Private Equity FunCast

She had the question 10 minutes before the executive did. She stayed quiet—and spent the next 20 minutes kicking herself.

Caroline Phipps, VP at ParkerGale, joins Cass to share the lessons she's learned on her path from D1 soccer to investment banking to private equity. Topics include why she waited over a year before responding to a single PE recruiter, what a professor taught her about integrity and cold emails, how she's using AI tools to audit her own work, and why she thinks the PE-operator relationship gets a bad rap. 

Plus: The Office rewatches, a dec...

Default rates are under 1%. Yet about 1 in 9 leveraged loans trades below 90 cents on the dollar. Both are true. 

Devin sits down with Kenny Tang, head of U.S. credit research at PitchBook, to explain why. They cover everything from a glossary of terms (BSL, BDC, PIK, cov-lite, LME) to what actually cracked in 2026 after the AI software scare. Plus, why defaults look low when stress is high, what credit LPs should watch, and whether today's lenders know how to run a workout.

Kenny Tang is a former bank workout and S&P recovery ratings guy w...

She was an English major who took a banking job in Seattle sight unseen, and eventually became an investor on PSG's healthcare team, focused on growth-stage software companies.

Cass sits down with Booth classmate Kate Nimmo to talk about what growth equity really is, why a liberal arts degree turned out to be a secret weapon, and the lesson she wishes she'd learned sooner: you don't need every answer on day one. 

Plus: Grey's Anatomy, toddler negotiations, and a TV pilot written during nap time.

In a corporate carve-out, figuring out what exactly you're buying is the hardest part. It's often a line-by-line exercise, requiring a scalpel to separate what stays and what goes.

ParkerGale's Ryan Milligan sits down with his colleague Kevin "KG" Gorman for Corporate Carve-Outs 101: how private equity buys a business unit out of a larger parent, why sellers let those businesses go, how you price something that isn't standing on its own, and why carve-outs take longer than you think. KG has closed two carve-outs in the last couple of years, including Comperemedia from Mintel, and our carve-out...

Her college career office was supposed to forward her resume to a foundation. Instead, Ariel Investments kept it, and she ended up working next to the founder.

Liz sits down with Lena Diasti, Chief of Staff to John Rogers, founder, chairman and co-CEO of Ariel Investments. We get into what a Chief of Staff actually does, how to leave investment banking before the "two years" are up, and why relationships end up mattering more than Excel spreadsheets. 

Plus, a Gilmore Girls hot take and the trick for perfectly smooth hummus.

In 1982, Bill Atkinson made Apple's Lisa faster by deleting 2,000 lines of code, and the management form asked how many he wrote. Forty-four years later we're counting tokens instead. Same bug.

The good news: with agentic workflows, engineering is finally measurable in terms a board understands. Jim sits down with Kirby Montgomery and Dan Bender of Code & Co. to cover what's worth tracking (speed paired with stability, and outcomes over activity), why tech diligence now starts before the LOI, why the slick data-room dashboard is sometimes running on localhost, and why you can game the capture but not...

What does it really take to build trust in private equity over a five-to-seven-year hold?

Cass sits down with her colleague Nori Welles-Gertz, a principal at Parker Gale, to find out. They talk about why PE is more about relationships and reputation than transactions, and how she moved from consulting into operationally focused lower middle market investing.

They also discuss how her college crew experience prepared her for a fast-paced career, what she's learning from AI experimentation and a few personal favorites: "Arrested Development," gluten-free pancakes, and perfect weekends built around lots of outdoor activities.<...

Investment diligence is all about answering two questions: Do we want to own this business? And what would we do with it if we did?

But then the deal closes, and all those problems you identified and opportunities you imagined during diligence become yours to tackle. So where do you even start?

In this episode, Ryan and Paul compare notes on what actually happens in the first year of owning a business: how they get the ball rolling on value creation, which early initiatives tend to make the biggest difference, and how they team up...

First, she sketched a med spa roll-up on maternity leave. Then, several law firms said it couldn't be done. Now? She owns five practices.

Cass sits down with her old pal from grad school, Amanda Blank, to discuss her path from finance to building Founders Beauty Group, a med spa roll-up where she leads both investing and operations. Amanda explains the MSO structure that makes owning medical practices possible, how she secret-shopped her targets, and why med spas are healthcare, not consumer (as her legal bills prove).

Plus, Kodiak pancakes, a mentor with 20 identical business...

He left private equity, took a 75% pay cut, and joined a 12-person startup that was still finding its footing. Now, Jon Apter helps oversee 1,600 employees as CFO of Accordion – a seat he's held for the last 11 years. 

Jon sits down with Devin to explain what really keeps a CFO in the room with sponsors and boards. Drawing on two PE deals and 12 acquisitions, he shares what it takes to get a company exit-ready from day one, why the CFO's real job is equity value (not the budget), and why AI spend is about to show up in you...

What does it take to move from banking to the buyside, and what do you have to figure out once you're there?

Liz sits down with Katie Yuan, a private equity associate at Hg in London. They met in 2022 in JPMorgan's investment banking training in New York. Since then, both have made the move from IB to PE. Katie traces her path from studying economics at Cambridge, to two years in JPMorgan's industrials group, to investing in B2B software at one of Europe's largest tech investors.

If you're a student or junior thinking about...

We built our sourcing model around one goal: know every owner of every software company long before they decide to sell. Ken Fine, Affinity's CEO, joins us to explain why relationships and not process are the keys to deal flow, and how AI can make that scalable (and even more human). We talk about the old way and new of sourcing, how AI turns messy inboxes into usable intelligence, and why the real alpha in private equity is more about who you know than what you know.

Ken spent his earlier career building and scaling venture-backed software...

Cass sits down with Brogan Magnarelli, Principal at Riverspan, to talk about her untraditional path into private equity — from point guard at Harvard to account manager at Boingo Wireless, to GE Healthcare sales leadership and finally PE business development. 

Brogan shares why gathering skills at every step matters more than following a linear path, how her basketball mindset shaped her career, and why she tells anyone who'll listen: if you're the smartest person in the room, find another room. They also get into the "silver tsunami" of aging founder-owned businesses, what it's really like being a working mot...

Devin's mom's only instruction to her financial advisor was "the number should never go down." Downside protection is often the most attractive part of investing in a mega buyout fund, but the latest data from PitchBook calls that into question.

PitchBook's Andrew Akers goes deep on why bigger private equity funds don't always outperform smaller ones, why "manager selection skill" might be a myth, and why the biggest funds pay more, lever up more, and don't consistently improve the companies they own. 

Andrew is Associate Director of Quantitative Research at PitchBook, where he recently built a...

What does it look like to "plant seeds" so aggressively that serendipity starts looking like a strategy? This week on Parker Gals, Cass sits down with Jessica Patton to trace her path from Detroit to Howard University to landing a rare straight-out-of-college private equity role in New York.

Jessica shares how she eventually landed in an impact-oriented role at Andreessen Horowitz, and what it took to jump off the deep end and start 5th Century Partners — Gmail, an anchor investor, and a one-way ticket to Chicago. Now 15 people strong, 5th Century is a lower middle market PE fi...

Corporate AI spend in 2026 looked like a teenager loose at the mall with their parents' credit card. No policy, no budget, no discipline about what was purchased and why.

That will change in the 2027 budget season, just kicking off. Devin goes deep with Accordion's Justin D'Onofrio using an 8-step framework to get it right. They cover why 91% of PE-backed CFOs can't size their AI spend, and why 83% of portfolio companies have AI pilots running with almost none tied to measurable value. That won't fly anymore.

Justin is a Managing Director on Accordion's Performance Management team...

What does it look like to go "all in" at every stage of your career, even when you're not on the traditional track?

This week on Parker Gals, Liz and Cass sit down with Hannah Song, a former senior associate at Promus Equity Partners who's heading to UChicago Booth this fall. Hannah shares her non-traditional journey from KPMG audit to investment banking at Mesirow to private equity — and opens up about the difficult decision of choosing between a surprise promotion and business school.

Plus, why Hannah chose culture over prestige when picking firms, her obsession wi...

Paul and Ryan break down what PE-backed executives should know about their management equity: how the economics work, what's worth negotiating, and how you can use it to start things off the right way with your PE sponsor.

This episode is sponsored by NetSuite Next. Try it free at netsuite.ai/funcast.

What if the future of private equity looks exactly like its past? The days of cheap debt and multiple expansion are over, so the only way to win going forward is to operate your way out. Buy well, execute, and exit well. In this episode, Devin and Paul sit down with Lee McCabe — recovering operating partner, Facebook and Alibaba alum, and Founder of Claymore Partners — to unpack what the new playbook for PE actually looks like.

Paul and Lee share stories about Operating Partner roles inside private equity funds, how to bond with management teams so you can...

Cass sits down with Angela McCoy, Managing Director at May River, a private equity firm investing in lower middle market industrial businesses. Angela shares her journey from leveraged finance at Bank of America through the 2008 financial crisis, to a family office, and ultimately to May River, where she started remotely during the pandemic while pregnant. 

They dig into why Angela believes sector-focused strategies are winning in today's PE landscape, how May River approaches portfolio management, and why the "private equity = cost cutters" stereotype couldn't be further from her reality. She also opens up about the power of p...

What if the thing founders are proudest of in diligence — "AI wrote most of our code" — is actually the reason investors should worry?

Jim sits down with Jason Gill and Kirby Montgomery of Code & Co. to talk about what happens when vibe coding meets private equity due diligence, why every diligence summary suddenly looks identical, and why the old scars (custom integrations, undocumented paths, the stuff nobody wanted to deal with) just became the most valuable thing a company owns. We break down the one question that separates real engineering from AI smoke and mirrors and lay out...

In this episode of Parker Gals, Liz Xu sits down with her former JPMorgan colleague and friend Caroline Carman, Senior Associate at Rallyday Partners, a lower middle market private equity firm based in Denver, Colorado.

Caroline shares her journey from leveraged finance analyst to becoming Rallyday's first associate, building the firm's junior team from the ground up. We dive into what drew her to private equity, the transition from heads-down number crunching to providing strategic thought partnership to portco management teams, and the mentor who shaped her career along the way.

Plus, why the "PE...

Devin and Cass sit down with Kate Hopkins, founder of OneGuide, to break down the 36 AI value creation plays private equity firms and portfolio companies are running right now. From TAM mapping and list building with AI to revenue leakage detection, workflow automation, and agent ecosystem strategy — this episode covers what's actually working, what's not, and what's coming next.

OneGuide's "Top 36 AI Value Creation Plays" report: https://connect.askoneguide.com/hubfs/OneGuide%20-%20AI%20Value%20Creation%20Plays%20-%202026.pdf

This episode is sponsored by NetSuite Next. Try it free at netsuite.ai/funcast.

In this episode, host Cass Ziebel sits down with Frontenac VP Maggie Pugel for a candid conversation about breaking into private equity the non-traditional way. Maggie shares how she went from buy-side equity research at Ariel Investments to private equity at Frontenac — without the classic investment banking pedigree — and why she's glad she took the "career switcher" route. 

They dig into what makes PE uniquely demanding and rewarding, how AI is changing the deal process, the value of great mentorship, and the mindset shift that comes with learning to let go of what you can't control.

Pl...

The private equity market in 2026 was supposed to rip. So why has it fallen flat?

Devin sits down with Steven Buibish, CFA, Director of US Private Equity Research at PitchBook, to break down the first half 2026 data. Deal value in Q2 dropped 38% from Q1. Software dealmaking froze. Mega deals are doing all the heavy lifting, distorting every headline number, and yet prices haven't budged. We're sitting at 2021 valuation peaks while volume collapses and leverage dries up.

They dig into what's actually happening beneath the surface: the HALO rotation into hard assets and data centers, the...

Welcome to Parker Gals — the podcast by and for women in private equity. Hosts Cass Ziebel and Liz Xu kick off the very first episode from ParkerGale HQ in Chicago, introducing themselves and the show.

In this debut episode, you'll hear how Cass stumbled into PE after a 2.5 hour "networking lunch" that turned into an accidental interview, and how Liz almost talked herself out of the job before Cass convinced her she was more than ready. Other agenda items include butter-to-egg ratios, Gilmore Girls VHS tapes, a pair of auction-won sunglasses, and two very different answers to "wh...

40% of PE firms and 60% of credit funds still track their portfolios on spreadsheets. That's now a way to monitor a few trillion in AUM. Private equity (and credit) are about to get way more transparent as retail investors get access to PE, and the tools you need to monitor and report your exposure must evolve. The products are way ahead of the plumbing. 

Devin sits down with Kevin Hsu, founder of Lumonic, a portfolio monitoring software company now part of PitchBook. We discuss Kevin's early career in private markets technology and what that taught him about the d...

PE GUY turned a Snapchat filter into millions of views and a seven-figure business. Host Devin Mathews (a real PE guy) conducts due diligence on Johnny Hilbrant Partridge's background, business model, and the wealthy towns he's taking on next.

We sat down with Johnny in PE GUY's natural habitat -- a Winnetka, IL pool house to figure out how a goofy internet character became an oddly accurate and honest mirror of the private equity industry. Johnny grew up in Winnetka and now lives in Wellesley (two classic PE Guy towns). He went to New Trier (the affluent...

Sam Levy's first sales job involved a phone book, a rotary phone, and 200 cold calls for one yes. He was still in college when he started a telemarketing gig with no playbook, no CRM, no email. Eighteen months in, the company went public, and the telemarketing kid was sipping champagne in the boardroom. This episode reveals everything that happened between that room and the one he sits in now: head of go-to-market strategy and execution at Oracle NetSuite, running a business that's grown from $250 million to $4 billion.

Sam walks Devin through how to build a career in...

The deep Rolodex model for headhunters doesn't cut it anymore. PE's cookie-cutter hiring scorecards now miss the best candidates in a complex world. And more and more funds are hiring internal teams to source CEOs. The executive search business is under pressure and has to adapt to survive. In this episode, Devin sits down with Nick Cromydas, to answer the question: how does executive search stay relevant?

Nick is the co-founder and CEO of Hunt Club, an AI-enabled search firm that pairs a GLG-style expert network with first-party data from countless executive searches. His team has conducted th...

In the past year, Excel AI plugins have become increasingly powerful, raising the question: Are Analysts and Associates about to become obsolete, or are we entering the age of the 10x modeler? On this episode, Devin and Caroline Phipps, a ParkerGale VP, go deep on AI and how it's changing the game. They're joined by Tarun Amasa, Founder & CEO of Endex, an OpenAI-backed startup automating modeling for private equity and investment banks.

We discuss building models from scratch, automating workflows, and auditing it all so you don't look bad in the IC. Learn about our use cases...

Your 401(k) is about to get access to private equity, but how, in what form, and at what price are all still TBD. Which is kind of a problem for such a big change. The pitch for putting private markets in retirement accounts is all about fairness: regular people got locked out of the hottest private companies, such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Stripe. But the products actually getting built are something else entirely. They are semi-liquid, evergreen, with various fee wrappers, and most of what you'll be offered is actually private credit rather than private equity or venture...

AI is reshaping the consulting industry faster than the internet or remote work ever did. Some say the industry's days are numbered. So why are Anthropic and OpenAI building PE-backed consulting firms of their own? And how will private equity firms and the companies they own feel the change?

We get into what AI is actually doing to the consulting industry, why it's hitting faster than any tech shift before it, and how consulting firms are using AI to transform themselves to stay ahead of their clients. If you're an investor, an operator, a consultant, or just...

Artificial intelligence is changing the rules of software investing, forcing private equity firms to adapt quickly and carefully. In this episode, we're joined by the team from Code & Co., one of the leading AI and tech due diligence firms serving private equity investors, to discuss how AI is transforming the way software companies are evaluated before a deal closes. Jim sits down with Code & Co. Managing Partners Dan Bender and Lukas Ingelheim along with Head of North America Kirby Montgomery to explain why tech due diligence is no longer just a checkbox exercise.

Dan, Lukas and Kirby...

It's hard to execute today. Growth has slowed, and costs are up. If you own, advise, or operate a PE-backed company, this episode offers a behind the scenes look at some plays you can run to execute your way through the chop.

Paul Stansik and Jim Milbery cover sales training, customer support data, weekly go-to-market reporting, speed-to-lead, AI-assisted engineering, video marketing, release velocity, and other practical moves that are improving execution.

These are all moves you can make that we've seen make a difference. Try some out yourself and let us know how it goes.<...

Everyone says they are one-shotting workflows with AI. We brought on the guy who can tell us what's actually happening in middle-market private equity companies. Kyle Roemer, Head of Data & AI at Accordion, has a unique view because his firm advises over 350+ private equity clients. He can see what's real and what's hype, and Accordion has the Ramp data to tell the difference. Kyle walks Devin through the rapid changes over the past year, function by function, so you can decide if you're ahead or behind. One prediction: the Office of the CFO will go through the biggest revolution...

How do you make the leap from the college quad to private equity? Associates Liz Xu and Niko Ivanisevic share their unexpected journey to the offices of ParkerGale. They get honest about imposter syndrome, the myth of the "perfect path," building a personal story beyond your resume, and why you should never chew gum in a job interview. Whether you're an undergrad planning your career or a junior banker wondering what's next, this episode is full of practical advice for how to break into the industry.

Most B2B software companies have more growth left in what they already sell. This framework shows exactly where to find it — and where to stop looking. Jim Milbery and Paul Stansik walk through the Ansoff Matrix, a simple four-quadrant tool for organizing every growth conversation a software company will ever have. New market or existing market? New product or current product? Sounds obvious, but it's an argument that can derail board meetings, kill roadmaps, and send sales teams down blind alleys. What if chasing new markets and new products is actually the thing slowing you down? Jim and Paul ma...

Most B2B sales reps are professionally trained to make you like them in 30 minutes. But when you're recruiting salespeople, likability doesn't guarantee success. Make the wrong hire and you can lose two years and a chunk of your growth plan. In this episode, Devin and Paul walk through the five qualities ParkerGale tests for (customer focus, structure, accountability, problem-solving, drive), the specific questions we ask in a panel interview, and the trick question that breaks through every rapport-building defense salespeople can muster.

Most private equity firms claim to use a leather-bound "value creation" bible nobody's allowed to touch. The truth? It's more of a Cheesecake Factory menu. In this episode, Paul and Jim break down what operating partners actually do once the deal closes — the three buckets that matter (revenue, cost, risk), why many software companies leave revenue on the table with their existing customers, and what "don't buy a company you can't sell" looks like in practice.