Private Equity FunCast

In 1982, Bill Atkinson made Apple's Lisa faster by deleting 2,000 lines of code, and the management form asked how many he wrote. Forty-four years later we're counting tokens instead. Same bug.

The good news: with agentic workflows, engineering is finally measurable in terms a board understands. Jim sits down with Kirby Montgomery and Dan Bender of Code & Co. to cover what's worth tracking (speed paire...

What does it really take to build trust in private equity over a five-to-seven-year hold?

Cass sits down with her colleague Nori Welles-Gertz, a principal at Parker Gale, to find out. They talk about why PE is more about relationships and reputation than transactions, and how she moved from consulting into operationally focused lower middle market investing.

They also discuss how her colleg...

Investment diligence is all about answering two questions: Do we want to own this business? And what would we do with it if we did?

But then the deal closes, and all those problems you identified and opportunities you imagined during diligence become yours to tackle. So where do you even start?

In this episode, Ryan and Paul compare notes on what actually happens in the first year of owning...

First, she sketched a med spa roll-up on maternity leave. Then, several law firms said it couldn't be done. Now? She owns five practices.

Cass sits down with her old pal from grad school, Amanda Blank, to discuss her path from finance to building Founders Beauty Group, a med spa roll-up where she leads both investing and operations. Amanda explains the MSO structure that makes owning medical practices possible, how she secret-shopp...

He left private equity, took a 75% pay cut, and joined a 12-person startup that was still finding its footing. Now, Jon Apter helps oversee 1,600 employees as CFO of Accordion – a seat he's held for the last 11 years. 

Jon sits down with Devin to explain what really keeps a CFO in the room with sponsors and boards. Drawing on two PE deals and 12 acquisitions, he shares what it takes to get a c...

What does it take to move from banking to the buyside, and what do you have to figure out once you're there?

Liz sits down with Katie Yuan, a private equity associate at Hg in London. They met in 2022 in JPMorgan's investment banking training in New York. Since then, both have made the move from IB to PE. Katie traces her path from studying economics at Cambridge, to two years in ...

We built our sourcing model around one goal: know every owner of every software company long before they decide to sell. Ken Fine, Affinity's CEO, joins us to explain why relationships and not process are the keys to deal flow, and how AI can make that scalable (and even more human). We talk about the old way and new of sourcing, how AI turns messy inboxes into usable intelligence, and why the real alpha in private equ...

Cass sits down with Brogan Magnarelli, Principal at Riverspan, to talk about her untraditional path into private equity — from point guard at Harvard to account manager at Boingo Wireless, to GE Healthcare sales leadership and finally PE business development. 

Brogan shares why gathering skills at every step matters more than following a linear path, how her basketball mindset shaped her career, and why she ...

Devin's mom's only instruction to her financial advisor was "the number should never go down." Downside protection is often the most attractive part of investing in a mega buyout fund, but the latest data from PitchBook calls that into question.

PitchBook's Andrew Akers goes deep on why bigger private equity funds don't always outperform smaller ones, why "manager selection skill" might be a myth, and why ...

What does it look like to "plant seeds" so aggressively that serendipity starts looking like a strategy? This week on Parker Gals, Cass sits down with Jessica Patton to trace her path from Detroit to Howard University to landing a rare straight-out-of-college private equity role in New York.

Jessica shares how she eventually landed in an impact-oriented role at Andreessen Horowitz, and what it took to ju...

Corporate AI spend in 2026 looked like a teenager loose at the mall with their parents' credit card. No policy, no budget, no discipline about what was purchased and why.

That will change in the 2027 budget season, just kicking off. Devin goes deep with Accordion's Justin D'Onofrio using an 8-step framework to get it right. They cover why 91% of PE-backed CFOs can't size their AI spend, and why 83% of po...

What does it look like to go "all in" at every stage of your career, even when you're not on the traditional track?

This week on Parker Gals, Liz and Cass sit down with Hannah Song, a former senior associate at Promus Equity Partners who's heading to UChicago Booth this fall. Hannah shares her non-traditional journey from KPMG audit to investment banking at Mesirow to private equity — and opens up ...

What if the future of private equity looks exactly like its past? The days of cheap debt and multiple expansion are over, so the only way to win going forward is to operate your way out. Buy well, execute, and exit well. In this episode, Devin and Paul sit down with Lee McCabe — recovering operating partner, Facebook and Alibaba alum, and Founder of Claymore Partners — to unpack what the new playbook for PE...

Cass sits down with Angela McCoy, Managing Director at May River, a private equity firm investing in lower middle market industrial businesses. Angela shares her journey from leveraged finance at Bank of America through the 2008 financial crisis, to a family office, and ultimately to May River, where she started remotely during the pandemic while pregnant.

They dig into why Angela believes sector-focused s...

What if the thing founders are proudest of in diligence — "AI wrote most of our code" — is actually the reason investors should worry?

Jim sits down with Jason Gill and Kirby Montgomery of Code & Co. to talk about what happens when vibe coding meets private equity due diligence, why every diligence summary suddenly looks identical, and why the old scars (custom integrations, undocumented pa...

In this episode of Parker Gals, Liz Xu sits down with her former JPMorgan colleague and friend Caroline Carman, Senior Associate at Rallyday Partners, a lower middle market private equity firm based in Denver, Colorado.

Caroline shares her journey from leveraged finance analyst to becoming Rallyday's first associate, building the firm's junior team from the ground up. We dive into what drew her to privat...

Devin and Cass sit down with Kate Hopkins, founder of OneGuide, to break down the 36 AI value creation plays private equity firms and portfolio companies are running right now. From TAM mapping and list building with AI to revenue leakage detection, workflow automation, and agent ecosystem strategy — this episode covers what's actually working, what's not, and what's coming next.

OneGuide's "Top 36...

In this episode, host Cass Ziebel sits down with Frontenac VP Maggie Pugel for a candid conversation about breaking into private equity the non-traditional way. Maggie shares how she went from buy-side equity research at Ariel Investments to private equity at Frontenac — without the classic investment banking pedigree — and why she's glad she took the "career switcher" route. 

They dig i...