Best Howie Liu Podcasts (2025)

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Power, Narrative, and Influence: Van Jones and Promise CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins 41:36

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7d ago41:36

41:36

Van Jones is a political commentator, author, and former Obama White House advisor. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is founder and CEO of Promise, a software company transforming how governments deliver services to people in need. They joined the Village Global team to discuss what founders building in complex sectors need to know about power, narrative, and…

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Scaling in the AI Era with PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada 47:07

14d ago47:07

47:07

Jennifer Tejada is CEO of PagerDuty, a public company serving 30,000+ customers worldwide. She joined Village Global GP Ben Casnocha for a masterclass on scaling in the AI era, followed by live feedback sessions with four founders building AI-native companies. Takeaways: Enterprise sentiment has shifted from “fear of missing out” to “fear of gettin…

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Wade Foster: Why Zapier is Built for the AI Revolution 42:16

1M ago42:16

42:16

When Wade Foster was a kid growing up in Jefferson City, Missouri, there weren’t many models for how to carve out a career in entrepreneurship. But when he and his friend Bryan Helmig developed an easier way to help users connect web-based applications, they ushered in what would eventually become Zapier, a remote automation giant that’s now worth …

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Howie Liu: Building Airtable to Feel Magical 46:05

3M ago46:05

46:05

Spreadsheets were originally designed for finance people. But when Howie Liu and his co-founders started Airtable in 2012, they had a deeper insight that a spreadsheet-database hybrid could be used by anyone for just about anything, including project management, content calendars, recipes, and even travel itineraries. Now the company is valued at …

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Joe Liemandt: The AI-Powered School Rewriting the Future of Education 42:33

4M ago42:33

42:33

Long before he attended Stanford, founded software giant Trilogy, or became the youngest member of the Forbes 400, Joe Liemandt wrote a high school paper about the potential for a futuristic technology called Artificial Intelligence. Four decades later Liemandt sits in the principal’s chair at Alpha School, an AI-powered private school founded in A…

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Mårten Mickos: Essential Lessons From A Legendary Tech CEO 41:24

4M ago41:24

41:24

Mårten Mickos isn't the kind of CEO who tries to dream up world-changing ideas or invent brand new markets. Perhaps best known for leading MySQL to becoming a $1 billion success story that powered Facebook, Google, and YouTube, Mickos also led teams at Eucalyptus and HackerOne and has consistently shown an ability to convert the potential energy of…

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Eric Schmidt: The Implications of Superintelligence 40:35

5M ago40:35

40:35

Best known as the CEO who helped transform Google from a promising startup into one of the best businesses in human history, Eric Schmidt has recently become one of the most important voices in the global conversation about artificial intelligence. He’s co-written two books on the subject including the New York Times bestseller Genesis: Artificial…

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Pedro Franceschi: Lessons from an Evolving Entrepreneur, from Hacking iPhones to Building Brex 43:19

6M ago43:19

43:19

At just 13 years of age, Pedro Franceschi was one of the first to jailbreak the iPhone. By the time he was 15 he had co-founded a payments company that would process over a billion in transactions. And by the time he was in his early 20s, helped transform a last minute YC pivot into Brex, one of the most iconic fintech breakout stories of the decad…

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Vibe Coding and The Rise of AI Agents with Amjad Masad and Yohei Nakajima 58:59

6M ago58:59

58:59

Amjad Masad (@amasad), founder and CEO of Replit, and Yohei Nakajima (@yoheinakajima), Managing Partner at Untapped Capital, joined Village Global partner Ben Casnocha for a live masterclass with Village Global founders. Takeaways: AI agents are rapidly evolving, with coding and deep research agents showing the most traction today. But general-purp…

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Mitchell Hashimoto: How Solving His Own Problem Sparked HashiCorp 39:27

7M ago39:27

39:27

The most successful founders don't usually chase startup ideas. Instead, they're pulled toward problems they can't ignore. Back in 2009, Mitchell Hashimoto set out to fix what frustrated him by hacking nights and weekends, open sourcing the tools he wished had existed for over a year. His quiet persistence and commitment to fixing the problem ign…

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Executing as a Best-In-Class Firm: Operational Excellence From The Inside of Over 50 VC Firms with Kristen Ostro of Strut Consulting 50:23

7M ago50:23

50:23

Jacob Mullins, Venture Partner at Village Global, welcomes Kristen Ostro, founder and CEO of Strut Consulting, to discuss the foundational elements that set venture capital firms up for long-term success. Kristen shares how her career began under the mentorship of Dick Kramlich at NEA, where she was trained in the core values and operational excell…

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The Secret to Startup M&A: How To Set Your Companies Up for Big Outcomes with Ezra Roizen of Advsr 55:20

7M ago55:20

55:20

Jacob Mullins, Venture Partner at Village Global, sits down with Ezra Roizen, General Manager of Advsr and author of "The Magic Box Paradigm," to demystify the world of startup mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on Jacob’s private podcast, VC Mastermind, which we are cross-posting on the Village Global podcast. Drawing on decades of experience as both …

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Jake Knapp: The Founder’s Guide to Product-Market Fit 41:10

8M ago41:10

41:10

For startups in the zero to one phase, finding product-market fit isn't everything. It’s the only thing. And there are few people in the entrepreneurial world better at solving the product-market fit puzzle than Jake Knapp, who helped build Microsoft Encarta and Gmail, co-founded Google Meet, and has advised teams at Miro, Slack, LEGO and NASA on p…

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Amjad Masad: Resolve, Persistence, and the Rise of Replit 39:28

9M ago39:28

39:28

Amjad Masad's journey is defined by relentless persistence. Born and raised in Jordan, he borrowed computers to teach himself coding, and then earned money building software for local internet cafes. He applied to Y Combinator again and again, finally gaining acceptance on his fourth try. His constant drive fueled continuous improvement, culminatin…

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Aaron Levie: The Restless Founder Plotting the Future of Cloud Storage and AI 40:49

9M ago40:49

40:49

When the team behind Box first went looking for funding back in 2005, they tried just about every trick in the book. They sent Bill Gates a fax. They dropped a prospectus off at Paul Allen’s house in Seattle. And they took a shot at convincing Mark Cuban to join two ambitious college kids with a hunch the way businesses stored and collaborated aro…

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Guillermo Rauch: The Product Visionary Fueling Vercel and Millions of Developers 39:36

10M ago39:36

39:36

Guillermo Rauch didn’t find success by accident. He began working on computers as a kid growing up in Argentina and was hooked immediately, eventually falling in love with programming and open source before moving to Silicon Valley. Since then his blend of technical foresight, audacious ambition and obsessive attention to detail in products has mad…

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Zach Perret: The Survival Story of a Fintech Giant 38:17

10M ago38:17

38:17

Long before Plaid became a $13.4 billion fintech juggernaut, it was just another struggling startup. Co-founders Zach Perret and William Hockey burned through cash and pivoted from one failed idea to the next, ultimately getting turned away by roughly 100 VCs during seed round funding. But Plaid persevered, and eventually revolutionized how financi…

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Abhay Parasnis on Creating Moats, AI Strategy, and Selling to Enterprise 47:45

10M ago47:45

47:45

Abhay Parasnis is founder and CEO of Typeface, is former CTO/CPO at Adobe, and sits on the board of Dropbox and Schneider Electric. He joined Ben Casnocha, co-founder and partner at Village Global, for a live masterclass for Village Global founders. Takeaways: If you can break into the top tier of the enterprise market, it’s hard to dislodge you. B…

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Fundraising in AI with Aaron Harris 46:26

11M ago46:26

46:26

Aaron Harris was a partner at YC for 7.5 years where he funded Deel, OpenSea, Scale AI, Rappi, Lattice, and others. He also built YC's Series A program where he worked with founders on over 200 Series As and Bs that raised in excess of $3B in capital. He joined Sam Kirschner, VP at Village Global, to give Village Global founders helpful tips on fun…

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Baiju Bhatt: First Robinhood, Next …. Outer Space? 40:43

11M ago40:43

40:43

As the co-founder of Robinhood, Baiju Bhatt didn't just help launch a company. He sparked a movement that fundamentally shifted the dynamics of investing, and created a new path for everyday people to participate in the markets. But can the man who changed the way people think about money do the same for energy? In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of…

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Hiring Technical Talent with Kathy Copic and Lindsay Pettingill 57:37

12M ago57:37

57:37

Kathy Copic is founder of Fieldwork Partners, where she works closely with early stage companies on scoping technical projects, getting early ML models into production, and helping them hire. She was interviewed by Lindsay Pettingill, Investment Partner at Village Global, during this masterclass for Village Global founders. Takeaways: Maintain at l…

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Eynat Guez of Papaya Global on Mastering Enterprise Sales and Building Long-Term Partnerships 55:36

1y ago55:36

55:36

Eynat Guez, founder and CEO of Papaya Global, was interviewed by Ben Casnocha, co-founder and partner at Village Global, during this masterclass for Village Global founders. Takeaways: Show up to key meetings as the founder or executive team — don’t just send the sales team. It signals to the client that you’re personally invested and committed to …

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Josh Reeves: How Gusto Took The Pain Out Of Payroll 38:34

1y ago38:34

38:34

When Josh Reeves, Tomer London and Edward Kim founded Gusto in 2012, roughly 40 percent of the employers in the United States were still doing their payroll by hand. Thousands of small business owners spent their time reading up on various federal and local tax codes or buried in late-night paperwork, drained of the energy to truly chase their drea…

1
Auren Hoffman and Ben Casnocha on Career Strategy, Undiscovered Talent, Networks, and more 58:01

1y ago58:01

58:01

Auren Hoffman, CEO of SafeGraph and GP of Flex Capital, interviewed Ben Casnocha, Village Global co-founder and partner, on Auren's World of DaaS podcast. They are longtime friends and had a wide-ranging discussion on career strategy, evaluating founders, serendipity, wealth, and much more. We've cross-posted that conversation here. Highlights: The…

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Howie Liu on Airtable's Early Days, Scaling, and AI 1:01:18

1y ago1:01:18

1:01:18

Howie Liu, founder and CEO of Airtable, was interviewed by Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha live in downtown San Francisco in front of an audience of Village Global founders and friends of the firm. Highlights: - Embracing discomfort is part of the founder's journey. Learning to tolerate and even appreciate this discomfort is impo…

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Breakthrough Lesson: RIP To Old-School Marketing 10:29

1y ago10:29

10:29

Most startups stick to traditional methods of getting their message out. Pattern Breakers, however, don't follow the old rules of marketing. Instead they ignite a movement where they ultimately rise to the top, uncontested, while others later scramble for the leftovers. In this Breakthrough Lesson, Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate examines three lesson…

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Niels Hoven: Teaching Two Year-Olds to Read Like Second Graders 34:40

1+ y ago34:40

34:40

The team behind the educational technology company Mentava is a small one, but its product idea is extremely ambitious: An app that teaches two year-olds to read at a second grade level. The idea is the brainchild of founder Niels Hoven, a father of four committed to accelerating K-12 education and helping high-achieving kids reach their true poten…

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Guillermo Rauch on AI, Scaling Vercel, and The Future of Web Apps 56:11

1+ y ago56:11

56:11

Guillermo Rauch is founder and CEO of Vercel, a company that provides the developer tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. He was interviewed by Ben Casnocha, co-founder and general partner at Village Global, an early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the world’s most successful entrep…

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Daphne Koller: Changing Lives With Coursera 43:33

1+ y ago43:33

43:33

Few startup founders follow a path to success like Daphne Koller, a polymath whose academic career in machine learning, computer vision, and computational biology make her a force far beyond the business arena. Koller left her academic career at Stanford in 2012 to co-found Coursera, the world’s largest platform for massive open online courses (MOO…

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Pattern Breakers: Which Startups Change the Future? 36:40

1+ y ago36:40

36:40

On this special episode of Pattern Breakers, host Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate joins LinkedIn founder and legendary investor Reid Hoffman for a conversation on Hoffman’s podcast Masters of Scale, where iconic business leaders share lessons and strategies that have helped them grow the world's most fascinating companies. Mike discusses the insights …

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A Sneak Peek at Pattern Breakers 39:45

1+ y ago39:45

39:45

Today is a huge day for Pattern Breakers, the book. Co-written with Peter Zeibelman of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Pattern Breakers has been dubbed “the most important start-up book of the last ten years” by legendary entrepreneur and co-creator of the Lean Startup movement Steve Blank. Pattern Breakers draws from decades of experienc…

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Maddie Hall: A Different Path to the Future 40:08

1+ y ago40:08

40:08

There is no single path to becoming the founder of a pattern-breaking startup. For Maddie Hall, her journey began with a crucial choice: to brainstorm startup ideas or to spend time with people already shaping the future. She chose the latter, following Sam Altman at OpenAI as his Chief of Staff. This experience, along with the connections and know…

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Breakthrough Lessons: Founder-Future Fit 12:12

1+ y ago12:12

12:12

Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike. Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books. Follow Mike on X!By Mike Maples

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Encore: Secrets of Public Speaking and Oral Communication from Renowned Speaking Coach 42:20

1+ y ago42:20

42:20

Michael Balaoing, founder of Candlelion, joins Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha on this episode to discuss: - The importance of the acronym WTF (what’s the feeling?) when you’re giving a presentation. - The four roles that you take on as a speaker: captain, pilot, guide, and game show host. - The five questions to ask when seeking…

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Justin Kan: Pattern Breaker Personified 41:59

1+ y ago41:59

41:59

If pattern breaker was a term in the dictionary, you just might find an image of Justin Kan. From his attempts as a teenager to send a camera to outer space, to selling his first company on Ebay, to strapping a camera to his head to play the starring role on Justin.tv, Kan has always been a man with uncommon ideas and the ability to convince people…

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Breakthrough Lessons: The Value of a Superbuilder 11:16

1+ y ago11:16

11:16

In the early days of a start-up, the superbuilder can be as important to greatness as the start-up leader, and they’re often not the same person. But what are the traits of a great superbuilder, and why do they play such a crucial role in the zero to one phase of a company? In this Breakthrough Lesson, Mike Maples, Jr of Floodgate discusses the suc…

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Kyle Vogt: A Problem Solver With A Purpose 39:02

1+ y ago39:02

39:02

Kyle Vogt has always been fascinated with designing robots and machines. From his youngest days, he retrofitted his father's car to drive itself along the highways of his home state of Kansas. Later, he dropped out of MIT and became a wildly successful startup founder, playing a crucial role in the development of Justin.tv and Twitch. With Cruise A…

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Breakthrough Lessons: Learning to Savor Surprises 11:48

1+ y ago11:48

11:48

The ability to notice and savor surprises is a key overlooked skill of the greatest founders. It allows you to narrow in on the types of capabilities that will lead to breakthroughs. In this Breakthrough Lesson, Mike Maples, Jr of Floodgate calls on the lessons learned by Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear to discuss why founders should seek surprises …

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Encore: Brad Feld on What Nietzsche Can Teach Entrepreneurs 50:09

1+ y ago50:09

50:09

Brad Feld (@bfeld), VC at Foundry Group and co-author with Dave Jilk of The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha to discuss: - Common misconceptions about Nietzsche and why being misunderstood makes him an especially interesting philosopher. - What Nietzsche can teach entrepreneurs deciding whet…

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Emmett Shear: How Twitch Changed Media by Merging it with Gaming 38:38

1+ y ago38:38

38:38

Emmett Shear was a gamer long before he helped define one of the most important new media companies at the intersection of gaming, media, and the creator economy. What can we learn from his success as a founder? (hint: it has something to do with truly listening to users.) Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com foreven …

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Breakthrough Lessons: The One Thing That Matters Most… 10:10

1+ y ago10:10

10:10

In the early days of a startup, finding product-market fit is paramount. Once you have it, failure is almost impossible. Without it, you can do everything else right, and still fail. In this Breakthrough Lesson, Mike Maples, Jr of Floodgate discusses three heuristics for maximizing the odds of success: Find the right North Star, offer a Delta 4 exp…

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Michael Seibel: “The Godfounder” Discusses Justin.tv, Twitch, and Y Combinator 46:47

1+ y ago46:47

46:47

Michael Seibel didn’t set out to become a legendary startup founder. As a young man, his sights were set on politics, dreaming of a future on the Supreme Court. But his friendship with fellow Yale classmate Justin Kan led to a fortuitous cross-country trip to California that changed everything. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate talks w…

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Welcome to Pattern Breakers 6:42

1+ y ago6:42

6:42

Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate is back with a new season of his podcast, once called Starting Greatness, now renamed Pattern Breakers. The focus remains, but with increased ambitions. In this season intro, Mike explains his reasons for expanding the podcast's scope, what listeners can anticipate going forward, and details about a forthcoming book se…

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How to Nail Product-Market Fit and Scale a B2B Company with Thejo Kote of Airbase 57:45

1+ y ago57:45

57:45

Thejo Kote (@thejo) talks to Village partner Ben Casnocha. Thejo is a two-time founder and CEO. His current company, Airbase, is a spend management platform serving companies with 100 and 5,000 employees like Coda, 15Five, Front, Marqueta, CaptivateIQ, Abnormal, and more. Airbase has raised over $200 million, has tens of millions in ARR, and is con…

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Encore: Cloudflare Co-Founder Michelle Zatlyn’s Advice on Hiring, Fundraising, Scaling, and more 50:26

1+ y ago50:26

50:26

Michelle Zatlyn (@zatlyn), co-founder, president, and COO of Cloudflare, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha for a masterclass with our founders in late 2020. They discussed: - The origin story of Cloudflare, including how the co-founders met, and how Michelle realized that she too could start a company. - Her advice on fundra…

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Lessons from the Early Days at Uber and Advice for Founders with Kevin Novak 46:37

1+ y ago46:37

46:37

We're excited to launch a new EIR program for data science founders in partnership with Rackhouse Ventures, founded by Kevin Novak. Learn more about the program: https://www.villageglobal.vc/rackhouse-village-global-eir-program Kevin Novak (@novakkm), an early Uber employee, was instrumental in developing their data science program and was the crea…

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Encore Episode: John Donahoe’s Lessons on Leadership and Being a Better CEO 54:14

2y ago54:14

54:14

This encore episode is a recording of a special masterclass roundtable session for our founders with John Donahoe. John is CEO of Nike and was previously CEO of ServiceNow and eBay. He is known as one of the most inspirational leaders in Silicon Valley and is a highly sought-after mentor to CEOs including Brian Chesky at Airbnb, Drew Houston at Dro…

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Identifying 275M Unreported Genetic Variations To Improve Healthcare with NIH All of Us Program CTO Chris Lunt 49:08

2y ago49:08

49:08

Chris Lunt is a technology executive with more than 25 years of experience building web services and data platforms. He is in his seventh year as the CTO for the NIH's All of Us Research Program. He joined the NIH from GetInsured, where he worked to improve health insurance shopping and enrollment systems. Previously Chris ran VC-backed internet st…

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Building Hardware Companies and Choosing Co-Founders with Michael Hochberg 57:04

2y ago57:04

57:04

Michael Hochberg (https://www.linkedin.com/in/hochberg/) is a physicist and a founder of four successful startup companies in semiconductors and telecommunications, including Luxtera, acquired by Cisco in 2019, and Elenion, acquired by Nokia in 2020. He won the highest awards for young scientists in Singapore (NRF Fellowship) and the United States …

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Secondaries with Matt Pellini of Hamilton Lane 40:19

2y ago40:19

40:19

Matt Pellini, Managing Director at Hamilton Lane, joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode. Highlights: - Matt says the secondaries market has grown over 5x from 15 years ago to now. - Selling in the secondary market used to be a sign of distress but is no longer. There are many different reasons for doing so and it’s mostly a sign of a manager being…