YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Sidgmore

lines on the record: 62
first: 2025-05-05
most recent: 2025-05-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“My focus is on the private markets world. I think it's such an interesting time in this space where we're only in the early days of more people having access to private markets. I want to help be part of that by helping to educate the community, both the GPs, the LPs, everybody else involved in private markets. There's really big questions that society is facing. I hope private markets can play a role in that. I think a lot of it's going to happen in the next five years. That feels like the window.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With everything that's happening in AI, how will people learn going forward and what will be valued? So as a world becomes, particularly on the content side, more commoditized, AI might start to write and be smarter than people in many ways. How will original content actually matter? I wonder what will happen as content and things become more commoditized from AI. How will people build and maintain genuine connections”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly didn't expect to be in finance. I studied. I worked for room to read as well. So in the year I was trying to play soccer again after being injured. I worked for John Wood in Room to Read at International Literacy Organization. And I thought I was going to do something that was related to the international relations world. I ended up falling into finance. Finance is so critical to what makes the world move. And this is really honestly about what private markets is. How do you unlock access for more people to investing, particularly in emerging markets? How do you give people access to things in financial services because it's so critical to what they do in their day-to-day life? How they buy a house, go to school, how they save for retirement, all of those things are related to finance. So even though I didn't study finance, I'm glad I ended up in it because it's so central to what everybody does every day.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really, business is about, right? It's about building relationships. Sales come at the right time when they come, but people have to be A, interested in buying something and B, they have to trust the person that they're working with.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My grandfather employed me at his antique show every year. I'd also work in historic times. He was an antique dealer in his second career every summer on Long Island go to the antique shows and we would sell for him. We were kids. My cousin and I were ten, eleven, twelve. We would be selling antiques. We'd have to price everything. We'd have to run around the antique show and try to find things to buy and see how much something was negotiate and then bring it back and then try to sell it. In addition to selling all the stuff that he had. So it was just a ton of fun. I learned all about how to value things, also how to sell and how to really understand people and understand what they were interested in and also talk to them. I mean, my grandfather was so good at this. He would build a relationship with them and he would talk to them about what they were interested in. Sometimes they didn't buy anything and that was fine. Maybe the next year they came back and they did. And I think that's so instructive on what.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, two things. I love being outside in nature and hiking. The other thing that I love doing is I actually collected sports cards for a long time. That's a really interesting category. We have a company that we've invested in that space that's built in exchange for sports cards called Alt. And I think that's while smaller than the other alternative asset categories we talked about, it's a really interesting category where I think that's where culture intersects with investing. So I love collecting sports cards. I love supporting sports teams.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This space without seeing what the largest firms are doing using things like LinkedIn as a way to communicate with investors. They're putting out tons of research and white papers. They're building out content teams. That's emblematic of where this is all going. So I think content's critical. I started this because I really just wanted to help connect the dots in the space. It's become a business across content, community, and capital. those three pillars all go hand in hand because you need all three in today's world. On that point too, I think marketing is as important as distribution and sales. You need the aerial support from marketing and the constant barrage of information and communication with investors. And that can enable smaller firms to punch above their weight. If they do a great job of marketing content, you got to invest in marketing too.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investor in as well, all the way through to evolution of asset managers as a business and trying to work with the wealth channel. The lower middle market is actually pretty interesting because there's going to be really niche managers that are going to grow their business in a core area and strategy that they're very good at and very focused on. Maybe they get consolidated or that position gets sold to a larger stakes business. So I think that's why we've made a bet on the lower middle market of alternative asset management because I think even if the lion's share of capital goes into the largest firms, there's also going to be more capital going into the smaller firms. And going from one to five billion or five to 10 billion, that's probably more doable than going from 50 to 100 billion. And then the other piece of it is the content side of things. I think for this space to continue to mature and grow, content is going to be critical. And content is going to be at the core of how firms think about capital raising. You're seeing it with the largest firms. You can't think about”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Execute investments, post trade, how do you manage track value, all the data, et cetera? That can't be decoupled from the evolution of asset management as a business and the distribution evolution that's happening on the private markets manager side. So I think both of those things are happening. Then there's a whole set of things that come from that that are related. One is I think we're seeing an evolution in asset management where there's consolidation and there's this barbelling of like you either need to be really big or really unique. We've thought about this from the lower middle market where if there's consolidation finding top niche managers, that's why we own a portion of cantilever group, the GP Stakes business in the lower middle market because we see that as technology improves to be able to serve the wealth channel better so things like iCapital, which I was involved with and wasn't an”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of these things cannot be made sense of an isolation. The different activities that I'm doing give me a very interesting perspective and they're all related. So the investing side at Broadhaven Ventures. We've invested in twenty companies from pre to post trade and private markets. I think the technology revolution in private markets market structure from pre to post-investment. How do you find investments? How do you...”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you look out over the next few years, this is kind of a dovetail question between your podcast and your investment interest, what excites you about both what you're trying to cover and then how you're trying to capture economics from the opportunity set.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Equity that the largest GPs have found ways to strategically partner with the largest LPs, so think like large sovereign wealths or the Maple 8, the Canadian pensions, calsters, cowpers, et cetera, where those firms were able to drive down fees by doing fee-free co-invests. And that was in part to help these managers do bigger and bigger deals. The question becomes with evergreen structures, if a GP can generate fees on the evergreen structure, why would they give that away fee-free to co-invest? Firms, I think, are certainly acutely aware this because they know how important the institutional customer is to them, that there needs to be harmonization between the institutional investor relations team and the wealth solutions business. All of this is thinking through how do these customers work with your business and how do you integrate them both into what you do?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That BlackRock, or GIP, did the Panama Canal. There are very few firms that can do that. And in the rarefied air, there are sometimes cases where being really big can help and you're not competing with a ton of other people, you actually may be able to get good deals or get good assets at fair prices. But I do think that's a question that private markets is going to have to answer because investors are coming into this and they're coming in at a time when more capital is flowing into the space. That also brings us to the institutional side of things, which is institutions are not going to become insignificant allocators to private markets. Insurance companies are going to be much bigger allocators. Lincoln recently partnered with Bain and partners group. These really strategic partnerships, they have hundreds of billions of dollars from the general account to invest in private markets. So the institutional channel is not going away. I want to be very clear on that. I do think the creation of evergreen funds brings up really interesting question, though, which is you've seen over the past 15 years in private.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've thought about this in the context of is this alpha in search of beta? I say that a little bit tongue in cheek, but I think what this does go back to is for the risk people are taking illiquidity risk, being in private markets, are people still generating returns that are in excess of what they're getting if they're only in public markets. Now, it's a really fair question. As more capital comes into this space, do returns go down without knowing and having crystal ball, I think it'd be hard to say that the answer is no. in certain sectors and categories, multiples have gotten higher, and I think that's very much the case. If you look at the difference between lower middle market and the upper end of the market, multiples are generally lower in the lower middle market. So I think there's still pockets of private markets where you can generate returns. There's also areas of private markets where scale really does matter. Talk about private credit or infrastructure. How many people can do a $20 billion deal in infrastructure?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd love to ask you about the implications of all this fun flows to calm and the structures on the existing institutional community. Start with Do you think happens to asset prices in the private markets as this money seems to come in with demand that no one's really talking about at what price?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Skill set in terms of managing the investments because you have to know, A, what to source and when and how, but then B, actually how to manage that asset properly and when to get out. Because you need to be able to create the ability to distribute capital back to investors. You need to have a team across the investment team, IR team, and the operations team that's all working in unison to be able to make sure that things are done properly from sourcing deals all the way through to capital raising.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some firms have put out white papers that are based on data and backtesting. If you're in a drawdown fund, you have to generate high teens returns to get the same multiple uninvested capital over a 10-year period as you would if you're getting low teens, IRRs in an evergreen structure. This gets to a really important point when it comes to thinking about evergreen structures, both if you're an LP and if you're a GP thinking about creating an evergreen structure. The question that people need to ask is, what is, one, the deal flow? Does this firm have the capacity and ability to source enough deals, either from their own platform? The other aspect of it is investor management. So it's great to be able to raise a lot of capital, but if you raise too much capital and don't have the deal to deploy that into, then that's just dragging down IRR for the investors. So it requires a different”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, for an investor in an evergreen fund, if the manager needs to be able to provide some liquidity, whether it's an interval fund or a tender offer, what dilution would you expect if you're thinking about expected returns compared to a drawdown structure?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or a $2 or $3 billion fund that you have to raise, or $5 billion fund that you have to raise every three to five years at 2%. So I think it's creating some really interesting business dynamics and questions. Goldman had a report on evergreens in the fall of 2024, and there's really only in the US at the time there's like 200 evergreen funds. So there's not a lot of choices relative to the thousands of closed-end funds that people can invest in. Evergreens just make it easier. the capital compounds in theory. And then you get a 1099. You don't get a K1. So it's just easier from a operational perspective.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where a GP says we want to buy back part of someone's investment and net asset value, we can do that. That's generally the discretion of the GP. So yes, there is some liquidity, but not always. Interval funds are periodic times where at certain intervals, other people can buy existing LPs holdings at net asset value again. Evergreen structures are generally lower fee. $125, $150, Navy, $175 in certain cases, lower carry, but the management fee and carry is charged on net asset value. So as businesses compound and net asset value grows over time in theory, you can start to generate real fee streams on that $125. So if you do the math, would you rather have $10 or $15 billion at $125?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be talking more about private equity and other alternative asset classes as opposed to something like hedge funds in this context, but historically the way that people invested is their closed-end vehicles. Closed-end vehicles or drawdown structures, it puts the onus on the LP in terms of how they manage the rest of their cash flows. The wealth channel historically and generally speaking has not liked the fact that there's really no liquidity for 10 years, which if you're an individual investor in your 40s, maybe you want to buy a house. So that can be a challenge just mechanically in terms of private markets being the right type of investment for people. So evergreen structures create mechanisms that enable things like liquidity. So let's break down evergreen structures. There's tender offer funds, and there's interval funds. Those are slightly different structures. So with tender offer funds, there are periods of time.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has invested in the alts. There's this set of different vehicles that create more liquidity than historically you saw in private equity drawdown fund. I'd love to walk through these different names you hear at evergreen structures, interval funds, tender offers, what they are, and how they get rolled out.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are certain firms that have done hedge funds for a long time, and I think that will continue to persist. I think that there's a set of newer LPs that I imagine they will probably think about hedge funds. The challenge is you almost have to do a two-layer sale. It's marketing and educating the advisor, and it's marketing educating the end client. The firms that people know about are probably going to be the ones that more likely get allocations. And people are more comfortable with. I'll call out a Baines survey from 2022. Bain and Company as $418 ultra-high net worth individuals. Name three firms that come to mind when you think of alternative assets and who are the providers. First answer, the biggest answer in the bubble chart was, I don't know. The next three, Schwab, Fidelity, and BlackRock, which in twenty twenty two, Schwab and Fidelity were not doing private markets. I think that shows how important brand is, and it also shows”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They've worked with private banks for years. That's where a large portion of the wealth capital has come from. I think that hedge funds will certainly play a role in all this.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you are much more of an expert on hedge funds than I am. I think hedge funds are in an interesting spot. They're by no means a small part of the universe. The large multistrat funds have done a great job of building their business. Their businesses too, right? The big pod shops, sixty plus, seventy plus billion dollars. And those have become the ways to allocate to the hedge fund space. What has been interesting from my perspective as somebody who's focused more on the other parts of private markets is that you are starting to see some hedge funds think about private credit and you are starting to see some hedge funds think about longer lock vehicles. So they're kind of getting into certain aspects of private markets that a larger multi-strategy alternative asset manager would play in, which is interesting. And I think they are not ignoring the wealth channel either. There are plenty of larger hedge funds that are on some of the big capital raising platforms. Certainly.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the end of the day, though, I really think this has to come down to investors have to be able to generate better returns than they could by investing just in the alternative.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To that, which is in private markets, I think there will be firms that truly generate alpha. And there will be firms that have private markets beta or private equity beta. Now then the question becomes, is the private market's exposure on a risk-adjusted basis factoring in most likely illiquidity? If the returns are still greater than what you can get in public markets, then I think there's a reason to do private markets. That still gets to things like manager selection really matters. Second thing, they're going to think about what managers can we work with over a long period of time. I do think that tends to favor the brands. So I think it's going to be easier for managers who have big brands and large multi-strat platforms to be able to win dollars from the wealth channel because they're a brand that people know. And I think it's no different than on the public side or in the institutional side where people.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Growing because private credit is now growing. So that's another really interesting category. And then infrastructure, also another growing category where there's trillions of dollars required to finance massive megatrends, rise of AI, investing in data centers, decarbonization. Those are multi-trillion dollar trends, tens of trillions of dollars where capital is going to need to go and the private sector is probably going to fill some of that gap. So big infrastructure funds. And then GP Stakes, which is a small but growing market and ecosystem where I think if you believe in private markets growing, betting on the growth of asset managers and their AUM, there's reason to believe why people may look at that and say, this is a derivative of this whole space growing. What is the value proposition that the ultimate buyer in private wealth is looking for? I think first and foremost, it has to be excess return. Now, there's a new”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where today is that capital that's coming from the wealth going? If you think about the different strategies within private markets, private equity, which has the largest pool of capital within the $15 trillion or so of private markets assets. So it's about $500 or $6 trillion of assets. Private credit is growing. It's grown from a few hundred billion to over $1.7 trillion over the last few years. And if you take what everyone from Blackstone, which has said $20 trillion market to Aries, $30 trillion market to Apollo $40 trillion market. So anything on a bank balance sheet, there's a lot of room to run in private credit, and that's a growing ecosystem. You have real estate, which is a large market. You have secondaries, first private equity secondaries, and there's a lot of structural reasons why that might make sense because people need liquidity. You have private credit secondaries, which has grown, I think, 17 times, still a small market. It's like 30 billion of assets.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Decisions get made compared to a private bank platform. All the private banks know they need to serve their ultra high net worth clients in a very unique and different way. So why did Goldman Sachs, as an example, launch Apex, which is family office platform for their ultra-high net worth clients? They're doing things like more direct deals. And I think we're at a really interesting place for the private banks in terms of how they're thinking about servicing the wealth channel that they know they need to differentiate. How do we offer things like late stage private companies that are really interesting and compelling that only we have access to because we have a broader platform? How do we get access to investing in sports alongside some of the funds or maybe into the funds in a unique way? Those types of things, I think, are what private banks are trying to do to differentiate themselves because now the wealth management space is getting increasingly competitive and crowded when it comes to accessing private markets. If you look at the range of different alternative investment strategies,”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investors, so you need to create new products to meet the needs of those clients. And then I think you're going to have the self directed individual investors. Recently Schwab launched an Alts platform. So for their brokerage clients, individual high net worth investors, 5 million net worth and above, Schwab has a few trillion dollars custody and of assets held at Schwab in brokerage accounts from individual investors. And if a portion of that, I think they said they'd like to get five percent of those client assets allocated in private markets. Talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, and that's going to be more self-directed in nature. And even I think we'll get to the Robin Hoods, the Revolutes, the SoFis, which has embedded some private markets products to the wealth channel within their complex as well. That's going to be really interesting to see how that works. And that's where education and brand matter even more. How does the way the wirehouse”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then they're helping their advisors saying, here's a set of products that we've done diligence on, we've vetted, we've sourced. This is a menu for you to work with. And by the way, there is value in that because those firms are now getting so big, you can start to drive some terms. The other parts of the wealth channel, family offices, when you know one family office, you know one family office. That could mean it's very institutional in nature. That could mean it's a principal making decisions and that's the way that they run their process. They could be larger, they could be smaller. That's also a hard market to cover because every family office is different, but they don't necessarily have the same decision-making cadence as a large institutional LP. Then you have the whole independent channel and broker dealers. You have the Osaics of the world, the LPLs. They're just starting to get into private markets. In many cases, they tend to have more of the mass affluent client types. Those firms are in part serving that cohort of...”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What products are the right products to have on the platform to serve the various spectrum of advisors that we need to serve? We're starting to see the independent channel, which is the fastest growing part of the wealth management space. It's growing faster in terms of assets than the wirehouses. And by the way, there's different models in the independent channel too. There's platforms like Hightower Focus Dynasty that provide the platform and services, including the alts capabilities and investment services in addition to technology stack to true independent platforms, which are just totally independent, have their own business, maybe their private equity-backed, but all of those firms then have different ways of deciding to source and implement private market strategies. The big platforms have a head of alts. They have a CIO, and now they're starting to do things top-down. So they're creating menus. They're creating diligence processes.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Copyright 2026 Morgan Stanley All Rights Reserved. And now back to the show. How does the decision making work for when an allocation goes to a manager at Oire? There's a few different elements to it. CIO is often responsible for picking and setting like here's an asset allocation framework and here's the types of strategies we want. The alts team and diligence team will do the work to figure out which managers are the right fit for that. The advisors then have a menu to choose from. So ultimately it's the advisors making the decision. And that's where I think this actually is not a simple sale because different advisors are in different places on their educational journey in private markets. Different advisors have different client types. So you could be at Merrill Lynch and you might be an advisor team that has ultra high net worth, $50 million, $100 million plus clients, billionaire clients, but you could also be another Merrill Lynch advisor and have massive fluent clients. So I think that actually makes the job really hard for the CIO and the Alt team figuring out.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are very institutional in quality and in process. So the CIO will decide we need this type of asset allocation. The Alts diligence team will figure out which managers they want to put on the platform. They'll have some larger managers. They'll have some smaller managers. I think one of the large wirehouses has like 60 different evergreen fund options. So there's a lot of choice. Now advisors have to pick and choose. What it means is the biggest GPs are probably best placed to cover the wires because they have the resources to actually cover all the different advisors, serve them, whether it's doing large events with them, whether it's going and meeting that advisor in the office in Dallas or the Midwest or California or New York. So you need the resources and coverage model to be able to do that. So I think the biggest firms will probably benefit most from working with the wires. And it's the most institutional in process in nature.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From a wealth platform. So if we think about it, let's start with the wires. The wires, I still think will be the largest source of flows from the wealth channel into private markets. I call it the wires are plugged in. So I mean that figuratively, I also mean that to some extent literally. So wire houses, who are they? They're the big private bank complexes. So it's the Merrills, the Morgan Stanleys, the UBSs. They have tons of resources. They have CIOs and they have diligence teams focused on finding, sourcing, vetting, and putting private markets managers on their platforms. That's for advisors to then pick from. It's a menu. Now, they have a different compensation model than the independent channel. So there's always questions as to why are those managers being put on the platform? There's placement fees involved at times. Not always, but at times. And that does drive why an advisor may pick a certain manager versus another. But having said that,”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The wealth channel is not just one thing. I think that's also what's been so challenging about working with the wealth channel relative to the institutional channel. The institutional channel is relatively similar cadence in terms of how a GP would sell. They know when their investment committee meetings are, they know the cadence for how they buy. They often are able to know the cadence for how they re-upp. And by the way, the institutions also have very sophisticated cash flow models and return hurdles where they understand this is how much we need to allocate. This is what we need to generate on an annualized basis for our constituents. And they have all of those pieces in place. So it makes fundraising, well, never easy, harder in today's environment, much easier than the wealth channel because we get to the wealth channel and a wirehouse is very different from a family office, from an independent wealth advisor.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sophisticated wealth platforms will want to do things that are more differentiated. In certain cases, that will mean working with the largest firms. And I think there's a prevailing view out there that people are doing more with less. That has happened on the institutional side for a number of years. And I think that's starting to happen with the wealth channel because if you're $100 billion firm, like a Serity, you can't spend time on a $10 million allocation. You have to think more like an institutional investor. So that does mean that they'll consolidate their relationships, but they also have to think about differentiation. So I think there's room for really high quality, smaller, more niche managers. They're really good at something. They will be able to raise capital from the wealth channel. The question, though, becomes, can they properly find and service the wealth channel? I think that's really one of the next phases of this space. And yet to be determined what the answer is.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Placement agents call on RIAs and they call on the sophisticated wealth managers and family offices for sure. There are platforms so iCapital case, they have marketplaces, they enable the smaller firms, and there are smaller firms on these marketplaces that can raise capital from the wealth channel. Any wealth manager or wirehouse advisor RIA can go on to iCapital and find funds to invest in. They can invest in Blackstone. They can invest in Apollo, Blue LKR, et cetera. But we're at this crossroads where firms, I think, particularly the larger wealth platforms, are thinking about how do we create customization for our clients and differentiation. Any advisor can now get access? Are they? No, but could they? Yes. How do we create customization and differentiation, but also do that at scale? So I think that actually gives smaller managers hope because I think there's a world where some of the larger”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“System like Distribution side. So someone wanted to say, okay, I'm not going to build this myself, but I'd love to partner up the platforms or the equivalent of the third party placement agent in the institutional world.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Focus on what they're really good at and say, I am the best at this strategy or this space and this is my differentiation. And then the third piece of it is I think we're probably going to see more and more consolidation. So some of these firms might end up becoming part of larger platforms. So there's the big alternatives platforms who might need to add one or two capabilities. They have most of them might need to add one more. Hard to build sometimes. Not easy to integrate either. And then I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the traditional asset managers. So BlackRock acquired GIP and HPS. Now those are blue chip firms, 100 plus billion of AUM. They acquired them for over $12 billion in each case. So there are firms that will get acquired. What is the ecosystem?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How does the next generation stay and continue to operate in a time when I think fundraising is going to get harder? We're in a world where the largest firms will be able to raise capital, particularly from the wealth channel, because of sheer size and scale. So the smaller firms, I think, really have to ask themselves the question, do they want to be in this business? If you want to truly go big and compete with the largest firms, you have to have tens, if not hundreds of people focused on the wealth channel, you have to productize for the wealth channel. That probably means creating some form of an evergreen product structure. So tender offer funds, interval funds, things of that nature. And that doesn't just require resources on the distribution side. It requires resources on the operational side. And it also requires having enough deal flow. The reality is a lot of those firms are probably going to say no. And that's fine. It doesn't mean, A, they don't have a great business because they do. And B, it doesn't mean that they can't.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The firms really have to ask themselves who do they actually want to be, what investment culture they want to have. I think to some extent it can also get into the firm dynamics. So how old are the managing partners and how young are the next ways?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you're not 50 billion or north, what do you do if you see this as an opportunity, but you're never going to have the resources to go deploy a huge Salesforce and reach the distribution in that way?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or do we become part of a larger platform? Because at some point, you need to be a very large scale platform and serve investors across the different strategies with this next wave of managers. You'll also see more willingness to partner where maybe a firm that's great at private equity or software investing might say, hey, I'll partner up with someone who's great at infrastructure. We're never going to get into the same category ourselves because that might be a little bit too hard. But let's partner because the reality is the question for the wealth channel is what is the right product at the right time and how do you package it up in the right way?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's farms that are maybe over $100 billion at times, firms that are 100 billion, and even like in that 50 billion plus range, those are firms that are clearly on a growth path. There's a whole set of both scaled specialists, so I would call someone like Vista a scaled specialist. They focused on software. They're about $100 billion or so of AUM. They have products across private equity, growth, and credit. And that's a firm that specializes on one thing, software, but they're $100 billion. And that's a massive market. Those firms have built scaled firms and brands and niches and who they are and what they do. They've done it at size. They've built a wealth team. They've hired people to do that. Those are the types of firms that have the ability to get to the next stage. I think when you're pushing $100 plus billion dollars, firms like that will start to think about the next phase of their business. They will start to think about do we go public?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's not just salespeople. Marketing is just as important. And that's why you're seeing this dovetail with brand. So all the publicly traded firms know they need to build their brand. They need to be on social media. They need to be on LinkedIn. You've seen the running videos with John Gray. Every firm will do it in their own way because every firm has their own unique DNA of who they are and who they want to be and the culture they have. And I think that that's great. They need to educate, they need to help people understand what private markets actually are.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Resources and capital to serve that channel. It's critical. You have to. It requires boots on the ground. Think about just a wirehouse. There's still, I think, the 80-20 rule applies. There's still 80% of the capitals coming from 20% of the advisors. And that's even at the most sophisticated wirehouses. We're still so early. And then you talk about the independent channel. We're so early there too. I'd say roughly about on average 1% to 3% of the 145 trillion of assets that Bain talks about is actually allocated to private markets within the wealth channel that compares roughly to a sophisticated institution, many of whom you've had on your show 20, 30, sometimes even 40% allocated to private markets or was a year ago or so. So when you think about the opportunity to serve the wealth channel, one, it's huge. Two, it requires real resources. Blackstone has a team of hundreds of people. Blue Al hundreds of people, KKR, Apollo, hundreds of people to serve the wealth channel.”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great question, and I think one that is on the minds of all of the firms in this space. So you take the top firms, the publicly traded managers, they have all made a decision that by virtue of who they are, the fact that they're in public markets and what they have to do to continue to grow their business and make shareholders happy is they have to think about the wealth channel. And it makes sense. They're of a size and scale to be able to do that. You have to invest in the wealth channel and building out a team and process an infrastructure and product innovation and operational overhead to be able to handle working with the wealth channel. The top six firms account for the majority of market share of capital raised in private markets. On average, the top six firms 2024 they raised $12 billion, the top seven through 25 firms only raised $1.7 billion. What that shows is that the biggest firms are investing large amounts of”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's break some of this apart on the distribution side for asset managers. It seems like so far it's only been the largest scale players. You said you have to invest and build in the space. If you look at the different types of asset managers based on size, who's playing in the wealth space today and how do they go about it?”
2025-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source