PODCAST · business
Private Equity FunCast
by Jim Milbery and Devin Mathews
Your favorite GP's favorite podcast. Occasionally insightful, always entertaining. Deep dives into how private equity works, what happens after the deal closes, how money gets raised, and how companies get bought and sold. And everything in between with healthy doses of pop culture and humor. Straight from the team at ParkerGale Capital.For educational and entertainment purposes only. Not investment advice. Additional disclosures at www.parkergale.com.
Episodes
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Parker Gals | Trust Over Transactions: The Heart of Private Equity (w/ Nori Welles-Gertz, ParkerGale)
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...
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The Deal Closed. Now What?
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?…
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Parker Gals | Building a Med Spa Roll-Up from Scratch (w/ Amanda Blank, Founders Beauty Group)
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...
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11 Years as a PE-Backed CFO: What Sponsors Actually Want (w/ Jon Apter, Accordion)
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...
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Parker Gals | From Advising to Investing: Building a Career in PE (w/ Katie Yuan, Hg Capital)
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…
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Relationships are the Atomic Unit of Deal Flow (w/ Ken Fine, CEO of Affinity)
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…
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Parker Gals | How a College Point Guard Built a PE Career (w/ Brogan Magnarelli, Riverspan Partners)
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...
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Diminishing Returns to Scale in Private Equity (w/ Andrew Akers, PitchBook)
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...
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Parker Gals | Why Private Equity is for Everyone (w/ Jessica Patton, 5th Century Partners)
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....
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Building Your 2027 AI Budget (w/ Justin D'Onofrio, Accordion)
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…
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Parker Gals | Everything's 'Figure-Out-Able': Going All In (w/ Hannah Song, Promus Equity Partners)
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...
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Understanding Management Equity: What PE CEOs Should Know
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...
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What's Wrong in Private Equity (w/ Lee McCabe)
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...
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Parker Gals | The PE Career Path Nobody Plans For (w/ Angela McCoy, May River)
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,...
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Can You Still Trust Tech Due Diligence? (w/ Jason Gill & Kirby Montgomery, Code & Co.)
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…
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Parker Gals | Private Equity Isn't Just for "PE Guys" (w/Caroline Carman, Rallyday Partners)
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...
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How PE Firms Are Actually Using AI Right Now (w/ Kate Hopkins, OneGuide)
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…
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Parker Gals |The Career Switcher's Guide to Private Equity (w/ Maggie Pugel, Frontenac)
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...
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Another False Start: PitchBook's H1 2026 Private Equity Data (w/ Steven Buibish)
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...
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Introducing "Parker Gals": Meet Cass & Liz
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…
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Private Equity's About to Get a Lot Less Private (w/ Kevin Hsu of Lumonic)
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…
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PE GUY Meets an Actual PE Guy
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…
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From Sales Rep to $4B GTM Leader: The Playbook for Building Sales Teams (w/ Sam Levy of NetSuite)
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...
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How a Tough PE Market & AI are Changing Exec Search (w/ Nick Cromydas of Hunt Club)
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…
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Financial Modeling Will Never be the Same (w/ Tarun Amasa of Endex)
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…
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Private Equity is Coming For Your 401(k) (w/ PitchBook's Nizar Tarhuni)
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...
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Will AI Kill Consulting? (w/ IGS CEO Matt Umscheid)
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…
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How Private Equity Is Rethinking AI & Tech Due Diligence (According to Code & Co.)
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...
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What's Working NOW At Private Equity Owned Companies
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…
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Inside Private Equity's AI-led Transformation (w/ Kyle Roemer of Accordion)
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...
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How We Broke Into Private Equity
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...
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The Secret Formula to Drive Your Company's Growth
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...
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The Right Way to Hire Salespeople
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...
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How Operating Partners Create Value in Private Equity
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,...
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The Evolution of PE Ops
In 1995, the typical "PE operating team" was a few old-timer ex-CEOs. Today there are 20,000 of them. Cass and Paul from ParkerGale's ops team sit down with Devin to walk through how private equity operations actually evolved — from the "I got a guy" Rolodex era, to the captive consulting model…
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10 Lessons From 10 Years Running Our Own Private Equity Firm
Do operating teams matter? Why is sourcing broken? Are add-ons a strategy or a crutch? What firms have actually "stayed small?" In this episode, Devin and Jim get introspective, reflecting on their biggest lessons to mark the 10-year anniversary of the final close of ParkerGale's first fund. Tell...
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The Private Equity Glossary - 50(ish) Terms You Should Know
LPs. GPs. Carry. Waterfalls. Pari passu. The unlock. Quantum. De-Risk. Niko originally thought one of these was a French dish. Liz wants to ban another from all future meetings. In their PE Funcast debut, ParkerGale Associates Liz & Niko join Devin to demystify the private equity alphabet soup,...
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The Ghost of Software Future
In February of this year, an obscure research report triggered a $1 trillion wipeout in software stocks in seven days. In this episode we decipher what actually happened — and why AI is more likely to be a gift to enterprise software than a death sentence. Devin and Jim have invested through…
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When And How To Sell Your Company
Selling a company isn't just about price - it's about timing, preparation and process. In this episode, Devin sits down with Ryan Milligan to break down how to sell a company - from timing the exit to running a competitive process and getting a deal across the finish line. They walk through the...
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You Just Bought A Company. Now What?
Everyone loves the chase but what happens when the ink dries on the deal and you actually own a company? In this episode, Jim sits down with Paul Stansik to pull back the curtain on how the combined deal, ops, and management teams come together in the first few weeks and months post-close. They...
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How Private Equity ACTUALLY Buys Companies
It all starts with an acquisition, but most people don't understand how private equity firms actually find and buy companies. Devin sits down with Ryan Milligan to break down the mechanics of deal sourcing, banker-led processes and direct founder relationships. From the early days of rotary…
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How to Survive Raising Your First Private Equity Fund
Raising your first private equity fund is humbling. Like Lloyd Dobler holding a boombox outside an LP's window, you need to be committed and creative. It took us over 150 meetings and almost 2 years to get to the finish line. One LP fell asleep mid-pitch. We got stranded in a monsoon in...
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How do you start a private equity firm from scratch?
In this episode, Devin and Jim rewind to 2014 — and a $12 bottle of Cabernet at the Macaroni Grill — where they hatched the plan to leave their firm and build a new private equity firm from nothing. This is the insider's guide they wish they'd had.
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Private Equity Predictions 2026
It's our annual Predictions episode (and by annual, we mean just the years we remember to record one). Devin and Jim offer their hot takes on fundraising, liquidity, why artificial general intelligence (AGI) is still years away, and whether or not the world is officially "over-softwared." PE...
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Software Holdcos in Australia
Devin sits down with Funcast listener and Terem Capital CEO Scott Middleton. Terem is a software holdco in Australia, and Scott shares his strategy, investment criteria, sourcing approach, and the difference between US holdcos.
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AI-First (Whatever That Means): Hiring Product & Engineering Leaders with Sean Lucq from SPMB
Jim sits down with Sean Lucq (Partner at SPMB Executive Search) to talk about the art of hiring senior engineering and product leaders—especially now that every job description on Earth has "AI" duct-taped to it. We get into why sticking with one great search firm beats "random recruiter…
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Modernizing Legacy Systems: The CNX Journey from Green Screens to Great Screens
In this episode of The Private Equity Funcast, Jim Milbery sits down with Jennifer Nelson (CEO of Izzy Software), Richard Malone, Rob Swanson (co-founders of CNX Corporation), and Iwona Montgomery to talk about CNX's nearly 30-year glow-up — from green screens to the cloud. After almost three...
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Marionettes, Metrics, and Medieval French Lit: A Conversation on UX and Life with Leah Reich
Jim and Leah dive headfirst into a whirlwind chat that covers everything from the fine distinctions between puppets and marionettes to the equally delicate art of building great user experiences. Leah shares her fascinating journey from a Medieval French literature course at Berkeley to leading…
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Exit-Ready Marketing: Shiv Narayanan on Making Marketing Measurable in PE-Backed Companies
Paul Stansik sits down with Shiv Narayanan—founder of How to SaaS and author of Exit-Ready Marketing—to break down what most private equity firms and portfolio companies get wrong about marketing. They explore how to make marketing a measurable, scalable lever for value creation, from diligence…
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Continuation Vehicles 101 with Houlihan Lokey
Devin sits down with Sameer Shamsi, Co-Head of Houlihan Lokey's GP Led Secondaries group. We cover everything you want to know about continuation vehicles, but were afraid to ask (or too dumb to ask?). What is the difference between LP-led and GP-led? How should GPs talk to their LPs about it?…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Your favorite GP's favorite podcast. Occasionally insightful, always entertaining. Deep dives into how private equity works, what happens after the deal closes, how money gets raised, and how companies get bought and sold. And everything in between with healthy doses of pop culture and humor. Straight from the team at ParkerGale Capital.For educational and entertainment purposes only. Not investment advice. Additional disclosures at www.parkergale.com.
HOSTED BY
Jim Milbery and Devin Mathews
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Private Equity FunCast have?
Private Equity FunCast currently has 319 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Private Equity FunCast about?
Your favorite GP's favorite podcast. Occasionally insightful, always entertaining. Deep dives into how private equity works, what happens after the deal closes, how money gets raised, and how companies get bought and sold. And everything in between with healthy doses of pop culture and humor....
How often does Private Equity FunCast release new episodes?
Private Equity FunCast publishes regularly with 319 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Private Equity FunCast?
You can listen to Private Equity FunCast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Private Equity FunCast?
Private Equity FunCast is created and hosted by Jim Milbery and Devin Mathews.
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