While public markets debate macro jitters, top-quartile GPs are quietly institutionalizing Continuation Vehicles as a primary strategy and overhauling the fragile spreadsheet plumbing that tracks their value creation.
📊 11 episodes across 10 podcasts
⏱ 788 minutes of intelligence analyzed
🎙 Featuring: Ben Gilbert (Acquired), David Rosenthal (Acquired), Roy E. Disney (The Walt Disney Company), Ron Miller (The Walt Disney Company)
|
The Big Shift
The institutionalization of PE plumbing and liquidity.
The middle-market machine is breaking under the weight of its own success, forcing GPs to architect entirely new systems for both liquidity and data governance. LPs are tired of waiting for M&A markets to fully thaw, and they are demanding real-time visibility into portfolio performance that legacy tracking simply cannot provide. The days of treating Continuation Vehicles (CVs) as emergency exits and portfolio monitoring as a quarterly spreadsheet exercise are over.
On the liquidity front, secondary markets have evolved into a structural component of private equity returns. Simultaneously, the internal data infrastructure used to manage these assets is facing a reckoning as public and private market reporting standards converge.
"I think the general consensus around the markets, around 15 to 16% of all liquidity back into LPs have come through a CV process."
— Adrian Siew, Managing Director on The Private Equity Podcast, by Raw Selection
"60% [of private credit funds] are on spreadsheets. Three years ago, that number was 80. Private equity is actually pretty different. This might actually surprise people, but it's closer to 40% are in spreadsheets."
— Kevin Hsu, Founder and CEO on Private Equity Funcast
Why it matters: If your firm is still running value creation KPIs through Excel while viewing CVs as a "last resort" for zombie assets, you are operating on an outdated playbook. The infrastructure layer of private markets is professionalizing rapidly, and GPs who cannot provide seamless, ledger-backed data and manufactured liquidity will struggle in the next fundraising cycle.
The move: Audit your portfolio monitoring stack immediately—if your value creation metrics aren't traceable to source files in a centralized ledger, upgrade before your next LP diligence process.
The Rundown
① Old GPU prices are defying depreciation gravity.
The market consensus that AI compute demand is cooling ignores the physical reality in Silicon Valley, where long-term off-take agreements are driving up the cost of older hardware. (Gavin Baker on Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy)
→ Why it matters: Infrastructure supply constraints remain severe, meaning physical compute assets hold significantly more residual value than traditional hardware depreciation models suggest.
② Brand ownership has moved to the CEO's desk.
The proliferation of consumer touchpoints has made it impossible to isolate brand management to the marketing department. Neal Arthur noted that "I think a CEO today is actually responsible for the brand" during their discussion on Masters of Scale.
→ Why it matters: Operators cannot delegate brand intentionality; it must be embedded directly into the core business strategy and operational execution.
③ Central banks are utilizing shadow repo facilities for intervention.
The US Treasury recently sold euros and utilized the FIMA repo facility to supply dollars during the Japanese yen intervention, avoiding direct disruption to the cash Treasury market. (Brad Setser on Odd Lots)
→ Why it matters: Macro investors must look beyond traditional currency reserves and monitor off-balance-sheet central bank plumbing to understand actual market liquidity.
④ Strategic contract manufacturing serves as non-dilutive financing.
Before launching their flagship brand, the founders of MadeGood aggressively pursued private label manufacturing for Costco to generate the cash flow needed to fund their own CPG rollout. (Nima Fotovat on How I Built This with Guy Raz)
→ Why it matters: B2B co-packing is a viable bootstrap mechanism for emerging operators looking to build consumer brands without taking early, highly dilutive equity capital.
⑤ Insourcing unglamorous logistics creates an entertainment moat.
To support their high-growth touring model, the Savannah Bananas opted against third-party vendors and built their own internal logistics company with 16 full-time truck drivers. (Jesse Cole on Masters of Scale)
→ Why it matters: True challenger brands secure their customer experience by owning the physical infrastructure that legacy competitors write off as a commodity expense.
⑥ AI is acting as the stock market's lead anchor.
Large language models are beginning to bypass traditional analyst syntheses, directly impacting how market participants trade on breaking information. Gavin Baker noted that "Claude is kind of Walter Cronkite for the stock market" during their discussion on Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy.
→ Why it matters: Investor relations teams must now optimize their earnings narratives for algorithmic interpretation just as heavily as human analyst consumption.
⑦ Radical preparedness masks itself as natural presence.
Navigating high-stakes, unscripted environments requires a level of preparation so deep that it borders on the tedious, ensuring the operator can handle live chaos without breaking character. (Rebecca Lowe on Dare to Lead with Brené Brown)
→ Why it matters: Executive presence in boardrooms isn't about raw charisma; it is the direct dividend of exhaustive, unglamorous groundwork.
Signal Board
🔥 HEATING UP
• Continuation Vehicles (CVs): Evolving from defensive maneuvers to core portfolio strategies for top-tier GPs. (Adrian Siew on The Private Equity Podcast, by Raw Selection)
• SRAM-based accelerators: Gaining traction for disaggregated inference as the physical limits of compute architecture are tested. (Gavin Baker on Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy)
• FIMA Repo Facility: Increasingly utilized by central banks to access dollar liquidity without selling Treasuries. (Brad Setser on Odd Lots)
👀 ON WATCH
• 🆕 Lumonic: Stepping into the massive void left by the 40% of private equity funds still running portfolio monitoring on spreadsheets. (Kevin Hsu on Private Equity Funcast)
• Bank of Japan (BOJ): Navigating immense pressure to raise rates to defend a weakening yen without cratering domestic growth. (Brad Setser on Odd Lots)
• 🆕 Strategic Calm: Lowering vocal tone and speed is being explicitly recognized as a high-leverage leadership tactic for de-escalation. (Brené Brown on Dare to Lead with Brené Brown)
🧊 COOLING OFF
• In-house PE AI builds: Firms attempting to build bespoke internal AI data solutions are abandoning them for commercial vendors within nine months. (Kevin Hsu on Private Equity Funcast)
• Traditional Secondary Ticketing: Live entertainment brands are actively sacrificing secondary market margins to prioritize fan loyalty and accessibility. (Jesse Cole on Masters of Scale)
• Frontier Model Margins: Open-source models are shifting margin dollars away from proprietary AI labs and toward infrastructure providers. (Gavin Baker on Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy)
The Bottom Line
The era of spreadsheet-driven value creation is ending; GPs must institutionalize their data plumbing and liquidity mechanisms or get left behind.
📖 Want the full episode breakdowns, guest details, and listen links?
Episode Guide
Masters of Scale — "The new rules of brand building, with Wieden+Kennedy CEO"
Runtime: 30 min | Host: Bob Safian | Guests: Neal Arthur (CEO, Wieden+Kennedy), Neil Barrie (CEO, Wieden+Kennedy)
Worth your time if: You are a CEO navigating how to maintain brand cohesion across an increasingly fragmented digital media landscape.
This episode details why brand ownership can no longer sit exclusively with the CMO. The executives at Wieden+Kennedy explain how intentionality, emotional connection, and even AI can scale a company's core narrative when executed correctly.
"I think a CEO today is actually responsible for the brand because they're in charge of the vast majority of consumer touch points."
— Neal Arthur, CEO of Wieden+Kennedy on Masters of Scale
Founders — "#428 How Claude Shannon Worked"
Runtime: 51 min | Host: David Senra | Guests: Claude Shannon (Father of Information Theory), Vannevar Bush (Former Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development)
Worth your time if: You want to understand how deep, unstructured curiosity acts as the ultimate engine for breakthrough innovation.
An exploration of the unconventional habits of Claude Shannon, focusing on how he treated everything from information theory to generating 28% annual stock returns as interconnected puzzles. The discussion emphasizes that high-level problem solving requires space for "serious play."
"I've been working on three different ideas simultaneously, and strangely enough, it seems a more productive method than sticking to one problem."
— Claude Shannon, Mathematician and Electrical Engineer on Founders
The Private Equity Podcast, by Raw Selection — "Secondaries Are No Longer a Liquidity Tool. They’re a Private Equity Strategy with Adrian Siew, Rothschild & Co"
Runtime: 16 min | Host: Alex Rawlings | Guests: Adrian Siew (Managing Director, Co-lead of GP Solutions practice, Rothschild & Co)
Worth your time if: You are a GP looking to manufacture liquidity for LPs while holding onto top-performing assets in a sluggish M&A market.
The conversation breaks down how Continuation Vehicles have matured from a stigmatized last resort into a primary, structurally sound tool for private equity capital management. Siew explains what separates a weak CV pitch from a highly aligned, successful transaction.
"The CV situation should be assessed alongside the IPO route or the M and a typical sell side... rather than I think there is sometimes a mistake I won't say mistake, but sometimes, sometimes a bias towards leaning into a CV opportunity as the option of last resort."
— Adrian Siew, Managing Director, Rothschild & Co on The Private Equity Podcast, by Raw Selection
Acquired — "Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire"
Runtime: 273 min | Hosts: Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal | Guests: Roy E. Disney (Chairman of the Animation Division, The Walt Disney Company), Ron Miller (CEO (former), The Walt Disney Company), Michael Eisner (CEO, The Walt Disney Company), Frank Wells (President, The Walt Disney Company), Jeffrey Katzenberg (Head of Film Studios, The Walt Disney Company), Howard Ashman (Lyricist/Musical Creative, Disney Animation), Ben Cohen (Writer, The Wall Street Journal), Brenda Chapman (Head of Story for The Lion King (formerly at Disney), DreamWorks Animation), Tom Murphy (CEO, Capital Cities/ABC), Warren Buffett (CEO, Berkshire Hathaway), Michael Ovitz (President (formerly Founder of Creative Artists Agency), The Walt Disney Company), Stanley Gold (Business partner of Roy E. Disney), Steve Case (CEO, AOL), Bob Iger (Former President & COO, Incoming CEO, The Walt Disney Company), Steve Jobs (CEO, Pixar, Apple), John Lasseter (Animator/Director, Pixar), Ed Catmull (Computer Scientist, Co-founder, Pixar), George Lucas (Founder, Lucasfilm)
Worth your time if: You are studying how dormant corporate IP can be radically restructured into an insurmountable economic moat.
A masterclass in turnaround strategy, covering Disney's transition from a distressed asset worth more liquidated into a global content juggernaut. It highlights the strategic pivot toward animated Broadway-style musicals and the explosive margin impact of secondary distribution channels like home video.
"In 1983, their stock dropped from $82 to $52 that the company was worth more if you sold it for parts than actually running it."
— David Rosenthal, Host at Acquired on Acquired
Odd Lots — "Brad Setser on the US's Unusual Japanese Yen Intervention"
Runtime: 42 min | Hosts: Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal | Guests: Brad Setser (Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations)
Worth your time if: You manage global macro exposure and need to understand the hidden mechanics of central bank currency interventions.
This episode unpacks the tactical nuances of the US intervening to support the yen by selling euros and tapping into shadow repo facilities. It provides a sobering look at Japan's actual fiscal health compared to widespread market assumptions about its debt load.
"The basic idea is that central banks have a lot of really good collateral. And if they need cash, they don't actually have to go and sell the Treasuries into the cash bond market. They can just repo them at the Fed, get dollars and then intervene that way."
— Brad Setser, Senior Fellow at Council on Foreign Relations on Odd Lots
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway — "Sam Harris on The Democrats’ Far-Left Problem"
Runtime: 69 min | Host: Scott Galloway | Guests: Sam Harris (Neuroscientist, Philosopher, Host, and Author, Making Sense podcast)
Worth your time if: You are tracking the socio-political undercurrents that are eroding institutional trust and impacting consumer attention capital.
Beyond politics, the core of this conversation centers on the structural destruction of boredom and the commoditization of human attention by smartphones. It frames focus as the ultimate non-renewable asset in modern business and personal life.
"The smartphone in our pocket has canceled the very possibility of boredom, right? It used to be that you could get bored and you could become interested in that fact."
— Sam Harris, Author, Philosopher, and Neuroscientist on The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy — "Gavin Baker - AI Market Jitters - [Invest Like the Best, EP.485]"
Runtime: 65 min | Host: Patrick O'Shaughnessy | Guests: Gavin Baker (Founding Partner and CIO, Atreides Management)
Worth your time if: You are allocating capital into the AI supply chain and need to separate Wall Street jitter from Silicon Valley reality.
Baker tears down the bearish narrative on AI infrastructure, proving that underlying demand metrics and long-term hardware contracts remain incredibly robust. He clearly maps out how open-source models are actually driving massive structural demand for underlying compute.
"Every metric is accelerating. OpenAI has accelerated, anthropic continues to grow really strongly. You're going to see a lot of acceleration that's going to answer these ROI questions."
— Gavin Baker, Founding Partner and CIO of Atreides Management on Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Private Equity Funcast — "Private Equity's About to Get a Lot Less Private (w/ Kevin Hsu of Lumonic)"
Runtime: 62 min | Host: Devin | Guests: Kevin Hsu (Founder and CEO, Lumonic)
Worth your time if: You are an operating partner or fund CFO tasked with dragging your firm's data reporting out of the dark ages.
A blunt assessment of the technology lag in middle-market private equity, where 40% of firms still rely entirely on spreadsheets for portfolio tracking. It outlines the inevitable shift toward ledger-based data infrastructure as public and private markets converge.
"All Lumonic is, is we're a ledger that stores all your financial metrics, your qualitative metrics. And so on the private equity side, this would be, if you have value creation KPIs that you set at underwrite, these are the things that you're tracking in a time series way."
— Kevin Hsu, Founder and CEO, Lumonic on Private Equity Funcast
How I Built This with Guy Raz — "MadeGood: Salma and Nima Fotovat Lost Their First Business.They Grew Their Next One Into a Snack Giant."
Runtime: 66 min | Host: Guy Raz | Guests: Nima Fotovat (Co-founder, MadeGood), Salma Fotovat (Co-founder, MadeGood), Saba Fotovat (Co-founder, MadeGood (Riverside Foods))
Worth your time if: You are building a physical product brand and need to creatively finance your supply chain and manufacturing scale.
This episode is a masterclass in operational grit, showing how founders can use private-label contract manufacturing as a cash engine to fund the launch and scale of proprietary brands. It highlights the immense value of vertical integration in CPG.
"This private label contract manufacturing is like having an investor because you generate the cash to put into the brand."
— Nima Fotovat, Co-founder of MadeGood on How I Built This with Guy Raz
Masters of Scale — "Always be the challenger"
Runtime: 29 min | Host: Jeff Berman | Guests: Jesse Cole (Founder, Savannah Bananas and Fans First Entertainment)
Worth your time if: You want to see what a completely uncompromised, customer-obsessed operational model actually looks like in practice.
Cole explains how throwing out traditional revenue-optimization playbooks—like avoiding the secondary ticket market and insourcing all trucking logistics—creates an unbeatable community moat. It proves that aggressive "fans first" behavior is highly profitable in the long term.
"Our goal is very simple. It's to create fans. Your goal is to make money. We could charge a lot more and we've been told to do that by every consultant."
— Jesse Cole, Founder of Savannah Bananas and Fans First Entertainment on Masters of Scale
Dare to Lead with Brené Brown — "Leading Under Pressure with Rebecca Lowe"
Runtime: 85 min | Hosts: Brené Brown, Adam Grant | Guests: Rebecca Lowe (Sports Broadcaster/Host, NBC/Fox Sports)
Worth your time if: You lead teams in zero-margin-for-error environments and need frameworks for remaining calm under extreme stress.
Lowe breaks down the grueling, behind-the-scenes preparation required to project ease on live television. The discussion translates broadcasting survival skills—like tactical pacing and strategic calm—into actionable leadership tools for boardrooms and crisis management.
"Do not confuse presence with preparedness. Preparedness is the unlock to fun, to going off script a little bit because you are ready."
— Rebecca Lowe, Sports Broadcaster/Host at NBC/Fox Sports on Dare to Lead with Brené Brown
