YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Lacaillade

lines on the record: 104
first: 2025-08-12
most recent: 2025-08-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Through Thrive, whether it's Jack Altman or Kearson Green, they have been one of our top Column Western partners, but definitely our top intro. And that doesn't happen if I don't have the support of Steve, O Pete, et cetera. What was so kind about it was there's never any question. It really was just from day one super supportive. So just very fortunate to be a part of this firm and really excited for the future.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like, wow, they were really forward leaning, really supportive. And I'm just so lucky to be a part of such a supportive kind group of partners who really gave me a lot of leash early days. So if you fast forward and we've invested four or five hundred million dollars with Thrive across a lot of funds, had incredible returns. That investment that we made was a huge returner for us. It was things like that that were the foundation of what's continuing to drive us forward today. And actually, you've seen that bubble chart where I show the different co-investments that we do, the core firms and the managers and the co-investments and how they intersect in the venture and growth world thrive has been a very prolific co-investment partner for us, but the most important thing for Thrive has been the fact that I think we've backed seven, eight groups that have been introductions.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Through idiosyncratic thing, there was anger. It was two thirds of the commitment we were going to make. We had our vehicle. We had our small vehicle that was making our commitment. And then we had the family. They backed out really last minute. And it was very surprising. It was upsetting. And I remember talking with Jared Winson, who was COO at Thrive at the time. And he was like, this is pretty baked. And I remember I was in Palo Alto on the phone with my colleagues. And how can we solve this? How can we figure this out? And we actually put it was 10 million from our public equity sleeve and then 5 million from our very small, this is like early days SES small private equity thing to do 50 million in this 27 year old on proven but everyone had total conviction in decision that myself and Stevo were making and thrive and there was never like oh why are we backing this Josh Kushner guy it was just like how can we solve this issue and that support you look back on it and”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a monthly sit down and mentoring session. He was great. And Steve goes incredible, incredible guy, truly like a father figure. But there's one story I'll tell that stands out to me. And it's our mutual friend, Josh Kushner and Thrive that when I think of support and kindness, remember when you have certain phone calls and when they happen. And so it was the summer of 2012. I'd been basically you're on the job. I gotten to know Josh Kushner that winter. He decided he'd just invested fund too. And rather than exercise his accordion on fund two to go from like 40 to 100, he decided to just raise fund three at 150. And he was bringing in SCS and I believe it was like Rothschild, where the two LPs coming on top of Princeton Duke and Wilkim Trust and a few others. And it was a very targeted raise. We were in for an amount. And then one of our families.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Start by saying my wife being married to me and my kids are so kind and lovely. That goes without saying, but when you think about who are the truly kindest, like my son and my daughter. But investment-wise, to answer your question, I would say it's been a lot of people that have mentored me and been very kind over the years. But when I started at SES, I was 30 years old. I hadn't really done this. We were building out the program from scratch. And Steve Rostaglio, who was our CIO, Pete Matoon, who was our CEO, founder. Tony Abiatti, Doug Ederley, who are co-founders of Pete, leading the client service. She's extremely supportive of going to do the shore capitals, the Thrives, the Founders Funds, the Edge yourself. It was from the beginning, I got as much pushback doing Bane as I did shore. So there was a really supportive, very kind and Pete specifically, who's an amazing guy. He was like a therapist.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Either something that we do not have that we strategically want to add, or it's something that we absolutely love and we want more of.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Larger firms, whether it's Summit, Spectrum. Would love to invest in these businesses once they've scaled up more. Directionally, they've had a number of businesses where they sell half their stake, get a multiple of money, and then are rolling half their stake with a great sponsor into the next transaction. So if you just do the math, you might make two and a half times your money back in two years and then roll if that two and a half that you roll does a 3x, then you're talking, you know, returns that can be kind of in the range of six to ten times your money. On the downside, you're in a business that's basically break even. These are bootstrap businesses that can be profitable. They want to be your minority preferred security. So you have really good downside protection. The ability to get interim liquidity and get really differentiated returns on the upside. It's a really good profile. A number of people try to do this. I think that are not that good. So we're always on the lookout. If you think of new things we do, it's like often it's.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's the story. Yeah, he tells when one of his deals made like 3x. I'm like, no one congratulated him. But I guess that's like typical. That's not unusual. He found a telescope. He's done really well. And these funds, I mean, Mickey's telescope one was $70,000, $80 million. Then we came into the 150 fund. You're staying way below the radar. Then a firm that we've had really great returns. This is under the radar firm, but I think I would argue maybe some of our best risk adjusted returns we get. It's called Growth Street Partners. It's Steve Wolff and Nate Grossman, who were at mainsail partners together. They founded it together. It was a $70 million first time fund. We anchored it. They're finding that founder in Kansas City. They're looking for minority capital, but a little bit of money on the balance sheet, expertise to help them go from, say, $5 million in ARR to 15 or 20. They're able to buy in at a reasonable price, accelerate professionalize business, and then those.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Taken private, but outstanding returns. But then Jordan Batman, West and Gaddy have this firm called Radian. They were both at Bay Capital Ventures. We're very bullish on them. Mickey, who was at Summit with Jeremiah Daly and then was recruited to go to Sequoia. When he was at Sequoia, he did some good deals, but he was like, Sequoia is not trying to get three X's. They're trying to get really...”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An area that we've talked about, but I think is super attractive is the bootstrapped growth equity area. We've backed a number of firms where people have been trained at the summits, TAAs, Excel, Sequoias, and then decided to, as those firms, now the people there generally are trying to write $50 to $100 million plus checks, some really talented professionals have launched their own smaller firms that are addressing that kind of five to $25 million equity area. This is not venture capital. This is bootstrapped software companies generally. But Jeremiah Daly at Elephant Partners and his partner Andy Hunt, Jeremiah was previously at Summit Partners, Excel and then Highland. Andy Hunt was the co-founder of Warby Parker and then was at Highland. And they founded Elephant. That's been incredibly successful investment for us that we came into Fund One. They had a company know before, which is a very big, was a public company now.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly right. It's helpful both ways organizationally, company wise, et cetera. I think that's a great example, but there's only one short capital. Be very cautious about most of it.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make real money. And I think for them, the ability to invest in the midmarket in their best businesses and then maybe some nonshore companies where they have real expertise, we think it will be a really attractive fund. So that's one that's really evolved. And I think it's very high quality in every single area.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are places for someone who might be an associate or VP on the healthcare fund to then go into a different vertical and become principal or partner. And the last thing, very excited about the Sure Advantage Fund, which is essentially going to be picking some of their best companies from their healthcare fund led by Mike Cooper and John Hennegan, who were to the original kind of investment partners alongside Justin and Ryan Kelly. Justin Ishbia is just beyond driven. He's that maniac on a mission that we talk about. His engagement and his drive is next level, and he's going to be, he just had actually his fourth child. He has promised a ZelPac that he is fully engaged for at least the next 18, 19 years till the baby goes to college. I was waiting for the last one. He's got this like four years ago. He's like, when we have our fourth kid, add on to that. But people like Mike Cooper and John Hennigan, you know, I wondered they've been very successful. Like, are they going to have that same drive when they?”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To that as they've evolved, there's a few businesses that they have loved and wanted to stay in longer. The first was Southern Veterinary Partners. That is one where they established a continuation vehicle or an SPV, gave their LPs the opportunity to roll into it. And then recently actually merged that with another veterinary platform the second time. They've grown this into a really, really big business. But they haven't done that with the majority of their assets. When they've gone really deep in something like that, they've done that in Southern Veterinarian now mission, bringing it together as well as Brightview. But the rest of them, they've sold to other private equity sponsors or things like that. We do see the CV space get, I would say, arguably abused by some managers where like, wow, you're selling everything to yourself. What's going on here? Sure, I think as a lot of third-party validation around their stuff. But then if you think of the evolution of team, they've grown a lot of great investment professionals and these different strategies.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The say one to five EBITDA startup platform. But then they've continued to build out their organization with all sorts of areas that can help businesses professionalize and grow. And you can apply that across microcap investing in other sectors. So they built out teams in the food and beverage space, in industrials, in business services, and also in real estate. And the real estate team has a tie-in to their veterinary practices. There's strategic synergies of the Shore organization where all the different strategy funds are benefiting from the organization of Shore, which is, I think it's 180, maybe 200 people, is bringing Gundu Knife fight. The returns for sure are exceptional. But what they've also done is delivered really high quality businesses to their sellers, which is not something you can say for every single healthcare rollup. So I think there's a durability.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're doing it because you can and you want more assets God bless capitalism, but it's really for the sake of, I guess, more money. The strategic rationale, if there is one doesn't hold as much water as it could. Sure capital is the exception to that, I would say, because Justin Ishbia and Team, and we've been investors with Shore since the first investor in Fund one. And it's been incredible to watch the evolution, but they started off doing microcap healthcare buyouts and have been incredibly successful at doing that. But then over the years, they have been very disciplined in keeping the microcap healthcare side small. So they went from, I might be a little off the numbers, but say 100, 110 million in FON to 220 and fund two. And for that 220, I think they might have had 2 billion in demand. So a lot of demand, then they've raised maybe in the three or four hundred million dollar range for their microcap healthcare funds on a go forward basis, which is enabling them to stay in.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And my advice to them, they don't ask me, and I proactively says you should probably at least if you're committing, let's just phrase $300 million a year or whatever it might be, you should put a third of that into a fund of funds and maybe split that across a small bio fund of funds and a venture fund of funds and then build on top of that, but not try to do it all internally working with a consultant. So I think a number of the funded funds are doing thoughtful work. I think people need to be intellectually honest about what they're doing, why they have a reason to source the best, get access to the best, do the best diligence. I'd also say the single family office world, I mean, these people are very wealthy. They have their own prerogative, but I think a lot of the stuff they're doing has adverse selection and not the right portfolio construction, those families will be generally fine, but maybe a hot take is I think that fund of funds are probably underrated.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a number of people that are really credible. And so I'm pretty outspoken about this. There's a lot of folks that are trying to do things internally. I've been on a whole host of reference calls recently with various institutions. And in many cases, they're trying to go directly, but they don't really know what they're doing.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great question. Well, I definitely give it to Kevin Kelly at Square Heritage. Maybe this is a catalyst. Definitely you're not going to meet their minimum, but maybe as a favor. It's probably less than five. But I think that there's”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You either through a third party placement agent fundraiser or just your network. People say, oh, yeah, you should talk to Liberty Mutual. They're looking to do this or you should talk to Notre Dame or whoever it might be. And then when you get the introduction from those people, that's super powerful. That's my advice to GPs. Because what I really hate too is when people are on the road, we talk about some of the GPs I'm upset with right now, they raised 550 million from their existing, but they're trying to push it to their 700 hard cap and do that for six to nine months and do a ton of meetings. What is the point of this? They're distracting themselves from investing.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give this advice to a number of buyout GPs. I mean, I think in the venture world, you basically, it's a network thing and you want to have various people that are very highly respected who make introductions on your behalf to the CoreLPs in that ecosystem agent. But if you're a bio firm, you might want to consider hiring a fundraiser, but I prefer boutiques generally that are very targeted. So my view is to really focus on a smaller number of higher quality meetings, not doing spray shot across 100 different LPs globally, but to really be deliberate about picking the 10 to 25 you want to talk to to get to with a 30 to 60% hit rate. That is the way to do it. You have to understand, okay, what is this LP's capital situation? What are they looking for right now?”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like 21 years old, 22 years old, working 100 hours a week. Not only doing that, but also having to be a father. So you not only had to raise himself, you had to help raise his brother and his teenage years. That is a very unique, he's a very unique person. So is his partner Jake? And I think it's finding those outliers. So is Justin Ishba, so is Darren Farber, I think it's been the key for me is identifying those outliers, embracing them, trying to make them the best people they can be.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Frank, it wasn't like a princiling or anything in China, I think, but middle class or reasonably well off, but clearly a little bit of a renegade. His mom and dad dropped him off in Orange County in eighth grade. Irvine, California, Irvine is the valley, like bought a house and left Frank in California and flew back to China. This is in the mid 2000s. There wasn't Zoom. This is not legal. He basically raised himself from eighth grade, I think, through high school went on to a great educational career, met Jake Sloane doing investment banking at Blackstone. They both have had great career together. But it's so funny when he was at Blackstone, his parents clearly renegades. I'm not sure if this was violating the One Child Policy. I think it was. He had a younger brother. And they're like, oh, we had so much success with Frank. They sent his brother to New York. And he was living, his brother was going to high school in New York. So Frank.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is very, very crucial to their success. But he's probably more risk oriented. He's like the quiet guy at the poker table who's going to be more risk on than Jake, who I joke with the guys at Radcliffe. He's like a neurotic tornado of energy. And Frank is really an exceptional partner to Jake. It's that yin-yang complement of them. And they're going after, started with Veterinary, then it was HVAC commercial side and residential. Now they've done accounting, which we helped anchor them in. And our good friend, Josh and Kareema Thrive of the Best More Folks have partnered in their accounting platform, gone into youth sports. Yeah, I just so confident in the trajectory of what Jake and Frank will do together. Do you know the story of Frank?”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, you need to talk about Jake and Frank because I just think they're truly exceptional. What's actually a little bit different with a ZBS versus a shore is just Nishbia, who is also an N of One, has built a true machine. Whereas I think ZBS is really the partnership of Jake and Frank. And there's a real key man risk with both of them and how much it scales. But I mean, that is really a yin-yang situation where Jake is the most aggressive high energy guy, but he's also super neurotic. He's talking a mile a minute and he's going to have a very high volume acquisitions. He's extremely personal, et cetera. But he's also definitely got that kind of risk orientation. And then he's like the Jake and Frank, they're both co-CEOs. He's going to be on the acquisition on the front end of things. Frank is going to be more the finance and the operations side. Jake will take 95% of the air in a meeting. But Frank.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To come in, it's filling out the softer side of those different partnerships, the people involved, their consistency, the likelihood they're going to be there for a while. Because even though there's a lot of different firms and entities out there, it is still a pretty small community of both managers in LPs out there. And it's really important for Particularly when they're starting off or at an inflection point, a firm. If you sit at the table with the right folks, you set yourself up not only for this fund, but for the next two, three, four funds, as well as co-investments. And if you want to launch a different strategies or whatever might be, similarly, if you don't do that, then you might have explained you to do and it's just distracting.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The personality of those people and also an understanding of are these people going to be there. What is the economic situation or the personal ties if it's an endowmenter foundation that this team has to their alumni, the Notre Dame guys in South Bender a great example? They're very passionate about Notre Dame and they've had a lot of consistency on their team because when you have either changes in capital or team that's where you get the instability that can be distracting for GPs And then on the fund of funds, my hot take has been that the fund of funds actually get a bad rap. However, they often have agendas whether it's looking good with a seated portfolio and special co-investment rights or whatever they can be more transactional. So just understanding those things. People that say, okay, well, we don't come into first closes. We're going to wait till the final close. Like, well, I thought we're like in a long time partnership. It'd be helpful for you.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really good people at those places. I think there's a number of funded funds who are doing very good work. I mean, if you think of the evolution of certain kind of fun of funds, they were providing access to people who then in the US who've built out their own teams. And so then they moved abroad to do that same thing. Really, everyone needs to continue to evolve their strategy and just be continuous improvement. So I give this advice to people. The best managers can have their K and eat it too. You solve for, you want to have a group that has stable and growing capital base with a team that are smart, that you enjoy interacting with, that can be strategic and add value where they need to, but also they're not overburdened some box checkers because we certainly see that a lot because there's a lot of LPs that can really detract value or be a pain in the butt because the requirements that they have in terms of check-ins and all these different things, they're not actually asking the right questions. They're just doing their checklist stuff. So you want to have.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Single family office world, entrepreneurs who make that type of money can be a little crazy. I mean, they can die. Single family offices are not necessarily the most stable base of capital either. No one's perfect. The endowments and foundations have been very steady, but sometimes when teams change, you can have a real rethinking of the program. And then this liquidity shock, I did not fully see this coming. I think it's a surprise and it's a dynamic situation that we work through, but definitely is going to put pressure on people. It's going to be interesting to see how all the sovereign dollars approach these markets because they have huge amounts of capital to play. I think they should barbell it and they probably need partners to help them barbell it, but there's, I think, a bias from what I understand for a lot of them to try to do it themselves and do it with teams that are often based in the Middle East or elsewhere. I think that's going to be harder to get on the ground like some of the smaller stuff we do. But I think they're getting more and more sophisticated.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it's happening in real time. It's a big deal. I mean, you have the pullback in funding that will have a lot of impacts on these budgets, but the tax thing seems like a bigger hole. These budgets are tight to begin with. I was speaking to a really great manager. They are going to raise 60 million from new LPs. They probably have a billion of interest. One of the prominent endowments had worked for like two years to get that spot and then just told them, said, We love you. I have to be on pause. We might want to do it. I would invest personally. We're so sorry. That is just a real story that happened 10 days ago or whatever. And I think that's probably happening a lot. So I think it just underlies a point that I've made for many years that's a little self-serving, which is you want to have diversity of LPs. I think that having a mix of single and multifamily office LPs can be great. But I mean, there's limitations.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That can be more money on the carry, and then you have definitely a bigger management fee that's contractual. So it's dynamic, but I think if you kiss enough frogs and you meet enough people, we really feel like we have way more great opportunities than we do capital at the moment. And I think that's going to persist for a long time.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can get a 30% carry. That might be what we would feel would be appropriate. And instead, you have a group come in who caps them at $400 million. We see this sometimes where you have LPs that have lots of capital and are like trying to push it on GPs. That's tricky because for a GP,”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Similar to maybe some of the hype in what we see in the AI world, there appears to be arguably too much hype in the independent sponsor lower middle market space, where we're seeing teams that we view as VB pluses, maybe A minuses that would have struggled to raise capital seven years ago, even in like a hotter market now raised because of a few different actors who have a lot of money and have identified this as a great area to invest. And so I think they're loosening their standards. I don't know, loosening their standards, but they're doing things that we wouldn't do. And then you worry similar to like the venture valuations. We think that this firm should raise $150 million. Maybe we do a budget-based management fee. They can offset. We can be creative to make sure they can cover their budget. And we'll say, okay, you can get over a three X return 25% carry, over a 5x net return.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bringing private equity to the masses is something that I think is great. I more like it because it feels to me like it's an avenue where we can exit things to. It's a lower cost of capital avenue for the private markets. We've seen this, the evolution of continuation vehicles and the secondary market, all that. I think these are really positive because they're creating liquidity options in an illiquid asset class. People talk about like, oh, put things on the blockchain or I don't know we'll see where things go over time. But the core thing that is, I think, really interesting right now that we see is the stuff going on in the lower middle market buyout end of the market and where it intersects with some of these circumstances with AI. Many it doesn't, but that professionalization of the small businesses, like I think that continues and continues. What worries me is that that secret has been out for many years, but like there appears to be”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can sell into the big series B that's oversubscribed, and it's a dynamic thing. My high level feeling is we still really believe in venture. It's so important to be with the best people and it's changing real time.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bad for company. That can be bad for the company, probably bad for the seed stage firms that don't have enough money to play. So not everyone's aligned. They're playing different games. This is happening in real time. I think it makes sense in a lot of circumstances. It'll probably be problematic in others. So how people navigate it's going to be interesting. I think there's the opportunity for Seed Fund probably though. You can probably sell into some of these rounds. If you're a big fund that's a lead is bad signaling, but if you're like a small person that we back and say, oh, you know, they say, okay, my LPs are pushing us for liquidity”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The entrepreneurs and be available to negotiate a deal on the spot if it needs to. That's a much different client experience than when you talk to the principal who then kicks you to the junior partner who then elevates it to senior partner. If I'm an entrepreneur as well, I worry, okay, wait, and maybe there's a bait and switch. I mean, there's just, it's dynamic. And maybe the best entrepreneurs, they don't feel like they need the help from the venture capitalists anyway. And that is what it is. But what I would say few things that worry me is that the game that the big players that we're talking about andreess and lightspeed, GC are playing, doing 10 on 50 to put a chip down might make sense for them. So they blow away. Maybe the company wanted to raise or needed to raise three or four million. They could have done that. Whatever might be. And instead they're doing 10 on 50.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a CEO deal, and that's an awesome deal. But I don't know how involved he is in all the different things that are going on. And they got a lot of money to deploy. Now, the capital needs are huge, but I will just say, I mean, you think of the army of people of GPs at some of these firms. I mean, a lot of them were invested in firms. There's so many new faces there. I don't know them, but I think the entrepreneurs feel that way too, or I think some of them do. And actually, the approach that Green Oaks takes, for example, where Neil Meta has actually gone the opposite way, the typical way that people go is hire more people, delegate more down, cover more of the waterfront. That's great. That's a strategy. Green Oaks has shifted to being kneel at the tip of the spear for almost all first meetings. Said short of being having himself or one of his wife or kids in surgery, he'll be there for the first meeting. Be a prepared mind, truly try to add value.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Deals but get deals. I'd be remiss. There's also like Locky Groom, Josh Buckley. There's a whole host of very credible players. There was a blooming of that. And now I feel like that slowed down a little bit. But there's definitely a next gen of people that are very competitive. David Tisha Box group that have really kind of emerged as real players. Okay. Now moving forward, that has been true for the past six, seven years. What has started to happen more recently has been the rise of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Lightspeed, General Catalyst have just grown massively in size and are, at least from a size perspective and a team perspective are really looking more like asset managers than traditional venture firms. And I think we're not invested with GC. I have a lot of respect for Haymont. I mean, I think there's certain deals. Like the Long Lake deal, Haymont's the CEO of that firm. That was the type.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Through Thrive has been the most prolific introduction for us, but Andrew Sen Horowitz, Founders Fund, the connectivity around our network or the case of Jack Altman, we get introduced to Jack Altman through Thrive. Then Jack connects us to Zach Ray and the team at Mischif. Sometimes there's a thing that goes that way.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Each step of the way, just being like, does this make sense from a bottoms up perspective, given the flow, given what you're trying to do, that's great. What we noticed, though, was our dollars were going more and more towards growth as those firms, I think they made a lot of sense what they were doing what they're doing. But then what that led to was us thinking we want a more early stage, but then there was this emergence of these solo capitalists and these early stage investors. And so we basically carved out about a third of our venture budget to invest in these emerging solar capitalists. You had some very credible people deciding not to join firms, but be their own kind of firm and get access to the best companies. Really, a lot, Gil, Hornzev, Raytonsing, or some that are well known, but also people like Jack Altman, Nico Winenborn, Rampton at Abstract. There's been a whole host of next gen VCs. A lot of them operators, not all of them, that have emerged. And we've backed a lot of them and anchored a lot of them, often introduced.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back up for a second when I started at SES in 2011, really great timing. Financial crisis had really kind of shaken things out a bit, had a firm that had a sticky growing capital base and was able to start relationships with a number of emerging up-and-coming firms like Thrive, but Founders Fund and Drewson Horowitz and a few others. At that point in time, you had Sequoia, Sequoia Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, Excel, the benchmark would be kind of the top five and then the emergence of the Union Square Ventures and a handful of other more boutique-yrsaka boutique firms. And we made the decision to back some of the emerging leaders. So we're early checks into Founders Fund, early checks into Thrive, early checking at Green Oaks a couple of years later, and Andreessen Horowitz, those are really helpful having the good partners Adventure has been a really good run. And I think as Josh has scaled up Thrive, Neil has scaled up Green Oaks.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If in our business we're really focused on what's best for the client, you have that as like your North Star with managers, it's maybe like how can we all win together, having that ability to put kind of agendas at the door and just have a supportive intellectually honest conversation, that's helpful.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In real time, there's another manager we think extremely highly of. It was considering doing a holding company structure. And the question that we're going to have to work on with this manager, because we definitely want to back them, I love the fact that he's thinking this way because he doesn't want to be like regular way private equity. But like, is this helping him and his partner get to the optimal structure for their strategy? their strategy historically has been to aggregate, like roll up a bunch of businesses, loosely integrate them to a certain extent, but then punch out and move on or sell a larger stake to larger private equity firm or someone who will take things to the next level while they then they find the next area to consolidate. So that strategy might not be as conducive to a holding company structure. And what we try to do, this gets back to what I was saying earlier, is really just be like open-minded, supportive partners.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Customer, a lot of these businesses are selling into the Department of Defense, government. There's definitely overlap in these companies. And if you look at whether it's a transdime or L3 Harris, there is a market for a publicly traded conglomerate of businesses that have certain characteristics. So I think that is what Darren. I think maybe I'm sure there will be other people that do holding companies where it doesn't make a lot of sense. But I think we're trying to be intellectually honest around the things that do make the most sense.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think we'll have more flexibility. I think for Long Lake and for Thrive, I think what's really important is that these are really durable lasting businesses that you want to own for a long time because that's the beauty of the compounding. And so Long Lake is very focused on having real moats because there's going to be quick wins that can happen that don't have the long-term moats. And so being very discerning around those things is important. And another holding company, your guest you're on a roll, Patrick, with some of my favorite people, but Darren Farber, we helped anchor his holding company Alley and River. And I mean, that's another one where it makes a lot of sense in terms of like there's real rationale behind why do it in that structure. I mean, first of all, there's a lot of cash flow that comes out these businesses that can be recycled to drive more acquisitions. So there's an efficiency from the holding company structure that Darren gets. But there's also just synergies across sales.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, we're flexible in our mindset. We have ourselves, a lot of our capital invests out of a 12 year vehicle that has three-year extensions. We need to have some sort of understanding around exit rights when you get out towards the end life of the fund and have those things built in. And in reality, I think probably if Long Lake is successful at doing what they want to do, they will take it public. They're like a private equity firm in some ways, but there's a very substantive technology story here. I'm sure there will continue to be lots of BS stuff out there, but they will have real substance. And so maybe instead of trading teens multiple, it will trade north of that because of the AI storing the different areas and can go into. And we might have the opportunity to get liquidity.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it's like having A teams go extremely deep and build something, you're specifically trying to solve problem versus sell a product.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Claiming they're doing this, but I remember seeing there were a bunch of companies back when I was first starting SES like in 2000, 11, 12, 13, 14. They would have websites and they would say that they did like real estate online. And all it was was like a shiny website. There was no substance. It was just all maybe trying to make your user experience look cool.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. That is also going to be very compelling on the acquisition side. So you have a regular way private equity firm that's going in and trying to do HOA roll-up. And then you have Longlake, who's going to be like, this is what we can do. And you can roll and however it might be. Dad's going to be very powerful and not to give away trade secret, but on the accounting side, whether I've and ZBS are doing with Crete, it's some of that same stuff where they're going in, they're looking at the workflows and they're taking accountings time, the way they're coding the different transactional. They're reducing these things by over 90%. And it's not sexy. It's really about going five layers deep. And that's creating real modes. I think there's going to be a lot of noise out there.”
2025-08-12 · Invest Like the Best · Peter Lacaillade - Backing The Best Managers In Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.437] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source