
We have a roadshow module in the system whichyou can use to help you organize any meeting
(41:55):
around the world.
These can be virtual.
They can be in person.
You know, it can handle both.
But that feels like a reasonable cadence.
And then don't ever get upset no matter howmuch you feel ignored.
That's just the nature of the beast.
And there are lots of stories of folks whothought, god, this is never going anywhere.
(42:17):
But then the moment was right for the LPsportfolio, and then you get a call because
you've really made an effort to stay in frontof them, and you never get upset when they're
too busy to to meet
with.
Try not to have any of your follow ups besales.
Try to make it be as educational as possible.
To to your point about Rahul, even if it isn'tdirectly in your space, try to make some
connections or some other useful thing thatrewards the LP essentially for taking that
(42:42):
meeting.
Yes.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I'm sure you're thinking about AI these days.
How does that impact the business?
I don't think there's a business on the planetthat won't be impacted by AI.
For sure, AI is going to have a huge impact onthis market.
(43:03):
I think when it comes to manager selection inparticular, AI is going to be hugely helpful.
We're working on a variety of things to make iteasier.
I mean, one of the more basic things that we'retrying to do is really to just create a chatbot
interface so that you don't have to become anexpert in how to use the filtering side of the
(43:26):
platform.
So you could just talk to the system and say,you know, show me private equity funds from
this size to that size, this longer trackrecord, etcetera, and it'll give you that
result.
That's a much more user friendly way thanhaving to know how to filter on each one of
those things.
It's the filters we we have, like, 90 fieldsyou can filter on, but it's kind of complicated
(43:50):
to do it.
So that's one way we see it, you know, where weintend to use AI to make the system better.
The the one idea that comes to mind is if wecould get clients comfortable to put their
portfolio data or at least part of theirportfolio data into the system so that the
system knew, okay, here's the mix of funds youhave.
(44:14):
We could use AI to analyze that and then say,okay, Based on who's attending the next event,
you should consider meetings with these 20firms because here's how they might be able to
help your portfolio.
I haven't seen anyone do that yet.
Now it's harder to do because you have to getthe you have to have the confidence of the LPs
(44:37):
that they're comfortable sharing theirportfolio data.
Some probably will just never share theirportfolio data because some are really, really
protective of it.
But others, depending on what kind oforganization you are, your portfolio might even
be in the public domain.
So you're probably less concerned about it.
Of course, all of this is gonna be done withhigh levels of security and protection.
(45:03):
But it's still an area where I think it's gonnatake LPs a while to get comfortable with it.
We even on the GP side, by the way, we havebegun to use AI to create summaries of the fund
manager for the LP to make the LP's life easierwhen they're coming in and looking at managers.
(45:27):
But we asked the manager's permission before weloaded any of their data into the AI tool.
Just knowing there's a high degree ofsensitivity, we wanted to make it clear we
weren't training anything on any of their data.
A big challenge in our industry is the way inwhich the data is presented to the investors is
(45:50):
really, really important, especially foralternatives.
When you fall into the unregulated categorylike most alt managers do, there are really
serious rules that you can't you don't want torun afoul of.
So the way your information is presented toinvestors is really, really important.
(46:11):
We're working on building tools to deal withall that so that the GPs can feel, not feel,
but actually be in control of that.
You couldn't just throw your stuff into ChatGPTand have ChatGPT present it however it wants to
prospective investors.
So that would be really, really bad in theworld of investing because the regulators are
(46:34):
gonna look at you and say, wait a second.
The okay.
Great.
You tried to use AI to make this wholeexperience better, but it said things to
investors that you should never say.
You know, you can't do that.
So in other industries that aren't as heavilyregulated and where the impact isn't as big
financially for people, you could definitelyexperiment more.
(46:56):
There's no question there is huge value thatcan be added, but we have to be really careful
about how it's done because we can't we can'tput GPs or LPs in a situation where we're
really on the edge from you know, in in interms of complying with the regulations.
(47:18):
The the regulations are here for a reason.
There's a lot of really interesting datasetswith whether it's Burgess or Atapar and and
some even, like, PreQin, and these platformsare trying to kinda predict where LPs are
trying to invest in.
Have you ever looked at partnerships with thoseservice providers?
We've definitely thought about it.
We have a lot more partnership interest nowthat we're bigger and we're so dominant in the
(47:41):
cap intro phase of the investment cycle.
It was a lot harder in the beginning.
I find with partnerships, it's really tough topartner with firms who are very different in
size.
Partnering with groups that are comparablesize, it just feels easier to me because
(48:02):
everyone has a vested interest, and there's notone player who feels super dominant over the
other player.
Look, we could be an amazing partner to anumber of these firms because the thing we have
that no one else really has is an unbelievableamount of meeting data.
(48:23):
So all of those systems you mentioned can lookat clicks and search data and things like that,
but we can tell you which GP met which LP forthe last 100,000 meetings.
I mean, that's really, really unique data thatI I can't really think of another organization
(48:47):
that could possibly have as much of that dataas we do in the institutional world.
There are probably groups that might have it inretail.
We don't play in retail at all.
We're really institutionally focused.
But institutions are where all the money is inall.
And and retail, not to diss retail, it's anexciting growth area for the for the industry.
(49:08):
But the vast 90% of assets, probably 95% ofassets are really institutional assets.
The meetings are the leading indicator or justslightly upstream to actually investing.
And that's one thing that I always tell GPs isthat if an LP keeps on taking meetings with
you, it's a very strong signal because they'reso constrained in their time.
(49:30):
It's arguably their most valuable asset,especially for the larger organizations.
It's almost more valuable than than a smallcheck.
What do you wish that people in the industrywould better understand about iConnections, and
what misconceptions do you wish people didn'thave about about CapIntro, about iConnections?
So our I think we're starting to make realprogress on this, but the we started in COVID
(49:56):
as a digital platform because you couldn't doan in person event.
So all the connections that we were that wemade over those first two years were mostly
through our platform.
Well, when the world reopened, there was suchpent up demand to get together in person.
Our event series just exploded, like, right outof the gates.
(50:18):
Our first event, we ran 8,000 meetings.
This was in '22 at the Foul Blow.
We ran 8,000 plus meetings.
We had 2,300 attendees, a load of speakers,super high quality.
It it was an event that it was not normal for afirst time event to look the way that event
(50:38):
did.
Fast forward to today, our event this year,5,500, 5,200, somewhere in there attendees.
We ran 19,000 meetings.
We had 50,000,000,000,000 in assets representedin that event.
Just leaps and bounds bigger than the firstone.
Super exciting.
But the success that we've had with the eventmeans a lot of the marketplace thinks of us
(51:06):
purely as an event business.
And we're really not.
The reason we are where we are is very much thesoftware.
If we didn't have the software platform makingit possible for this size audience to
orchestrate all of these meetings and reallyfacilitate these meetings, the events would
(51:28):
never be as successful as they are.
We, a lot of times, have to educate the marketon the fact that we are not just an event
business.
We're really a software business at the core.
And what we're starting to make real headwaywith is demonstrating to this industry that we
can become and we really are becoming a fullblown investment platform.
(51:53):
Ultimately, if we can get you in into thatfirst meeting moment, the cap intro moment,
there's no reason why we shouldn't be able tokeep you throughout the investment life cycle.
We then wanna help you with diligence.
We wanna help you maintain that relationshipongoing through things like roadshows and
meetups and the investor portal.
(52:14):
We want to help you with your transactions bydigitizing your sub docs and help you through
redemptions and quarterly updates, annualupdates, however frequent you want to do them.
So we have the customer base.
We're starting from a position of real strengthbecause we have so many GPs and LPs.
(52:38):
And these are the most prominent GPs and LPs.
I mean, the folks who are members of theplatform, who are attending our events, are
running as I said, it's a it's a huge assetbase, and they really are regarded as the best
in the world.
How do we carry that success in the first phaseof the investment cycle all the way through the
(53:01):
balance of the investment cycle.
Sometimes it can be frustrating that peopleassociate us so much with events.
But let's face it, this isn't the worst spotfor us to be in.
Having the best firms in the world already onour customer list is a huge advantage.
So then because really the problem we have tosolve is really one of adoption.
(53:25):
I already have them as customers.
Now I just have to figure out the right way inthe right moment to expose them to other things
we can do for them and and help them with.
And that's totally happening.
Like, we have somewhere between 500 and athousand LPs are in our software every month
regardless of events.
(53:46):
So it's totally happening where the the clientbase is starting to see other things that they
can do in the software.
Well, it might be the wrong time to ask, butwhat events do you have coming up that people
should be aware of?
That's hilarious.
That's I I will never walk away from a momentto plug our next event, David, so all good.
(54:09):
So the the next big event for us is Singaporein November.
So and that event, we're we're really excitedabout the Singapore market because there is so
much wealth creation in Asia.
And, you know, knock on wood, hopefully, theTrump administration figures out a way to
resolve the trade dispute with China, and we weget to a good place for both countries.
(54:36):
Assuming that happens, there is no doubt in mymind that our event in Singapore will someday
probably be bigger than the event we have inMiami.
As it stands today, there's no question The UShas the biggest base of investors in the alts
world.
But with all the growth in China and Singaporeand Vietnam and Japan, Japan has actually
(55:01):
become a really popular place in the last sixmonths.
This event, we we are trying to educate thatregion on how a cap intro event works and why
GPs and LPs should attend.
We've made huge progress, by the way, with theLPs.
The LPs in Asia love the event.
(55:23):
They love the format.
They get the joke.
You know, they're coming now, and they're usingit the same way the LPs in The US are using it
in in Europe.
The GPs have been a harder sell, but we'restarting to see the ice thaw there.
And I part of it too was, you know, China hasgone through a tough couple of years.
(55:43):
A lot of the strategies in Asia really havebeen out of favor.
China, you know, obviously dominates Asia, andChinese based strategies just haven't been in
favor with with US investors.
I think as all of that starts to change, we'llstart to see more Asian based GPs come to this
(56:05):
thing.
And there's no reason why we can't be doing20,000 meetings with firms in Asia as well.
I mean, are plenty of them.
And we're also seeing, you know, in in theearly days, the investors in Asia were really
liquidity focused.
They didn't want illiquid strategies.
(56:28):
We're starting to see that change, but it's aprocess.
For sure, they still value liquidity, and Iexpect that's probably going to be that way for
a while longer.
But we're completely 100% committed to thatpart of the world.
And I suspect in a few years, you're gonna seebig movement on the numbers there.
(56:49):
Can emerging managers raise in Singapore?
And talk to me about kind of raising money in adifferent geography.
Yeah.
I would say in our experiences, Asia is veryopen to all size fund managers.
We we have a really broad cross section of fundmanagers coming to the Asia event.
(57:12):
Much more so if I have to compare it to aregion, I'll compare it to The Middle East.
The Middle East, I find, is still much morebrand focused than Asia is.
In The Middle East, the flows, in my opinion,are still skewed towards the biggest brands in
the world.
(57:32):
And, you know, it's also very much arelationship part of the world.
It's true.
You know, relationships are the big driver inThe Middle East.
And the biggest funds have been there longer,and they've spent the time to build those
relationships.
Asia, I find to be really entrepreneurial andvery open to like, I I think all size of funds
(57:54):
have had a good experience at our event inAsia.
I don't know if that would have been as true inThe Middle East.
Now if you're a small fund based in The US andyou're mostly focused on a US investment
strategy, until you're, call it,$4,500,000,000, I don't think it's really a
(58:16):
good use of your time to spend the time andmoney to go over and do an event in Asia.
But if you're Asia based or even Europe based,Middle East based, it's more accessible, you
know, from a time zone standpoint.
You're you just it's easier to deal withinvestors in Asia from those places.
So I would feel more comfortable recommendingit to firms in those parts of the world.
(58:40):
Once you cross 500,000,000, it's a realbusiness.
You've got real traction.
You're considered you're definitely on a pathto be institutional grade once you're at
500,000,000.
And I think everyone is starting to take youmore seriously.
So at that point, I think it becomes worth itand definitely over a billion.
(59:01):
The principle that I've always applied is if ifyou go to geography prepared to commit to it to
for a minimum of ten years until you penetratethat.
Is do you agree with that?
A 100%.
I think you probably could say be prepared tocommit for at least five years.
(59:21):
You're gonna start to see progress in fiveyears.
If you have if you have a solid strategy, asolid business, you've achieved critical mass
of AUM, you're north of 500,000,000, I wouldexpect you to make some headway in five years
or less.
And then presumably as you scale, you couldbring in IR folks or capital formation folks to
(59:43):
kind of take over the relationship.
But in terms of the founders of the firms, youknow, minimum five years, ideally ten years per
region.
Absolutely.
I I think you start by just going to a handfulof events and see how it clicks for you and and
your strategy, see if there's an appetite forit.
But once you've established that there is, it'snot really that hard to add people.
(01:00:06):
I mean, we're also used to working remotelynow.
You don't even necessarily need an office in aregion to to penetrate the region and make some
progress.
So many people are working from home now.
You could add a person in Asia, a person in TheMiddle East, a person in in Europe.
(01:00:28):
That's not a huge investment.
You know?
You can do that and make enormous progresscompared to everyone being based, you know, in
New York 12, you know, 12 time zones away fromHong Kong or Singapore.
We have an LPU relationship.
We're gonna spend the weekend with them, and wetalk about kind of the scalability of once a
(01:00:52):
year, like memorable experiences.
We're going to like a football game and doingdinner with the wives and every everybody, but
I think people underestimate what once a yeartrip to a Singapore and meeting, having dinner,
You know, I know you guys put on, like, aconcert and and special events going to one of
those.
Like, how quickly those could scale, althoughthey feel very unscalable because you're
(01:01:15):
spending twenty four, thirty six hours, butdoing that once a year could be quite powerful.
If you if you're not doing that, you'reprobably not gonna make any progress.
I mean, at our events, we have differentelements.
The one on one meetings are the you know,that's the thing we're best known for.
But there are a ton of dinners, a ton ofparties.
(01:01:36):
Some of them we're helping to facilitate.
Some the clients are just doing on their own.
We do the, you know, we did the concert inMiami.
We've done smaller versions of it in Singapore.
Those are all moments for people to just spendtime together and hang out in a less formal,
you know, less work oriented way.
(01:01:58):
It's just a chance for people to hang out andget to know each other and become friends.
If you're not on a tour annually where you'retouching base with your relationships in a
region, at least once a year where you'regrabbing dinner, lunch, things like that,
you're you're probably not gonna make anyheadway.
If you're not willing to make at least thatcommitment to it and in the beginning, it's the
(01:02:24):
founders who need to be there.
You know?
Once once you've achieved more critical mass,you know, when you're over a billion, you can
probably get away with the founders doing itless, but but someone has to be dedicated to
really building those friendships.
And that's really how I think of it.
It's like once you have friends in a region,you can start to make progress.
(01:02:47):
But if you don't if you don't do the work tomake friends, it's pretty unrealistic, I think,
to assume you're gonna somehow build a businessthere.
Ron, this has been a masterclass on how tobuild networks, how to how to literally attract
trillions of dollars in in LPs.
(01:03:07):
Thanks for jumping on the podcast and lookforward to maybe not Singapore, but maybe Miami
next year.
Sounds great.
We'd love to have you there.
And, David, thank you again for, for theinvite.
It was great to be with you today.
Thanks for listening to my conversation.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share witha friend.
This helps us grow.
Also provides the very best feedback when wereview the episode's analytics.
Thank you for your support.
So tell me about Rahul Mudgal.
So Rahul is a very good friend of mine, and inmy opinion, one of the, if not the best
fundraiser in the alternative investment world.
Rahul has raised just south of I don't want toget the number wrong, but I know he's just
(00:20):
south of about $100,000,000,000 which in forthe size fund he's working with, that's a
pretty incredible number.
And what I love really is the ethos with whichRahul kind of approaches his work.
He pays it forward all the time, And he'sincredibly good at just helping his friends in
(00:48):
a million ways, especially when it comes tounderstanding what else is happening in the
market and just educating people by way ofsharing information in a systemic way that I've
really never seen any single marketer do aseffectively as Rahul does.
(01:09):
But that combined with the fact that he's justone of the best human beings I've ever met, it
it becomes really a deadly combination when youput it all together.
I had to look it up.
A $100,000,000,000 is the larger than GDP ofboth Uzbekistan and Bulgaria.
(01:29):
Pretty good for one guy.
And you mentioned that he's systemicallyhelpful.
How does he productize his value add to LPs?
He has access to an incredible amount ofresearch.
And if you become part of his network, he'sincredibly generous in that he shares all of
(01:49):
this research with his network.
It's a fairly exclusive email club that I'm apart of.
But he is very, very disciplined about takingin information and sharing it with this group
he's created in his email thread.
And it's research related sometimes broadly tocategories like hedge funds or private equity.
(02:16):
Sometimes it's extremely narrow aboutsubsectors that those particular funds are
investing in.
It's a really wide range of things that he'ssupplying data on.
He's built this little machine that he manageshimself, and it's incredibly valuable stuff.
I mean, it's it's really, really useful.
I've never in my career, I've never come acrossanyone who's doing this across such a wide
(02:41):
swath of topics as systematically as Rahul is.
If you know Rahul, it's not really thatsurprising that of all the people I've met,
he's the one doing it.
He's just incredibly generous with his Rolodex,with his time, with leads in terms of trying to
be helpful to people, whether it's an LPlooking for an interesting strategy that they
(03:04):
need to add into their portfolio or someone inhis network who maybe is in the middle of a job
change and is trying to figure out wherethey're gonna go next.
Rahul is just really always there for thepeople in his network, and that's his main
focus.
He's never really focused on selling.
He's mostly focused on how he can be helpful tothe people around him, and then the selling
(03:26):
just takes care of itself.
It's very impressive.
We both know a lot of generous people.
Not everybody have been able to translate intosuch such large businesses.
Is Rahul just playing a mid and long term game,or is he fundamentally doing something very
different that other marketers are doing?
What I described is fundamentally differentthan what most marketers are doing.
(03:48):
And and it is 100% the long game.
It's not even the mid game.
He he's always really thinking, if I'm helpful,if I'm good to the people around me, I'm
helpful to the people around me, and I takecare of my network, my network will take care
of me.
And I think that's the philosophy with which heapproaches not just his work.
(04:13):
I think that's how Rahul approaches life.
Is it different than other marketers?
I think it's dramatically different than thevast majority of marketers.
I think the best marketers in the world areprobably doing something that is closer to what
Rahul is doing.
It's a it's a tough business.
There's a tremendous amount of pressure.
(04:34):
Fundraising is hard.
It takes you know, it's it's one of the longestsales cycles in our economy.
You don't have a meeting and get a ticket thenext day.
It just doesn't work like that.
It takes a long time of getting to know people,building relationships.
And LPs want to track you generally for aperiod of time.
(04:55):
They wouldn't really get to know you.
It's definitely a long sales cycle.
But I have found too many marketers are reallyfocused on what you can do for them instead of
spending time understanding what is the LP'sreal need?
What is it that they're looking for?
I think some of the best sales advice I've evergotten is to really approach selling more like
(05:23):
how a doctor approaches diagnosing a problem.
They don't go in and say, well, here'severything you need to know about me.
Here is something I think you should be doingbefore they ask you any questions.
A doctor starts with questions.
And I think that the best salespeople in theworld approach it more like a doctor than
(05:46):
starting with their pitch.
It's tell me about yourself, tell me about yourfirm, what is it that you're trying to
accomplish, where are you having problems.
Understand what the LP situation is first, andthen you can find out, do they even need what I
do?
It's very likely, in most cases, probably theydon't.
(06:06):
So you're spending all this time pitching whenyou should be spending that time understanding.
And that that is definitely core to who Rahulis.
And I I think it's the piece that a lot ofmarketers really miss.
And it takes a certain amount of courage to dothat because when you do that, you're
oftentimes going for the no, as they say.
(06:28):
You're selling a hedge fund and you hear an LPsay, right now the holes in my portfolio are in
private credit or private equity.
Well, are things hedge funds don't do.
So you probably don't have a solution for whatthey currently need.
But if you at least knew what it was that theyneeded, you could then offer to make
(06:48):
connections and be helpful to them, which willpay dividends down the road.
And look, everyone's portfolio is constantlyevolving.
So they may not need you today, but it's greatto have that relationship already built and
solidified so that when they do have a need inan area where you can be helpful, they're
thinking of you.
That that, in my opinion, is really the rightway for fund managers and fund marketers to
(07:13):
think.
I think a lot of human behavior could beexplained through evolutionary biology lens.
And there's a famous, Capuchin monkey, studywhere they were giving Capuchin monkeys
cucumbers in order to create ta to completetasks, and then they started giving half of the
monkeys grapes and the other half of theCapuchin monkeys would not actually eat the
(07:36):
cucumbers.
They revolted and they said, I'd rather not eatthan be treated unfairly.
So it's not it's even more than a human traitof fairness.
It's even deeper.
It's even more evolutionarily wired than usthan than even at the homo sapien level.
It's really biological.
That's very interesting, and not reallysurprising.
We talk about this game selection, the gamethat Rahul plays, the game that top allocators
(08:00):
play.
What game are you playing as the founder andCEO of iConnections?
The game iConnections is in is helping in asmany ways as possible GPs and LPs build and
scale their businesses.
And the thing that we are best at, and and it'swhere we started the business, is this cap
(08:22):
intro area.
Because fundamentally, cap intro is whereeverything starts in relationship building for
GPs and LPs.
First, LPs are interested in meeting GPs whocan run money for them because they're trying
to generate returns.
And for GPs, they're looking for AUM to add totheir fund because their business is is running
(08:45):
the money that's in that fund.
So that's where it started for us.
What we're now evolving into is a full blowninvestment platform.
So we are constantly thinking about ways thatwe can help the LPs build and scale their
business and same thing on the GP side.
How can I help the GPs build and scale theirbusiness?
(09:07):
And throughout this process, throughout theinvestment process, there is a tremendous
amount of interaction that takes place betweenthese two parties.
So we're trying to find ways to just reallyhelp both sides make that process run more
efficiently in whatever it is they're trying todo, whether it's additional meetings that are
(09:28):
now taking place outside of events.
We started with a core focus on physicalevents.
But we have a whole roadshow module, forexample, that helps the community get together
outside of events when they're traveling aroundthe world trying to meet each other.
We have an investor portal that enables them toshare information and follow each other as
(09:50):
returns are generated and as reports arecreated and they're trying to educate each
other and share information with each other.
We have a meetup area within our system thatenables GPs and LPs to just bring a group
together.
We have this community of thousands of peoplenow.
So as a center hub of this community, we're ina really good position to help people create
(10:15):
educational moments, marketing moments, andbring them together on the fly in virtual
settings.
That's what our meetup area of the platform isabout.
So everything we do is really about helpingthese two primary constituents build their
businesses.
(10:35):
And when you started iConnections, you had thislarge Rolodex of LP relationships, and you did
what everybody is afraid to do, which is youbasically gave them to the market and you
started to compound that.
How difficult was that?
And what was the initial thesis on kind ofgiving up all your relationships to the
community?
You know, I never I never really thought of itas giving up our relationships.
(11:00):
I I always thought of it as paying it forward,that if we if we created a community that
enabled people to meet each other in a way thatwas useful to everyone in the community, that
that would evolve into a good business.
And I I think we were right about that.
Actually, this guy right here, this littletombstone is the tombstone from the event that
(11:26):
we used to start the business.
We started iConnections through a large globalcharity event in the height of the pandemic.
This was June of 'twenty.
And we brought together about 400 LPs and about300 GPs.
Collectively, they did about 3,000 meetings.
And we did it all for free and donated all ofthe proceeds.
(11:49):
We did it free in terms of our time.
We charged the managers.
But what the managers paid, a 100% of that wentto benefit food banks around the world.
And I'm sure you remember food insecurity was ahuge issue in the midst of the pandemic.
So it was great to start that way because notonly did we give away our relationships in the
(12:11):
way you described it, but we also gave away allthe money to the food banks.
But it was was such an amazing way to just makea bang in the industry really fast, really
effectively.
It was done at a time when the industry was indesperate need of a new way to connect because
(12:31):
it's such a face to face business and thatopportunity didn't exist, especially at the
start of COVID.
So it was a huge pay it forward moment for us.
And I just can't tell you how much that cameback to us in spades.
A few months later, you know, on the back ofthat event, we realized, wow, there there's
(12:53):
definitely a business opportunity here becausethe industry can't get together in person.
They clearly need a virtual platform.
They had a great experience in the Funds4Foodevent.
How can we now turn this into a business?
We were able to go right back to that communityand we got a ton of great feedback as we built
(13:13):
out our platform and a ton of early subscribersto the software.
So for us, it's very much the Rahul way ofthinking.
In today's digital world, online privacy isn'toptional, it's essential.
That's why I use NordVPN.
It's one of the fastest and most reliable VPNson market.
(13:35):
It helps me protect my personal data, blockmalware, and keeps me secure when I'm
connecting to public Wi Fi networks.
Whether I'm traveling, at my local coffee shop,or just browsing at home, NordVPN keeps my
Internet connection encrypted and myinformation safe from hackers.
But here's where it really comes in handy: changing my virtual location. (13:49):
undefined
When I travel abroad, I could easily accesscontent or services that are available in The
US, whether it's financial platforms, newssites, or even just streaming my favorite show.
With NordVPN, I can instantly switch my virtuallocation to The US or over 125 other countries
and get seamless access as if I never lefthome.
(14:10):
To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan,go to nordvpn.com/invest.
Our link will give you four extra months on thetwo year plan, and you could try NordVPN risk
free with NordVPN's thirty day money backguarantee.
Once again, that's nordvpn.com/invest.
That's n0rdvpn.com/invest.
You could also find the link in the show notesfor this episode below.
(14:31):
And I wanna double click something because Ithink it is actually mid a midterm game in that
you have to have a long term perspective, butthe fact that you've been able to scale this
much in five years shows how quick, quoteunquote, quickly long term games compound.
It's a paradox.
If you play long term games, they couldcompound much more quickly than people realize.
(14:54):
It might not happen six months.
It might not happen eighteen months, but itcould happen in three to five years.
It's not like it's a game that could only beplayed in decades.
100%.
You can't see the connection of the dots movingforward.
I think in in the famous Steve Jobs talk, hekind of went through this, and he said, you
(15:15):
can't you can only connect the dots lookingbackwards.
You can't really connect them moving forward.
Thinking about how to be helpful and just ingeneral, playing the long game leads to
opportunities that you could never possiblypredict.
(15:38):
Playing the short game, you kind of always knowwhere that's gonna get you because it's just
it's more obvious.
It's a transaction.
So you know how much you're gonna make.
Sell something for 10,000,000, you know you'regonna make 500,000.
That's the the ceiling of what you couldpossibly make.
That's absolutely right.
And, like, an another example of where weplayed the long game.
(15:58):
As the tech platform began to, sort of takehold, a lot of other groups needed a tech
solution for their events.
So we quickly pivoted and created a way for ourtech platform to be used by other industry
(16:19):
events.
We thought, hey, here's an event that's there.
And again, in the midst of COVID, all of theseevents were going through a really, really
tough time.
For some, it was a near death experience forsure.
Having a tech platform that enabled them to doa virtual event really fast was a game changer
(16:41):
for a lot of them.
I don't think we charged anyone.
I'm trying to think back, but I can't rememberany of these events where we actually tried to
make money on it.
We basically thought, hey, the event needs thehelp.
Our community wants to connect.
There's pretty big overlap between whateverthat event is and our community.
(17:03):
Let's just find a way to do this and give it tothem for free, because they probably don't have
the budget for it.
Everyone's going through a tough time.
And again, it's just helpful to everyone and wecan do it probably better than anyone else and
do it fast.
It's not worth trying to figure out how we'regonna charge XYZ event to do this.
(17:26):
That became a whole element of the businessthat when we made those first few decisions, I
never would have known where it was gonna lead.
Well, fast forward five years, we are on thecusp now of rolling out an annual meeting
element to the platform.
So think about it.
(17:47):
We have about 1,100 funds who are or managerswho are members of the platform.
A huge number of them are doing annualmeetings.
And and the annual meetings AGMs.
COVID.
AGMs.
Exactly.
Those AGMs post COVID are more complex becausethere's a huge virtual element and there's the
(18:11):
in person element.
Well, before COVID, there wasn't a lot of videoat an AGM.
You showed up at the AGM, you attended,everyone attended in person.
There wasn't usually Maybe they did aconference call, but it was terrible.
Now these things have a much bigger productionelement to them than they did in the past.
(18:31):
People want to be able to attend virtually ifthey can't be there in person.
And they wanna have close to the sameexperience that you would have, which means you
need multiple cameras, you need decent qualitystaging and lighting and audio and all the
elements that go with creating a high qualityproduction, which of course we do at all of our
(18:54):
events.
So we thought, okay, we have the tech platform,we've done a lot of third party events now,
we're really good at AV, why don't we create abusiness line to support AGMs?
Because we know it's probably close to 50% ofour fund clients that are doing AGMs every
(19:14):
year, or at least every other year, not everyyear.
That's an opportunity that we would not be in aposition to do that had we not supported third
party events.
And if we hadn't paid it forward and looked atdoing that largely as a way to just be helpful
to the community, we probably wouldn't be in aposition to launch this thing that we're about
(19:38):
to launch.
So again, it's hard to know where how it's allgonna come together, but in my experience,
playing the long game is always it's really theonly game.
Have you ever googled yourself and found yourhome address, phone number, or other sensitive
information online?
That's not an accident.
Data brokers collect and sell your personalinformation, leading to spam, identity theft,
(19:59):
and loss of control over your personal data.
And with data breaches up over 70% in recentyears, the issue is only getting worse.
That's why I'm using Incogni, a service thatautomatically contacts more than two thirty
data brokers on your behalf into personal dataremove.
All you have to do is sign up, and they do allthe work.
Incogni also keeps your data off the market bydoing repeated removals, taking it down if it
(20:20):
shows up again.
You can get 60% off an annual Incogni plan bygoing to incogni.com/invest and using the code
INVEST at checkout.
Trying Incogni is risk free with their thirtyday money back guarantee.
Once again, that's incogni.com/invest,inc0gni.com/invest.
You can also find the link in the show notesfor this episode.
(20:40):
Your data belongs to you.
Take it back with Incogni.
It's it's the brand, which I like to say thebrand is the brand promise.
The successful kind of cycle with the customerof providing something, then being pleased with
it, and then wanting to come back.
And oftentimes, if you're doing the right way,customers should be asking you for product
extensions and should be saying, we would loveto partner with you guys on the AGM.
(21:04):
Sometimes they are not able to conceptualizethat, but it's the first product that you serve
and having a wonderful experience for thecustomer that gives you this optionality of of
providing new products.
And what you just said is literally whathappened.
We a a client who heard, had experienced theevent, saw how how well we run the Miami event
(21:25):
in particular, and had their AGM coming up andthought, hey, why don't we ask iConnections to
help with this?
We know they do third party events.
They have the tech platform.
They have the event know how and operationsinternally.
Why don't we approach them and see what theysay?
So they did.
And we said, God, we'd love to do this becauseit'll give us a really solid pilot that we can
(21:50):
build a whole new business line on.
So, yes, we are very, very good at stayingclose to our customers.
We are in incredibly good contact.
And the events that we do also create momentsin time when we really get incredibly good face
to face time with our customers over a coupleday period.
(22:12):
Our New York event that we just ran earlierthis month, it was 45 or 50 demos slash surveys
with customers where we're really, like,clicking through screens and getting their
input and saying to them, what do you like?
What do you not like?
And what what isn't even here that you wish wehad?
(22:34):
All of those moments are incredibly valuevaluable when you're trying to build something
that's ultimately gonna serve your clients in amore strategic way.
And it that like, all of that is nottransactional at all.
It's really we're really trying to build astight a relationship with that community and as
useful a relationship for the community aspossible.
(22:58):
One of the trends that I see is basically thepodcast of conferences and conference leaders
and conference organizing organizers realizingthat that's essentially content.
So the the panel, instead of just making itkind of this traditional panel, making it
interview style, are you finding that iniConnections, and is that one of the trends
(23:22):
that that, you know, you foresee in yourfuture?
It's funny.
We have a lot of content because, you know, weprobably ran 50 to 60 sessions in Miami.
We probably had 25 to 30 in New York.
We'll do another 25 to 30 at our event inSingapore.
And even with all those, I find myself wishingwe had more.
(23:47):
There seems to be an insatiable demand forthese educational moments.
And we're in an interesting spot in that wereally have the smartest people in the world on
stage at our events.
The last event, the one person who really comesto mind as a huge name in our industry is Cliff
(24:10):
Asness.
So Cliff did a little private session with agroup of maybe 15 or 20 LPs.
And then he did a session on stage, incrediblywell received.
And he's a brilliant guy.
The idea that if you're a kid in school andyou're majoring in finance and you're
(24:31):
interested in getting into the fund business,and now you can go to YouTube and listen to
what Cliff thinks about what's happening in themarket today.
And there are so many of those moments nowavailable.
Like, the the amount of education you can getcompared to when I was starting in the
business.
I mean, it's really night and day.
(24:52):
The only place you could have that opportunityis if you went to the conferences, which of
course early in your career, they're veryexpensive.
It's hard to do.
You probably can't even afford the flights andthe rooms, let alone the ticket to the event.
But now YouTube has made it possible to sharelots of social media platforms, but YouTube in
(25:14):
particular has made it possible to really sharethis.
So for us, it is an absolutely criticalcomponent of our brand building and our growth.
We want the market to see our association withthe smartest people in the world in this
industry.
So definitely, I I am not personally apodcaster and I am but but the event is
(25:40):
absolutely providing a form of what you'regetting from, you know, the podcast industry.
As a matter of fact, and you should takeadvantage of this in Miami, we have a whole
podcast studio that we set up at our Miamievent.
We had a small version of it in New York.
But in Miami, we have it fully blown out, adesk, multiple cameras, you know, beautiful
(26:06):
background, TV screens.
And we're encouraging people who want to createcontent at our event.
Take advantage of the fact that you havesomeone like a Cliff who's speaking at an
event.
If you can convince him to jump on yourpodcast, the setup is right there.
You can just get in the seats and get rightdown to business.
(26:27):
We feel like there's just such a demand for allof this.
Anything we can do to help facilitate more ofit, it's good for us.
It's good for our clients.
So, yeah, we're we're definitely leaning intoit in a big way.
I I got to spend two hours with Cliff on apodcast that I did a couple months ago.
So I've been collecting questions for a secondsecond shot.
(26:47):
You know, thing that comes to mind is the TEDcase study where they were a private
organization, high end, very expensive, andthen they did this paradoxical idea of of
posting all their TED talks online.
And a lot of people thought it was a very riskymove, they ended up getting hundreds of
millions of views and growing the platformconsiderably.
(27:08):
So people don't just go to conferences for thecontent.
They also go for the community aspect as well.
For sure.
And what we're seeing is that the number ofviews taking place after the event is dwarfing
the number of people who are watching the eventlive.
(27:28):
Many of our sessions have been posted onlineand gotten anywhere between thirty, forty
thousand views all the way up to half a millionviews, you know, depending on what the topic is
and and how pertinent it is to current events.
But it's it's really an incredibly powerfulmechanism that I think if you're if you're at
(27:52):
all in the content game, it's kind of crazy notto be leaning into it.
I I Ted obviously was way ahead of everyoneelse.
So I wanna really double click on value add toLPs.
You had an interesting conference in 2022around crypto craze at the time.
So tell me about how LPs leveraged iConnectionsto learn more about crypto.
(28:17):
So when we think about content, the what, ofcourse, comes to mind for everyone is who's on
stage?
Is it a fireside chat?
Is it a panel discussion?
Is it a keynote presentation?
What we learned over time was that LPs reallywere viewing their one on one meetings.
And we do a tremendous number of on onemeetings.
(28:40):
Our events have world class content on stagelike many others.
But what's really unique to iConnections is theone on one meeting element of our events where
we're running thousands and thousands of theseat each event.
The LPs are using those meetings to educatethemselves in every imaginable way.
(29:01):
They're using it to educate themselves on themarket.
They're getting educated on specific investmentstrategies.
Referencing back to 'twenty two and what we sawin the crypto area.
Crypto was exploding in late 'twenty one, early'twenty two.
Our event in January of 'twenty two saw we onlyhad 17 fund managers that were in digital
(29:26):
assets.
Those 17 funds collectively got over 800meetings, meaning LPs agreed to meet with them,
even though this was not at all considered tobe an institutional category yet.
And I think even today, it's still not reallyan institutional category.
It's a whole lot closer, but but it's not quitethere yet.
(29:48):
Well, back then, it was viewed as the WildWest.
LPs were not telling us they wanted digitalassets, but then when we looked at the meeting
counts and we saw that concentration, and wehad never seen anything even close to that
level of concentration with such a small numberof funds achieving such a huge meeting count.
(30:08):
It became obvious to us that LPs were usingthose meetings to learn everything they could
about Bitcoin, about meme coins.
You know, back then NFTs were still all therage.
So they were running through these meetingsabsolutely just coming up to speed on how it
all worked.
And we thought, wow.
(30:30):
That's really, really interesting.
And we actually quickly did a survey of LPs andsaid, hey, if we did a dedicated digital assets
event, would you attend?
And the response was overwhelmingly yes.
And we actually ended up doing one for thatyear.
Unfortunately, later in the year, the bubbleburst in crypto and then you had the whole FTX
(30:52):
mess.
And so that was all a big setback.
But I think digital assets has absolutelyrebuilt.
And now it's also being built in a much better,more sustainable and stronger way.
I think this administration is very focused ongetting the right regulations in place so that
you can invest safely and invest in it in waysthat's much closer to how we all invest in
(31:18):
stocks and bonds.
And I think that's the right way to go.
Our ability because of this meeting element tosee where LPs are headed as opposed to what
they looked at retrospectively is verypowerful.
And we're working on multiple data products toreally bake that into the iConnections platform
(31:43):
so that we can be more helpful in predictingwhere the LPs are going next.
There's lots of platforms that will tell you,hey.
Here are the mandates that exist out therebecause LPs have said, yeah.
This is something I need in my portfolio.
Those things could be six to twelve months old.
They're not good indicators of what's coming upnext and what the next mandate is gonna be.
(32:06):
But when we see how they behave in thesemeetings, it's very often that the meetings
they take are different from what theirmandates are at a given point in time.
Yeah.
800 LPs, 17 managers.
And I bet a large amount of those 800 LPs, likeyou mentioned, didn't have a mandate or
couldn't even write a check.
(32:26):
And yet many of those ended up probablyinvesting into some of those managers couple
years later to kind of go back to long termaspect of it.
And also probably some of them that didn't evenhave a mandate somehow magically found a
mandate if if there was a compelling enoughmeeting.
It kind of goes back to this principle that Ithat I use is you can't spend too much time
(32:46):
with a billionaire or with a $100,000,000,000institution.
No matter how much time you invest into largecheck writers, it's just efficient.
You could spend two, three years.
It's just much more efficient than trying to betransactional kind of with smaller investors.
There's just you really have to focus on thelarge check writers and really focus on, you
know, putting in the time with those investors.
(33:09):
Absolutely.
And those are the check writers who cancompletely change the trajectory of your
business.
If you get even if the check isn't the biggestcheck, just they're so well regarded in the
marketplace, just getting any size check fromthem pretty much creates you know, it it's a
(33:29):
vote of confidence on your business and on yourinvestment strategy.
So I I completely agree with you there.
Look.
There is a place for getting the small checks.
So I'm not I'm not anti focusing on the smallchecks.
And kind of a combination of them is what I'veseen work the best where you're you're building
that long term relationship with a larger firm,and it's great to be able to say to them, hey.
(33:54):
Our AUM went up by $5,000,000 in the lastquarter.
Hey, it went up by $10,000,000 in the lastquarter.
And that can be coming through small checks.
All of that good news helps to influence thatbigger player to continue continue to spend
time with you, take you seriously, and, youknow, hopefully, you can get something across
the line.
There's a nuance there.
A lot of people say, don't worry about the sizeof the check.
(34:17):
But, course, if you take that to extreme, ifyou have a a $100,000,000 checks, it's just a
difficult business to run.
Double click on what the most effective GPs doat iConnections that a lot of GPs do not do.
We'll get right back to interview.
But first, we're looking for the next greatguest.
If you or someone you know is a capitalallocator and would make for a great guest,
(34:38):
please reach out to me directly atdavid@wisperdcapital.com.
So the number one thing is they put in thetime.
This is an event where you're doing the averagefund did about 20 meetings at our event in
Miami this year.
And collectively in that event, we ran about19,000 meetings.
So it's an enormous event.
(35:00):
The funds that do the best are the ones who putin the time in the lead up to the event.
So the event was in late January.
We opened our software, making it possible forGPs and LPs to see each other in the software.
That opened in, like, mid to late November.
The GPs who got the most meetings are generallyspeaking, the ones who, as soon as the system
(35:25):
opens, they're already completely set up in thesystem.
They purchased access to the event a monthahead of time.
They loaded their returns and all theirmaterials into the system so that when that
system opens, they're ready to go.
And then as soon as it opens, they're in therelooking at which LPs are coming, using the
(35:46):
filters to determine, okay, who are the onesthat are really a fit for me?
And then sending meeting requests to those LPs,hoping that LPs will see those requests,
confirm meetings with them, and then they getto go make more requests.
We limit the number of requests so LPs aren'toverwhelmed.
But you basically once a request is eitherdeclined or confirmed, a GP gets that credit
(36:12):
back, if you will, and they can go make anotherrequest.
So they are generally working with 50 to 100 ofthese at any given point.
You'd be shocked at how many GPs spend.
This is not an inexpensive proposition.
Our software is expensive.
The event is expensive.
A lot of them don't really spend the time inthe system doing the work, sending the meeting
(36:37):
requests.
And then in early January, we start to get thepanic phone calls.
Hey.
I don't have any meetings.
And then we go and look, and we say, well, yousent five requests.
You have a 100.
Go go send the other 95, and then we'll take alook at where you are.
And, of course, you know, we have clientsuccess department that helps people to
(36:59):
navigate the software.
And we want people to come and have a goodexperience.
But it's ultimately on the GPs to do this work.
Now the LPs are in there doing their own workas well.
And the LPs may also go through the system andsay, hey, here are the 20 people that I wanna
meet.
They send their own requests.
Most of those requests, of course, are gonnaget confirmed because people are always happy
(37:22):
to get a request from an LP.
But but this it like, this is not rocketscience.
It is not complicated.
It's really just a matter of staying on top ofit.
It's the hard work of the lead up to the eventand making sure that you're organized and every
day you're in the system looking at, okay, whoaccepted my request?
(37:46):
Who didn't accept my request?
You know what?
These requests are now a week and a half old.
They feel stale.
I'm just gonna withdraw them all and send awhole new batch of requests.
The the marketers who are really on top of allof these elements, they're the ones who leave
having gotten twenty, thirty, 40 meetings.
I mean, we had some funds last year whoachieved fifty, sixty meetings.
(38:11):
And at that level, you're having to sendmultiple teams usually because you can't
possibly do them all in two days.
The cap intro element is just two days long.
So it it's it's really taking the lead up tothe event very, very seriously.
If you do that, you're gonna have a greatexperience.
(38:32):
I mean, we there's too many LPs for you not tohave a great experience.
If you come and you do the basic behaviors andyou really try and you don't get meetings, it's
almost always because performance has reallybeen bad.
If your performance is just not good in yourpeer group, it can be tough.
There's no, you know, there's no denying that.
(38:55):
But if you if you come and you do the basicsmore often than not, you're gonna leave this
event pretty happy because you've got we alwaysmake sure there's more LPs than GPs.
Last year, we had 25 more LPs than we did GPs.
So it was a very healthy ratio between the twogroups.
(39:16):
And and GPs came away thrilled.
I mean, the number of positive comments,emails, text messages that I got coming out of
this Miami event was off the charts.
I mean, very, very few GPs came away feelingsad.
But I'm telling you, ninety five percent of thetime when a GP is sad, it's it's always because
(39:38):
they just didn't do the basics.
You go to iConnections.
You have a great first meeting.
Let's say it's 10 out of 10.
What's the right cadence and strategy to buildthat relationship post conference?
My advice would always be move at the pace thatthe LP is comfortable with.
If you're using our software to if you're usingthe investor portal, you can keep your
(39:59):
information in front of that LP Because ifyou've had a meeting with them, the LP now has
a folder in their side of the investor portalfor your fund.
So every time you load a market update, aperformance update, whatever whatever
information you think is useful for LPs to see,you can put it into the system, and it will
(40:23):
stay in front of the LP.
That's, like, the bare minimum.
At least quarterly, you wanna be trying to getin front of that LP again.
They're not gonna meet with you quarterly, butI think it's important that you're at least
trying to get in front of them quarterly.
It's definitely a business where you shouldnever ever be offended.
(40:45):
People are super busy.
LPs in particular are being approached from somany different angles.
It's really hard to break through that noise.
And and also, every time you come back toanother iConnections event, if it's someone
that you really clicked with, do anothermeeting with them at the next iConnections
event.
Some of the bigger funds who attend our events,a third of their meetings are usually existing
(41:10):
investors.
The process of getting together is so efficientbecause everyone gets you know, we do the
calendaring for you.
Every meeting is a half hour long.
It becomes a great moment to just touch basewith an audience that you're trying to stay
connected to.
So it's not all new relationship discovery.
(41:31):
I mean, that's the biggest component.
But every event, you should absolutely betrying to reconnect with people that you
thought you had a good moment with.
So I would say definitely use the investorportal to keep your materials in front of them.
Absolutely try and get together with them inperson quarterly.
We have a roadshow module in the system whichyou can use to help you organize any meeting
(41:55):
around the world.
These can be virtual.
They can be in person.
You know, it can handle both.
But that feels like a reasonable cadence.
And then don't ever get upset no matter howmuch you feel ignored.
That's just the nature of the beast.
And there are lots of stories of folks whothought, god, this is never going anywhere.
(42:17):
But then the moment was right for the LPsportfolio, and then you get a call because
you've really made an effort to stay in frontof them, and you never get upset when they're
too busy to to meet
with.
Try not to have any of your follow ups besales.
Try to make it be as educational as possible.
To to your point about Rahul, even if it isn'tdirectly in your space, try to make some
connections or some other useful thing thatrewards the LP essentially for taking that
(42:42):
meeting.
Yes.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I'm sure you're thinking about AI these days.
How does that impact the business?
I don't think there's a business on the planetthat won't be impacted by AI.
For sure, AI is going to have a huge impact onthis market.
(43:03):
I think when it comes to manager selection inparticular, AI is going to be hugely helpful.
We're working on a variety of things to make iteasier.
I mean, one of the more basic things that we'retrying to do is really to just create a chatbot
interface so that you don't have to become anexpert in how to use the filtering side of the
(43:26):
platform.
So you could just talk to the system and say,you know, show me private equity funds from
this size to that size, this longer trackrecord, etcetera, and it'll give you that
result.
That's a much more user friendly way thanhaving to know how to filter on each one of
those things.
It's the filters we we have, like, 90 fieldsyou can filter on, but it's kind of complicated
(43:50):
to do it.
So that's one way we see it, you know, where weintend to use AI to make the system better.
The the one idea that comes to mind is if wecould get clients comfortable to put their
portfolio data or at least part of theirportfolio data into the system so that the
system knew, okay, here's the mix of funds youhave.
(44:14):
We could use AI to analyze that and then say,okay, Based on who's attending the next event,
you should consider meetings with these 20firms because here's how they might be able to
help your portfolio.
I haven't seen anyone do that yet.
Now it's harder to do because you have to getthe you have to have the confidence of the LPs
(44:37):
that they're comfortable sharing theirportfolio data.
Some probably will just never share theirportfolio data because some are really, really
protective of it.
But others, depending on what kind oforganization you are, your portfolio might even
be in the public domain.
So you're probably less concerned about it.
Of course, all of this is gonna be done withhigh levels of security and protection.
(45:03):
But it's still an area where I think it's gonnatake LPs a while to get comfortable with it.
We even on the GP side, by the way, we havebegun to use AI to create summaries of the fund
manager for the LP to make the LP's life easierwhen they're coming in and looking at managers.
(45:27):
But we asked the manager's permission before weloaded any of their data into the AI tool.
Just knowing there's a high degree ofsensitivity, we wanted to make it clear we
weren't training anything on any of their data.
A big challenge in our industry is the way inwhich the data is presented to the investors is
(45:50):
really, really important, especially foralternatives.
When you fall into the unregulated categorylike most alt managers do, there are really
serious rules that you can't you don't want torun afoul of.
So the way your information is presented toinvestors is really, really important.
(46:11):
We're working on building tools to deal withall that so that the GPs can feel, not feel,
but actually be in control of that.
You couldn't just throw your stuff into ChatGPTand have ChatGPT present it however it wants to
prospective investors.
So that would be really, really bad in theworld of investing because the regulators are
(46:34):
gonna look at you and say, wait a second.
The okay.
Great.
You tried to use AI to make this wholeexperience better, but it said things to
investors that you should never say.
You know, you can't do that.
So in other industries that aren't as heavilyregulated and where the impact isn't as big
financially for people, you could definitelyexperiment more.
(46:56):
There's no question there is huge value thatcan be added, but we have to be really careful
about how it's done because we can't we can'tput GPs or LPs in a situation where we're
really on the edge from you know, in in interms of complying with the regulations.
(47:18):
The the regulations are here for a reason.
There's a lot of really interesting datasetswith whether it's Burgess or Atapar and and
some even, like, PreQin, and these platformsare trying to kinda predict where LPs are
trying to invest in.
Have you ever looked at partnerships with thoseservice providers?
We've definitely thought about it.
We have a lot more partnership interest nowthat we're bigger and we're so dominant in the
(47:41):
cap intro phase of the investment cycle.
It was a lot harder in the beginning.
I find with partnerships, it's really tough topartner with firms who are very different in
size.
Partnering with groups that are comparablesize, it just feels easier to me because
(48:02):
everyone has a vested interest, and there's notone player who feels super dominant over the
other player.
Look, we could be an amazing partner to anumber of these firms because the thing we have
that no one else really has is an unbelievableamount of meeting data.
(48:23):
So all of those systems you mentioned can lookat clicks and search data and things like that,
but we can tell you which GP met which LP forthe last 100,000 meetings.
I mean, that's really, really unique data thatI I can't really think of another organization
(48:47):
that could possibly have as much of that dataas we do in the institutional world.
There are probably groups that might have it inretail.
We don't play in retail at all.
We're really institutionally focused.
But institutions are where all the money is inall.
And and retail, not to diss retail, it's anexciting growth area for the for the industry.
(49:08):
But the vast 90% of assets, probably 95% ofassets are really institutional assets.
The meetings are the leading indicator or justslightly upstream to actually investing.
And that's one thing that I always tell GPs isthat if an LP keeps on taking meetings with
you, it's a very strong signal because they'reso constrained in their time.
(49:30):
It's arguably their most valuable asset,especially for the larger organizations.
It's almost more valuable than than a smallcheck.
What do you wish that people in the industrywould better understand about iConnections, and
what misconceptions do you wish people didn'thave about about CapIntro, about iConnections?
So our I think we're starting to make realprogress on this, but the we started in COVID
(49:56):
as a digital platform because you couldn't doan in person event.
So all the connections that we were that wemade over those first two years were mostly
through our platform.
Well, when the world reopened, there was suchpent up demand to get together in person.
Our event series just exploded, like, right outof the gates.
(50:18):
Our first event, we ran 8,000 meetings.
This was in '22 at the Foul Blow.
We ran 8,000 plus meetings.
We had 2,300 attendees, a load of speakers,super high quality.
It it was an event that it was not normal for afirst time event to look the way that event
(50:38):
did.
Fast forward to today, our event this year,5,500, 5,200, somewhere in there attendees.
We ran 19,000 meetings.
We had 50,000,000,000,000 in assets representedin that event.
Just leaps and bounds bigger than the firstone.
Super exciting.
But the success that we've had with the eventmeans a lot of the marketplace thinks of us
(51:06):
purely as an event business.
And we're really not.
The reason we are where we are is very much thesoftware.
If we didn't have the software platform makingit possible for this size audience to
orchestrate all of these meetings and reallyfacilitate these meetings, the events would
(51:28):
never be as successful as they are.
We, a lot of times, have to educate the marketon the fact that we are not just an event
business.
We're really a software business at the core.
And what we're starting to make real headwaywith is demonstrating to this industry that we
can become and we really are becoming a fullblown investment platform.
(51:53):
Ultimately, if we can get you in into thatfirst meeting moment, the cap intro moment,
there's no reason why we shouldn't be able tokeep you throughout the investment life cycle.
We then wanna help you with diligence.
We wanna help you maintain that relationshipongoing through things like roadshows and
meetups and the investor portal.
(52:14):
We want to help you with your transactions bydigitizing your sub docs and help you through
redemptions and quarterly updates, annualupdates, however frequent you want to do them.
So we have the customer base.
We're starting from a position of real strengthbecause we have so many GPs and LPs.
(52:38):
And these are the most prominent GPs and LPs.
I mean, the folks who are members of theplatform, who are attending our events, are
running as I said, it's a it's a huge assetbase, and they really are regarded as the best
in the world.
How do we carry that success in the first phaseof the investment cycle all the way through the
(53:01):
balance of the investment cycle.
Sometimes it can be frustrating that peopleassociate us so much with events.
But let's face it, this isn't the worst spotfor us to be in.
Having the best firms in the world already onour customer list is a huge advantage.
So then because really the problem we have tosolve is really one of adoption.
(53:25):
I already have them as customers.
Now I just have to figure out the right way inthe right moment to expose them to other things
we can do for them and and help them with.
And that's totally happening.
Like, we have somewhere between 500 and athousand LPs are in our software every month
regardless of events.
(53:46):
So it's totally happening where the the clientbase is starting to see other things that they
can do in the software.
Well, it might be the wrong time to ask, butwhat events do you have coming up that people
should be aware of?
That's hilarious.
That's I I will never walk away from a momentto plug our next event, David, so all good.
(54:09):
So the the next big event for us is Singaporein November.
So and that event, we're we're really excitedabout the Singapore market because there is so
much wealth creation in Asia.
And, you know, knock on wood, hopefully, theTrump administration figures out a way to
resolve the trade dispute with China, and we weget to a good place for both countries.
(54:36):
Assuming that happens, there is no doubt in mymind that our event in Singapore will someday
probably be bigger than the event we have inMiami.
As it stands today, there's no question The UShas the biggest base of investors in the alts
world.
But with all the growth in China and Singaporeand Vietnam and Japan, Japan has actually
(55:01):
become a really popular place in the last sixmonths.
This event, we we are trying to educate thatregion on how a cap intro event works and why
GPs and LPs should attend.
We've made huge progress, by the way, with theLPs.
The LPs in Asia love the event.
(55:23):
They love the format.
They get the joke.
You know, they're coming now, and they're usingit the same way the LPs in The US are using it
in in Europe.
The GPs have been a harder sell, but we'restarting to see the ice thaw there.
And I part of it too was, you know, China hasgone through a tough couple of years.
(55:43):
A lot of the strategies in Asia really havebeen out of favor.
China, you know, obviously dominates Asia, andChinese based strategies just haven't been in
favor with with US investors.
I think as all of that starts to change, we'llstart to see more Asian based GPs come to this
(56:05):
thing.
And there's no reason why we can't be doing20,000 meetings with firms in Asia as well.
I mean, are plenty of them.
And we're also seeing, you know, in in theearly days, the investors in Asia were really
liquidity focused.
They didn't want illiquid strategies.
(56:28):
We're starting to see that change, but it's aprocess.
For sure, they still value liquidity, and Iexpect that's probably going to be that way for
a while longer.
But we're completely 100% committed to thatpart of the world.
And I suspect in a few years, you're gonna seebig movement on the numbers there.
(56:49):
Can emerging managers raise in Singapore?
And talk to me about kind of raising money in adifferent geography.
Yeah.
I would say in our experiences, Asia is veryopen to all size fund managers.
We we have a really broad cross section of fundmanagers coming to the Asia event.
(57:12):
Much more so if I have to compare it to aregion, I'll compare it to The Middle East.
The Middle East, I find, is still much morebrand focused than Asia is.
In The Middle East, the flows, in my opinion,are still skewed towards the biggest brands in
the world.
(57:32):
And, you know, it's also very much arelationship part of the world.
It's true.
You know, relationships are the big driver inThe Middle East.
And the biggest funds have been there longer,and they've spent the time to build those
relationships.
Asia, I find to be really entrepreneurial andvery open to like, I I think all size of funds
(57:54):
have had a good experience at our event inAsia.
I don't know if that would have been as true inThe Middle East.
Now if you're a small fund based in The US andyou're mostly focused on a US investment
strategy, until you're, call it,$4,500,000,000, I don't think it's really a
(58:16):
good use of your time to spend the time andmoney to go over and do an event in Asia.
But if you're Asia based or even Europe based,Middle East based, it's more accessible, you
know, from a time zone standpoint.
You're you just it's easier to deal withinvestors in Asia from those places.
So I would feel more comfortable recommendingit to firms in those parts of the world.
(58:40):
Once you cross 500,000,000, it's a realbusiness.
You've got real traction.
You're considered you're definitely on a pathto be institutional grade once you're at
500,000,000.
And I think everyone is starting to take youmore seriously.
So at that point, I think it becomes worth itand definitely over a billion.
(59:01):
The principle that I've always applied is if ifyou go to geography prepared to commit to it to
for a minimum of ten years until you penetratethat.
Is do you agree with that?
A 100%.
I think you probably could say be prepared tocommit for at least five years.
(59:21):
You're gonna start to see progress in fiveyears.
If you have if you have a solid strategy, asolid business, you've achieved critical mass
of AUM, you're north of 500,000,000, I wouldexpect you to make some headway in five years
or less.
And then presumably as you scale, you couldbring in IR folks or capital formation folks to
(59:43):
kind of take over the relationship.
But in terms of the founders of the firms, youknow, minimum five years, ideally ten years per
region.
Absolutely.
I I think you start by just going to a handfulof events and see how it clicks for you and and
your strategy, see if there's an appetite forit.
But once you've established that there is, it'snot really that hard to add people.
(01:00:06):
I mean, we're also used to working remotelynow.
You don't even necessarily need an office in aregion to to penetrate the region and make some
progress.
So many people are working from home now.
You could add a person in Asia, a person in TheMiddle East, a person in in Europe.
(01:00:28):
That's not a huge investment.
You know?
You can do that and make enormous progresscompared to everyone being based, you know, in
New York 12, you know, 12 time zones away fromHong Kong or Singapore.
We have an LPU relationship.
We're gonna spend the weekend with them, and wetalk about kind of the scalability of once a
(01:00:52):
year, like memorable experiences.
We're going to like a football game and doingdinner with the wives and every everybody, but
I think people underestimate what once a yeartrip to a Singapore and meeting, having dinner,
You know, I know you guys put on, like, aconcert and and special events going to one of
those.
Like, how quickly those could scale, althoughthey feel very unscalable because you're
(01:01:15):
spending twenty four, thirty six hours, butdoing that once a year could be quite powerful.
If you if you're not doing that, you'reprobably not gonna make any progress.
I mean, at our events, we have differentelements.
The one on one meetings are the you know,that's the thing we're best known for.
But there are a ton of dinners, a ton ofparties.
(01:01:36):
Some of them we're helping to facilitate.
Some the clients are just doing on their own.
We do the, you know, we did the concert inMiami.
We've done smaller versions of it in Singapore.
Those are all moments for people to just spendtime together and hang out in a less formal,
you know, less work oriented way.
(01:01:58):
It's just a chance for people to hang out andget to know each other and become friends.
If you're not on a tour annually where you'retouching base with your relationships in a
region, at least once a year where you'regrabbing dinner, lunch, things like that,
you're you're probably not gonna make anyheadway.
If you're not willing to make at least thatcommitment to it and in the beginning, it's the
(01:02:24):
founders who need to be there.
You know?
Once once you've achieved more critical mass,you know, when you're over a billion, you can
probably get away with the founders doing itless, but but someone has to be dedicated to
really building those friendships.
And that's really how I think of it.
It's like once you have friends in a region,you can start to make progress.
(01:02:47):
But if you don't if you don't do the work tomake friends, it's pretty unrealistic, I think,
to assume you're gonna somehow build a businessthere.
Ron, this has been a masterclass on how tobuild networks, how to how to literally attract
trillions of dollars in in LPs.
(01:03:07):
Thanks for jumping on the podcast and lookforward to maybe not Singapore, but maybe Miami
next year.
Sounds great.
We'd love to have you there.
And, David, thank you again for, for theinvite.
It was great to be with you today.
Thanks for listening to my conversation.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share witha friend.
This helps us grow.
Also provides the very best feedback when wereview the episode's analytics.
Thank you for your support.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.