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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“Has to put together this monthly report, has to do this every month, and probably has a few different associations he or she has to do this for. What they do is they open up a clean Excel doc and then get sources from like five different areas and populate it and then put it together and it takes 10 hours. By building various AI powered tools to pull in data in certain ways and put it all together, it was taking 10 hours is now less than an hour, even with checking and a much better, more thorough customized standardized way. So you just save 90% plus and made a better experience for everyone involved.”
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
“General catalysts initially seeded Long Lake. Kudos to Haymont on really believing in them and pushing this. And then they've gotten capital from Thrive and others at different stages. And we're looking at an investment right now. But you look at what they're doing. They have a team of, call it eight private equity folks who come from great places, like top vice president or director level at really great firms who have great experience working under Alex on the private equity side. you have engineers who've had senior positions at scale ai, palantier, et cetera, that are top of their class, the best schools. And they're building tools that it's not about the shiny UI or about something you want to sell. They're going into the workflows. Their first major area they're focused on has been homeowners associations, which is a very large and fragmented area that trades at a pretty high multiple. And they demoed a tool for us. They sit down with the manager.”
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 see deals getting done where a couple of engineers from a top company might get $8 million on a $40 million valuation to go do a roll-up. They don't have a broad set of skills, no private equity experience. They also don't have enough capital. They can do like one deal. In order to do this right, I think you need to have a significant amount of capital and a really large, maybe not too large, but a substantial team that has skill sets from both the finance industry and the AI engineering side. And I think nothing embodies this more than what LongLake's doing. Long Lake for reference is holding company that was founded a couple of years ago by a guy named Alex Taubin, who had been in Oak Tree. And I think I know Zach Frankl, who was co-founder of RAMP and co-founder of Cognition. One of the smartest human means either of us would probably come across. I think you would agree with that.”
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 it was so impressive. I think that's a firm that has had continuous evolution. And they started off with friends and family, it was like seven or eight million. But then 40 million, we came in a year later when he raised 150. They were known for doing seed in series A. There's a lot of consumer in there. But from the beginning, Thrive was very clear saying we're stage agnostic, industry agnostic. They didn't want to be put in a box. And I think that's good. I think some people probably say too much in their fundrais in the early days. They maybe box themselves into much. Josh did the opposite. He was very open on that. But they've continued to evolve and they've, I think, emerged as one of the most important growth investors in the world. What they're doing right now with their holding company doing buyouts utilizing AI to really enhance some of these fragmented industries. And there's a lot of folks out there. There's hype around, oh, okay, use AI to do like roll-up.”
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, that's a wonderful compliment. Thank you. Wow, that's just being compared to Thrive. But I do think there are parallels to one thing I was saying to Nabil at Thrive. I think it was yesterday, because they came in last week to demo some of their tools they're using, their AI tools internally, as well as what they're doing with their”
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
“Managers create at seven times. And so I'm rooting for it. And by the way, for those pension money, if we go all the way up to the Apollos, the Karers, the Blackstones of the World, their major clients or the US pensions that have to deliver alpha to these various plans. And that could be doing double digits. And so there's an opportunity across the spectrum. One thing that frustrated me a lot, I haven't had the vindication as much as I would have hoped, but was in 2018 to like 2021 was just how silly the numbers were across everything and how everyone looked good. And I have confidence that with the right set of partners in time, things will play out. Being with the people that are actually truly adding value will deliver differentiated returns.”
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
“Generate alpha by professionalizing businesses, or it could be carve outs too. Some of our greatest deals have been very operationally focused, like teams that carve out division. They take on a ton of degree difficulty through complexity. But what's really hard to do is to generate alpha doing consensus trades. By the way, they can make money. They're various friends of yours probably in Greenwich here who are going to be very successful financially by buying businesses that lower middle market firms professionalize and then they generate somewhere between a two to two and a half gross and maybe high teens that gets down to net and that's okay that's okay for a certain pool of capital and that's fine i don't want that to go away because i want to have those people be willing to pay 12 or 15 times EBITDA for a business that our man”
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
“These things take a long time to play out in private markets and the way things are marked. I think that's one theme you'll get if you get to know me is I'm not really concerned about marks. At the end of the day, I'm trying to have great partnerships that will deliver distributions in due time. And if something goes wrong, I'm like, okay, well, maybe that's a learning experience and that creates a situation that can be advantageous to us because the fund smaller, there's more co-investment, whatever. It's not necessarily a bad thing. In the venture world, the reckoning was definitely like put off majorly. And I don't know how it's going to play out because so much capital is coming to AI. These bigger funds had issues of the later stage stuff. And so then they're doing the seed things. And the seed hasn't really corrected it, even though public multiples are way down. That would be another reason why I really love lower middle market buyouts, because I think the ability to”
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 think of it that way, but I would say certainly like value and it's relative value. I mean, you could pay 15 times for a software business that's growing a lot could be a great relative value. And I think that you want to be in the market leaders. That is a key thing. I've been disappointed, I don't know, not disappointing because I'm a glass half full type of person, but there hasn't been more of a correction in Ventureland. I think there's a lot of businesses out there that were overvalued and are not the one or two leader in their category. They might be number five or 10. And they probably, there's not a lot of value there, but they're being somewhat zombies 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
“If Notre Dame is doing something, they might refer it to us. There's a really good just feedback loop that happens by being a good partner. But I think it's finding people I say this frequently, but track record is important, but we're investing in the next fund. We're trying to go where the puck is going. And I think really trying to be intellectually honest and strategic with partners about that not be overwhelmed by, okay, well, who did this and who did that? And there's a lot of box checking that goes on in the LP world. And I think it's. Actually, relative to the GP world, it's less competitive. And I could get into those dynamics, but I will say what we're doing is not off the run anymore, though. There are a number of folks that are moving into the space”
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 hard. You're overskept around. And by the way, I'd be very critical of myself. And I'm definitely stretched too thin, et cetera. But I'm getting so much positive energy meeting new and emerging groups or spending time talking about direct co-investment deals with established people, et cetera, that I just, I love my job. And I think the passion comes through. I think there's a taste and a gut instinct. I think that is intuitive. I had it when I started this in 2011, but you also grow and learn and refine what you're looking for. And I'm just very authentic. I'm very open and transparent and real. And what that leads to is very deep trusted partnerships, which then refer other people to do that. And then when you're known as being a leading backer of different firms, then you're sought at.”
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
“But this guy is really exceptional on the level of Matt and Alex, Jake and Frank from ZBS and Alex and Ross from Heritage Tolingy. When I saw that statement, that introduction, it was like, okay, we get on immediately.”
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
“Just run through walls just going to work harder than anyone he was an athlete. He has not a chip on his shoulder. I think he has a boulder on his shoulder. He intermed for Matt and Alex at Garnet Station partners, mentored by those sorts of folks. I think we'll talk about Jake Sloan later, but I mean, Jake Sloan does not throw around compliments that much. If you know him and he thinks that Jordan has the potential to be even better, potentially. Now, how do we source these things? There is an ecosystem of people that are mentoring and inspiring others who we know and are close with some of them. So the Jordan Duban, for example, was referred through Roycio Guff, first of all, because he was a student of his.”
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 we're coming into, he has a new platform he's starting that is in an adjacent area. So it's very related. And then a third idea that is also kind of in the same area of you could see how these things all come together.”
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
“Usually they have some experience at a real firm where they worked for a couple years and they learned how to financially model and learned like how transactions work and whatnot. There's something in them. They have that bug where they want to be an entrepreneur. They don't want to go work for some big firm. This is not like a fallback like they couldn't get the job at their private equity firm. So they decided, okay, this is the cool thing to do. They're very passionate about the strategies that they're pursuing and are really going to run through walls to make it happen. I think the velocity of acquisitions, the getting, the constant getting on planes, going to, God knows where to find the next garage door roll. There's this guy who we're backing right now, Jordan Dubin, who is actually literally, he hasn't graduated yet from HBS. But over the two years, he has been there, he has with two of his former partners at El Caterton, they have done a garage door guild.”
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
“Was seeing things in youth sports, accounting is something that's gotten some heat. We have a landscaping company. We're looking to have it. I mean, this goes on and on and on.”
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 that still happens, but now the rise of these independent sponsors, search fund people, I mean, the lines kind of blur together in what you call these things. And I think part of what can be different there is that these things are usually focused on very fragmented aggressive roll-ups. HVAC is one that everyone talks about.”
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, it's really hard work. And why did it grow? You made different acquisitions, you expanded into different markets or built out your sales force, et cetera. I mean, you did a bunch of things that have made a more stable business. You don't have as much customer concentration. Therefore, banks will lend more money to it. And this is a tale as old as time, something that is very repeatable and something to go after. When I started this in 2011, most of these emerging firms were people who were spinning out of other shops. There were a number of them, but yeah, it would usually be mid-market firm gets big, three junior partners decide to go off to do this.”
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
“Then that is valued by the market somewhere between 12 to 16, 18 times. The multiple you can sell that business at is twice as big as what you paid or significantly ahead. Now, why is that? You professionalize the business. You put in financial reporting systems.”
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
“Good friends with. I think they have been inspirational for next generation of leaders. That is an area that we're spending a ton of time. So we've been backing lower middle market firms for a long time since I started in 2011. The majority of our biotevs were in these smaller cap businesses or firms that were going after smaller cap businesses. And when I say that, maybe just to back up for one second, what's the thesis around why lower middle market versus mid-market versus large cap? Lower middle market, this varies depending on the business model and industry dynamics and growth, et cetera. But say a typical small business will trade for, say, five to six times EBITDA on the low end, maybe if it's a really great business with high growth, maybe it's, say, five to eight times EBITDA. Whereas when you scale that and you take that from somewhere in the two to seven of EBITDA grows to 20 plus.”
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, I think they are targeting lower cost of capital. They're really focused on, okay, what kind of premium are we going to get over public equities? Is this suitable? There's a real emphasis on credit from these shops because it's very scalable in a lot of their end clients are not taxable. They're less sensitive to that sort of thing. But I would say that the cool thing at HBS maybe 10 years ago was to go back to your firm that you'd worked at or go back to Blackstone or Carlisle, KKR. Now I think a real trend that has been going on for many years but has really accelerating is actually to not go back to these big shops, but to actually become an independent sponsor to do a search fund, to go do a roll-up in a certain industry and maybe that leads you to building out your own private equity firm. Royce Jugkoff teaches a class at HPS, and there's been some real success stories. You had the Garnett Station guys on who were both.”
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 go join Blackstone or whatever after your stinted banking, you're really just cranking through models and you're not really on the front lines with entrepreneurs. It's more about financial engineering than it is business building. I'm making generalizations, but I think the size of what they do.”
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
“Because we think that by going in the smaller end of the markets, we're taking on maybe more risk, but you're able to buy into things at lower prices. You can do more operationally and improve these businesses, and then they can be sold up the food chain to these larger players into these places that have lower cost of capital. And that has continued to evolve. I think it's not happening overnight. But I think one thing that is interesting about those big places is that they have become maybe more like investment banks than private equity firms.”
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 by us, the large end, I think you have, I mean, this is patent me for a long time, but the bigger buyout's definitely moving towards asset managers. And one thing that a lot of those firms like Blackstone, KKR, Carlisle, Apollo are focused on is having vehicles that cater to the mass market, interval funds or things like that, and really also having more customized solutions for their big sovereigns or whatever it is. They're not private equity investment firms. They're asset managers, and they're some of the most important asset managers in the world. And that's not where we spend a lot of time and play”
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
“But the focus platform that we're a part of, if that wasn't the case and I was going to start something, one of the key things is I would want to start with an asset base of around $5 billion going to 20 because I think that scale piece, that first couple billion is really hard because it's the chicken and the egg issue.”
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, I stumbled into the job I'm in to begin with. I was going to go and be a lower middle market via growth equity investor. And it was just through networking that this guy was like, I can only have a job for you, but the guys who manage my money, I wasn't thinking about private wealth. I wasn't thinking about, I didn't know what a multifamily office was. GPs were really open to taking my call in 2011 at other points in the cycle, it becomes harder to get access. Right now is a good time to be launching a program. I think it's been a tougher capital raising environment because distributions have slowed down. And then you layer in the fact that the endowments and foundations are in a tough spot right now. And there's a lot of uncertainty around funding and taxes. I think that there is room for a number of new players to go into the wealth management area. But I think the scale is really tough. If I were to not be at SES and I'm in it to win it here and really love the vision of not only SES.”
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 sophisticated on the family office side. There are a handful, it's probably less than 10 of firms out there in the country who have achieved really significant scale like we have and deal with these types of families because it's hard to get to because scale is really important. If you're a billion or two billion dollar firm, you don't have the scale of assets to be as relevant on the investment side. So I was really fortunate to join SES when we had $7 billion and now we're 50 billion. But I feel like to have a really attractive program in the alternative space, it's difficult to do that sub $5 billion portfolio.”
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
“Bill Pay or other family office services, but they might not have a very robust investment platform. The vision for SCS, when our founder, Pete McToon started the company in 2002, was like, he had had a liquidity event himself. He was looking for a solution. And he was like, wow, there's a huge gap in the market to bring these two things together, having a world-class investment platform that looks like the best single family offices, the best endowments and foundations. also is very client aligned.”
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
“Bang is like a placement agent fee. Might be 50 basis points or 100 basis points of management fee, something like that. Whereas the folks that often do it, they need to raise that money. They're not really oversubscribed. And then sometimes what you'll see too is you might have a really good firm. They don't have their flagship product that's oversubscribed on the platform. They have the new thing that they're starting, whether it's a new sector focused fund or geography. It's the upstart thing that they need to launch. you might not even get the best of these large firms that's the issue on the banking side you also don't have our average family is over 100 million a typical wealth advisor is really not as steeped in trust in estate stuff and like the complexities of larger families like some of the boutiques are and there are a bunch of boutiques out there that are really good in helping you with your estate 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
“Friends who ask me what to do is like, maybe there's certain credit funds. If you go plain vanilla on something like that, you can be fine, you not get hurt. But like, I don't think in the areas where there's a lot of alpha in the market, small buyouts, venture capital, those are non-existent really on the large private wealth platforms at the banks. And you just don't know, you're like, why am I being shown this? There are fees and incentives and conflicts involved in most things that are being shown to the clients. They're showing something because they got a deal. But if you think of the large cap buyout world, there's some firms that are oversubscribed in one and done and are really great firms with great cultures and are very hard to access them. They probably don't have much dollars, if any, from the wealth management channels. That's just a fact. And then there are others, they don't want to do that because they'd have to pay.”
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 a huge industry. It gets like close to 160 trillion globally. I think 90 billion plus, I mean, 90 trillion plus pool of assets in the US. And generally, I think it's pretty crappy. It's not great. You have the banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, et cetera. They're great firms. They can do nice things on the lending side and they will do interesting deals from time to time that they'll offer up to their clients. But in general, I think you get real adverse selection doing private investments through those platforms because they have fee arrangements with these firms and they will only put a firm on the platform if there's some fee share. And the best funds are heavily oversubscribed and don't take wealth management dollars. There are exceptions, but in general you have an adverse selection of funds on wealth management platforms. My advice to my”
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
“Example I can think of recently with a fund that we passed on where another LP had shown it to us and they had spoken to this group look great on paper, great presenters, et cetera. They were very excited about it. My colleagues brought it to me. I thought it was interesting. I know one of my good friends works at that firm and I called him. And it was like, don't walk away, run. A lot of detailed reasons why we should not do this fund. why we should not back this person. We passed this along to this other LP and he goes, oh my gosh, I just spoke to that person's boss. And they said the most amazing things about them. And I'm like, yeah, well, that's the company line. And so just the summarize, you have to be investing with really great people, but also people who have great character integrity and are going to be awesome long-term partners because nothing's a straight line and really making”
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
“Controversy around them. And when they've faltered, people are ready to kick them when they're down. And the team isn't cohesive and things like that. So I think that can be a risk. And in the due diligence, what's really important is not to get stuck in the echo chamber of doing the onless calls and talking to the other LPs that are doing the fund because you can get a lot of positivity if you're just listening to the people that are fans. One thing I've really doing continued, I was talking about this with my colleague today is like really making sure that we are trying to find contrary views or people who are not doing the fund. I don't even do many unless reference calls. I'm generally like just assuming they're all good and focusing on going off list, but also it's really important that you know that you have very trusted relationships with people on the other side of the phone.”
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 would say this is very obvious. You're getting into a partnership that usually is like a 10 year plus three years and then there could be extensions beyond that. I mean, often these things are lasting 15 plus years, which I think is longer than the average marriage. You really need to know the character of the partner that you're investing in and understand that there are going to be good partners and good times and bad. And I think that if you have people who are very focused on themselves, greedy, that can cause real disruption with teams, which can cause firm instability and make for real issues in the underlying stability of the team that you're partnering with for this 10-year plus horizon. Fortunately, we've had a really great set of partners generally, but where we've had issues, we often back real kind of alphas. I think that's great, but some of the ones we've had issues with have had.”
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
“Of 18, 19, 20, stuff where there could be the underlying companies maybe weren't the best vintages of private equity. We got par and the tightest spreads. We got par from an interval fund buyer. And I think that the risk is not that there's like a blow up or a catastrophe or something like that. It's that it's an overwhelming experience because you also have the friction of the various fees involved that are going to drag things down. And then the other risk, and we saw this with B-REIT, is people think that they have quarterly liquidity, their gates. And oftentimes when things happen in markets, everyone rushes for liquidity at the same time and they can't get it. I think that people need to be really clear about, yes, in normal situation, you're very likely to be able to get quarterly liquid after a two-year lock, but you have to be prepared for a scenario where”
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 in private equity. Yeah, exactly. So I think that's the risk. The cost of capital for some of these evergreen private equity vehicles is far lower than the standard players. I'm talking specifically about a very high profile secondary sale that's been in the market a lot. The bids from the sophisticated buyers for these assets came in at mid-80s pricing. a couple of the evergreen vehicles interval funds that have been set up that raise capital and need to put it to work so they in all the cash drag bid in the mid 90s. So there's a 10% spread between folks that candidly like have big funds and want to put the money out. I don't know exactly what they're underrating to, but they were blown out of the water by these new sources of capital that really need to put money into work. And we executed a trade. We sold some of our direct lending private credit for the venture.”
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
“Think you run the risk that a lot of people are going to have pretty mediocre experiences in private equity because a lot of the products that are being put together to cater to the high net worth or even like mass affluent market are done by really large cap shops in vehicles that have lower cost of capital. And they might be targeting what they're trying to do is like 10, 12 percent. And if they undershoot on that, you might end up”
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 worked at Harbor Vest Partners in the secondary group between like 07 and 09, but there was a lot of enthusiasm around large cap buyouts leading up to that. Blackstone. And when I joined SES in 11, I looked at a bunch of our clients' portfolios and their legacy wealth managers. And they were just chock full of large cap buyout firms from 05 to 07. That's not a great vintage because the global financial crisis, a lot of people took a pause and they miss 09, 10, 11, 12, and then maybe they start getting excited again. And those were the best vintages. And they get excited again when things start to heat up. And I think it's really important to be consistent in your allocation so that you capture the really good vintages.”
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
“IRRs between, say, 10 and 15%. That's like the average private equity return over the past 25 years, roughly. Some vintages are better than others. And we're trying to generate what we're striving to do in our program is generate top quartile returns, which is typically going to be an additional, say, 5% plus of return above that. But so we're targeting kind of high teens, low 20s, IRRs. We put in our book 16 to 18% net IRR multiple roughly around 2.5X. But certain vintages, I think we'll have the potential to be north of 3x. But then you get a bad vintage in the COVID era where you had really inflated multiples out there and you have to grow into these purchase prices that people paid. You might end up in the low twos. And your IRR might be mid-teens or low teens in the top quartile. So what's really important is to be consistently investing in the asset class because I think one thing that I”
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 your nav, and hopefully your portfolio has grown a little bit, you're going to roughly be at 40 million. You're going to be at that 35% target nav. You're going to have an unfunded liability. You're trying to be 35% private equity. You probably have to have about a 15% unfunded, but we just kind of manage against that. And then if you get divorced, God forbid, I'm sure you won't. If life changes, then you can toggle down. And that's how we do it. It's really to think very long term. I think it's very important to get the vintage diversification doing this now 14 years at SES. We're targeting our bar. If you think of the market generally, the private equity market generates multiple somewhere between kind of a 1.8 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
“What we're trying to do is, let me just run some simple math for you. Let's say you're $100 million client of ours, and we want to have you be 35% private equity. The rough back of the envelope math, this is a little swag, is that in order to get to that nav target that you have, say you want to have $35 million of nav in private equity, is you need to commit a third of that allocation per year, somewhere between 10 to $12 million annually. We do it every two years. So you would commit, say, $20 million, somewhere between $20 is probably good. So you're going to commit $20 million to the vehicle we're setting up right now, which killed private equity 10. And then you're going to commit hopefully your portfolio is growing a little bit. So you might commit 21 or 22 million to private equity, 11 and 23, 24 million to private equity 12. And then when you get to year six, the modeling would suggest.”
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, exactly. There's a couple things I would say. Yes, the pooled vehicle enables us, and we actually found that you don't want to do it every year. You want to do it every two years, but you don't want to do it every three to four years. Two years, you get the right mix of underlying buyout growth venture funds and co-investments because we want to have diversification across these different sniper laser shot people that might be doing subsectors in defense like Alane River or healthcare software, et cetera. And the venture funds often raise into your cycles. So it's kind of nice thrive or founders fund are basically in each vintage vehicle we set up, you're going to have that fund. But it gives the optionality that if we have a client, say they're an entrepreneur, they start with 50 million with us, then they sell their business and they go up to 250 million. They can flex up accordingly in their allocation.”
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
“We call them pool vehicles. They are structured much like fund to funds, although our underlying clients, our wealth management clients, SES just pay a single asset management fee. So we make the same fee for them off putting them into parametric that's doing tax efficient indexing. We're not biased to put them in privates first. We're just trying to do what's the best from an asset allocation perspective. Yeah, yeah. And our approach has been where's the alpha, it's in private, specifically private equity. That's where we want to use our illiquidity budget. And then in the more efficient areas of the market like public equities, we are largely doing a lot of passive. And because our underlying clients are largely U.S. taxpayers”
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
“Buyouts in the venture stuff we do. But then the other really key component to our success, and we've seen other competitors, firms that look like us start to copy the model or just adopt the model that we went with from the beginning is that we use pooled vehicles that we set up every two years. We get the money from our clients and then we allocate across a series of different funds and co-investments.”
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
“First of all, as I mentioned, the families themselves are very wealthy. They have enough money to keep in fixed income cash to fund their lifestyle and deal with things. So they can have a sizable amount of capital that they lock up. We have a flexible model, but as I mentioned, the average family's somewhere around 35, 40% in privates. Some people and myself, too, personally, I'm 60, 70% in privates. I'm comfortable with that and I believe in the long-term return potential. There's a huge opportunity wealth management generally if you look at smaller families, they might have atypical wealth management client that might have five to $15 million. They can't have that type of 30-40% allocation, 50% allocation to privates, but they can probably do 10 to 15%. And maybe it's 2 or 4% right now. And often it's in like multifamily real estate or something really that has an income component and it doesn't have the upside of the”
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
“Yes, with approximately 500 clients. So an average client of about $100 million. And because of their wealth, they can have an allocation to private equity or to alternatives and a lot of private equity that resembles what the top endowments foundation single family offices has. So our typical client at SES might have 30% target to private equity, another 10% or so to opportunistic credit and real assets, et cetera.”
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 we also brought in a head of client service, Adrian Penta, who just started a few months ago. And three or four other really senior awesome hires at SES. We wouldn't have been able to do that otherwise because they are definitely incentivized and inspired by the vision that we're trying to do, which is to really be the best firm in wealth management period. This is the ultra high net worth end that we serve. The high net worth that the other firms have focused. So now if I run into a client that is below 25 million, I'll refer them to my colleagues at Focus. And we're going to enhance our capabilities just across the board. So I think private equity, when done well, can really be incredible for businesses across all different vectors. That's not to say they're not bad actors, but from a firsthand experience, and of course there's the investment thing, talking as an employee of a private equity firm, what has me so 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 inspired people and it's enabled us to bring in really great talent we couldn't have otherwise brought in. Lane McDonald, our new CIO, who had previously run the family office for the Johnson family from Fidelity, Harvard management company before that, and then a career in private equity at three different firms. And actually you're in the Boston area. He's a bit of a celebrity from his Harvard and USA hockey days. But literally the best CIO partner could possibly imagine. Prior to the focus Take Private by CDNR, there's no way we get lane.”
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
“Of the 400 billion of assets, they've now consolidated from a balance sheet perspective aligned over half of that, including myself. So I had independent shares in SES. So we had a revenue share with Focus, traded those partner shares to be part of the one focus situation. And as have the majority of the assets within focus. So we're all growing, aligned, growing in the same boat. I believe that we'll be able to solve our clients' issues in much better ways. And it's been a shot of adrenaline also just, it's locked people 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
“Firms do 90 different things, but organize it into various kinds of divisions or hubs that are best in class. And the core mission behind focus is really putting the client at the center. But these changes really benefit the client first, but then also the employees of the different firms and ultimately the investors at the private equity firm. We're about 18 months into the take private. It was ended January 2023. The Take Private was announced and then it was delisted around Labor Day at 23, so about 18 months ago”
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