Faith Driven Investor

Host Richard Cunningham welcomes co-host John Coleman for July's Marks on the Market, joined by two veteran venture investors: Phil Jung, who helps lead the venture investing business at Sovereign's Capital, and Mark Phillips, co-founder and managing partner at Eleven Tribes Ventures. The panel digs into a historic first half of 2026 for venture capital, the "barbell" strategy reshaping early-stage investing, and why faith-driven investors need to understand both the opportunity and the constraints of the AI boom.Phil and Mark bring an early-stage, seed-focused lens shaped by operator-led, vertically focused founders — from wire harnessing to waste management — while John Coleman zooms out to the macro picture: record public market concentration, a $725 billion capex commitment from the hyperscalers, and the possibility that this technological shift could be ten times bigger and ten times faster than the Industrial Revolution. The conversation closes, as always, with reflections on Scripture and what it means to build — and rest — under God's sovereignty in the middle of historic disruption.Key Topics:A record-breaking first half of 2026: $412 billion invested in venture capital, more than all of 2025 combinedThe "barbell" approach to early-stage investing: mega AI valuations on one end, capital-efficient vertical AI solutions on the otherWhy physical products, deep tech, and hard tech are back in vogue after years out of favorConstraints on the AI boom investors should watch: capital expenditure limits, energy demands, and regulatory fragmentationToken costs, open-source models, and who ultimately controls the dataClosing reflections from Psalm 127 and John 4 on surrender, weariness, and callingNotable Quotes:"It really is an unprecedented venture market in the moment that we have never seen before." - Phil Jung"Increasingly your software platform, your product is no longer the moat... it's distribution... and then it's integration." - Mark Phillips"We serve a God who's in control, who's unchanging, who created a universe far more complex than anything we're talking about here." - John Coleman

What if the most freeing financial decision you could make had nothing to do with your portfolio returns?In this episode, host Justin Forman sits down with John Cortines, co-author of God and Money and True Riches and a generosity leader at the Maclellan Foundation, for a practical, spiritually grounding conversation about generosity, stewardship, and freedom.John shares how his journey began at Harvard Business School with a banking password that read "retire@40!" and how God used a men's Bible study, serious biblical research, and interviews with radically generous Harvard MBA alumni to completely reframe his understanding of wealth. What emerged wasn't just a new giving percentage. It was a transformation of the heart.Key Topics Discussed:The wrong question most Christian investors ask about money, and the right oneFinancial finish lines: how pre-defining your lifestyle and net worth guardrails creates freedom instead of limiting itThe four heart conditions that keep investors from true generosity (pride, coveting, anxiety, and indifference) and the gospel transformation for eachWhy effective altruism produces joyless giving, and what makes Christian generosity categorically differentThe rise of professionally managed giving funds, and why John believes they'll become as normal as index fundsPractical steps for faith-driven investors to move from obligation-based to joy-driven stewardshipDirect Quotes from John Cortines:"The right question isn't how much do we need to give? It's how much do I really need to keep." — John Cortines"Giving is actually a source of joy and freedom and purpose in the Christian walk. And it's God's invitation where I can step into playing on his team to accomplish his purposes in the world." — John Cortines"What if 10, 20, 30 years from now, it was as normal to think about professionally managed giving funds as it is to think about an index fund for stocks today." — John CortinesEpisode DescriptionJohn Cortines started his career in oil and gas with a banking password that literally read "retire@40!", a saver's dream encoded into every login. Then Harvard Business School, a men's Bible study, and a deep dive into Scripture dismantled his framework entirely. What he and co-author Greg Baumer uncovered changed not just how much he gave, but why, and the freedom that came with it.In this episode, John walks through the framework from his books God and Money and True Riches, including the concept of financial finish lines that set guardrails for lifestyle and net worth, and the four heart transformations every steward must navigate: pride to gratitude, coveting to contentment, anxiety to trust, and indifference to love. These aren't abstract theological ideas. They're the architecture behind how faith-driven investors actually hold and deploy capital with joy.John also shares his vision for the future of generosity: professionally managed giving funds that work alongside traditional portfolio management, bringing the same rigor, governance, and reporting to Kingdom capital that investors already expect from their financial advisors. Recorded live at Kingdom Advisors, this conversation is a call to bring generosity out of the shadows and into the boardroom, and the family table.

In this America 250 special edition of Marks on the Market, Richard Cunningham and Luke Roush sit down with Donna Harris — founder and CEO of Builders and Backers, venture investor, and co-author of the redemptive investing playbook at Praxis — for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of American entrepreneurship, the limits and promise of venture capital, and how the AI revolution is democratizing who gets to build.As the country approaches its 250th birthday, Donna brings a decade of venture investing experience and a conviction that America's greatest competitive advantage isn't its capital markets — it's its people. Builders and Backers has helped launch nearly 800 companies, backing nurses, bartenders, dog breeders, and disability attorneys who are using AI to bring ideas to life that would have required $35,000 MVPs just a year ago.Key Topics:Why venture capital is a "solid tool for a specific use case" — and why it's the single most expensive capital a startup can takeThe real entrepreneurship data: startups are creating a third fewer jobs per company than 15 years ago, and 62% of Americans have an entrepreneurial dream but less than 2% act on itHow AI is democratizing startup formation — from a $35K MVP to a $20 Claude Pro subscriptionDonna's investment thesis for the AI era: stop asking which AI model wins and start asking which people are uniquely positioned to create value with itThe concept of "re-risking" from a faith perspective — and why prosperity itself can become the greatest obstacle to obedienceScripture at the close: Donna on God's broken heroes, and Luke on the woman with the alabaster jar and the boy with five loavesNotable Quotes:"There has never ever in history been a greater moment to become an entrepreneur." — Donna Harris"The best investors aren't just investing in AI companies. They're investing in smart people who will use the tool well and solve meaningful problems in sustainable ways." — Donna Harris"We need to aggressively re-risk, otherwise we get lulled into this stupor of prosperity and comfort and building bigger barns." — Luke Roush

John Coleman sits down with Kristian Andersen — co-founder and partner at High Alpha, the Indianapolis-based venture studio and fund — live at the Main Street Summit in Columbia, Missouri. Kristian traces his unlikely path from freelance designer to venture capital pioneer, unpacking how High Alpha's hybrid studio-fund model is navigating the most disruptive era in software history, and why he believes faith calls investors and builders alike to an adventure mandate and a creation mandate.Key Topics:How High Alpha's venture studio model differs from traditional VC — and what 10+ years of iteration taught them about company creationWhy seat-based SaaS licensing is dying and what outcome-based, utility, and agentic business models are replacing itThe AI disruption hiding in plain sight: companies going from zero to $50M revenue in a single year — and what that means for early-stage investorsThe enterprise SaaS recession of 2021–2024, the "buying barbell," and why legacy SaaS and AI-native companies are on completely different trajectoriesWhy the biggest untold story in the entrepreneurial journey is what it costs the founder's family — and how High Alpha is addressing itServiceNow's entry as a Fund 4 LP and what strategic corporate venture capital actually looks like when done rightThe theology of taste: why Kristian believes truth is beauty, and how the adventure and creation mandates of Scripture shape his work as an investor and builderNotable Quotes:"Operating companies makes us better investors. And conversely, investing makes us better operators because the half-life of experience in this industry is a lot shorter than people think it is." — Kristian Andersen"The currency we trade in are founders and markets. And we want to engineer some radical advantage into those businesses." — Kristian Andersen"I think we serve a God that calls us to adventure. Every good thing that's happened to me in my life has been a function of me saying yes, not saying no." — Kristian AndersenAbout Kristian Andersen: Kristian Andersen is the co-founder and partner at High Alpha, an Indianapolis-based venture studio that both incubates net-new software companies and invests in high-growth founders. Before High Alpha, he founded StudioScience, a design and innovation consultancy he ran for 15 years before selling to private equity. An active angel investor, Kristian has co-founded multiple software companies and invested in over 40 startups. He is married to Brandy, has six children, and is part of the Praxis community. High Alpha's Fund 4 counts ServiceNow as a strategic LP.About High Alpha: High Alpha is a venture studio and fund based in Indianapolis that combines company creation with venture investing. The firm partners with founders and corporations to ideate and launch enterprise SaaS businesses, then supports them with capital, operations, and shared resources. High Alpha's portfolio companies have included Angi (formerly Angie's List), ExactTarget, and others from the Indianapolis tech ecosystem.

Hosts: Richard Cunningham, John Coleman, Luke Roush Guest: Kyle Brown, CEO, Trinity Capital (TRIN)Key Topics:The private credit market has grown 6X in the last decade — but headlines conflating software-sector turbulence with systemic credit risk are getting the story wrongHow 90% of institutional allocations have flowed to just 12 companies and 50 funds, creating compressed spreads, race-to-the-bottom pricing, and concentrated risk in mega-cap private creditWhy Trinity Capital's ~20% loan-to-value and ~1x ARR attachment rate on software leaves them well-positioned compared to over-leveraged competitorsThe AI infrastructure picks-and-shovels play: how Trinity is financing GPUs and power-generation equipment on 24–36 month fully amortizing loans to sidestep speculative overbuild riskSoftware incumbency in the age of AI — why enterprise systems of record are far more resilient than headlines suggest, and where the real vulnerability lies (point solutions)The US macro outlook: GDP at 2%, unemployment near long-term average, global capital flowing to America — and why all three hosts remain constructively bullishDirect Quotes from Kyle Brown:"Private credit over the last 10 years has grown 6X. It's projected to continue growing at a rapid pace. It's being confused as one big monolith and it's really not that at all. It's a massive and robust diversified marketplace now.""The thing that we're missing out on and that we need to add to that balance sheet is our oodles... Because when you're on your deathbed, you're not talking about that great IRR you made on that stock investment or what you did in your IRA. You're telling stories.""We're in the middle of a technological revolution and it's just a shame that culture wars and some of the stuff that is going on is getting in the way of what is really an amazing opportunity for anybody who wants to go and do something, who has an idea, who wants to build."Episode Description:Kyle Brown, CEO of publicly traded Trinity Capital (TRIN), joins Richard Cunningham, John Coleman, and Luke Roush for the May edition of Marks on the Market — and he brings a clear-eyed diagnosis of what's actually driving private credit volatility, what the headlines are getting wrong, and how Trinity has navigated one of the most turbulent environments in the asset class's short history.The conversation opens with a deep dive into the structural forces reshaping private credit: a 6X decade of growth, 90% of institutional money concentrating in fewer than 50 funds, zero-interest-rate-era cost of capital that no longer exists, and a retail investor base encountering alternatives market gates for the first time. Brown explains why software-sector fears — while not entirely unfounded — are being misread as a system-wide credit crisis, and how Trinity's conservative underwriting (averaging ~20% LTV across the portfolio) positions them very differently from over-leveraged peers.From there, the conversation pivots to AI infrastructure investing, the US macroeconomic outlook, the US-China summit, and — in a closing rapid-fire segment — what God has been teaching each host and guest in His Word. Brown closes with a meditation on "oodles," his invented economic unit of enjoyment, drawn from the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12 — a reminder that no balance sheet is complete without the investments we make in the people we love.