Charlie Tafoya: Trust, Data and the Next Ten Years

I was up for VP at Pantheon, so definitely had private equity career track laid out right before me. But yeah, I ultimately quit on a Friday. I actually got married on Saturday and then started coding literally on Monday. So my father-in-law didn't know that I had left my private equity job at the altar. - This is modern capital. Conversations with the people accelerating the next generation of private markets. I'm Mark Andrew. The infrastructure of private markets is taking shape. Let's unpack it. - Charlie Tafoya has already lived a few of the stories everyone in private markets is talking about right now. He was financing data centers as a banker well before they were an asset class. He invested in secondaries at Pantheon when the whole market was less than $8 billion. It's $170 billion now. And what he saw from that seat was LPs coming out of 2008, demanding data they'd never asked for before and the technology infrastructure that failed to keep up. So he quit private equity on a Friday, got married on Saturday and started learning to code on Monday. Ten years later, chronograph sits between the largest LPs and GPs in the world and the same shift is now arriving in private credit. Charlie has watched this movie before and now he's raised $143 million. So we'll do it again. Please enjoy this conversation with Charlie Tafoya. - Charlie, welcome to the Modern Capital Podcast. - Thank you for having me, good to be here. - It is very good to have you here. We've been working on this for a little while because back in June, congratulations to you, Charlie. You announced a very big raise of $140 million from several of your existing investors as well as a new investor in sixth street growth, which is a terrific firm and certainly an active one in private credit and across the capital markets. Tell us what $140 million lets you do a chronograph over the next couple of years. - Yeah, 143 to be precise for whose counting to be sure their LPs are actually. But no, thank you again for having me. It's great to be here and yeah, I apologize. Ultimately, we had to reschedule our prior conversation. You know, I would say one of the most uncomfortable things about doing a deal is having this not only pressure, but ultimately somewhat of a secret and we tend to be pretty open people here. So I do apologize for that. - That's right, we had it scheduled. I think the week before you announced it and then we had to reschedule. So this worked out a lot better this way. - No, well, we did say internally, I think it may be more compelling in the end, but no, we're extremely excited. I mean, one, just incredibly grateful and proud, frankly, that our existing investors are continuing on the path. We've had such a phenomenal experience with summit partners, Carlisle and Nasdaq, as our investors, starting with Carlisle and Nasdaq in 2019. In 2022, really as the overall SaaS environment was beginning to change, we brought in summit partners and I can't speak highly enough of that relationship. They have just been phenomenal advisors, mentors, just everything you really want in an investor-investee relationship. I mean, certainly the challenges, they hold us to very rigorous quantitative standards, but in the end, I think we're all focused on the same thing, which is fundamental value creation in the right way. - Yeah, as we entered into the current year, I think we were coming up on 10 years, thinking about where the world was heading in the world of AI, and it felt like, once again, the right time to do something, I would just know we've actually avoided at fundraising throughout our overall journey here, just having been private equity investors ourselves. I think coming into this and having bootstrapped it for several years, we have a lot of costs discipline. We grant employees very healthy equity, and I think we're sensitive to dilution on their behalf. And just broadly, I think we felt that raising spend wasn't the right model for this asset class and trying to serve this asset class, given that we never wanted to put our risk, the fundamentals of the business itself, meaning that we didn't want to be dependent on financing to grow in the right way, with very strong views on how the technology would develop over the course of years. So all this to say, our original thesis really played out, frankly, almost precisely, including in terms of the underlying, and underwriting that we did, underwriting, underlying model, excuse me, and underwriting that we did from the outset. And in short, it just felt, again, like a natural opportunity to sort of pick our heads up and assess the market. So yeah, ultimately, we ran a very limited process. I'm sure there were even some clients of ours who may have been disappointed, but I think we were very focused in who we felt we needed, or wanted to, I should say, partner with, given the success of our existing investor group. And ultimately, six tree was, frankly, just a perfect fit in terms of their market position, the way they think about investing in technology, their conviction on the space, their thesis as a whole for what's needed in the space, and it was sort of exactly aligned with what we wanted to do. And to put it directly, I think we were just exceedingly impressed with the quality of their diligence, everything from as you can imagine, and in the middle of the Sasaka lips, and the cute focus on AI, but more the amount of just broader thoughtfulness with which they approached the market diligence as a whole, again, really stood out, and again, we were disillated until I get a deal done with them. - Yeah, anyone who hasn't listened to Alan Waxman's commentary on the current state of private credit, Alan Waxman being the CEO of Sixth Street itself. His commentary on the current state of private credit this year is, I think, essential listening for those who haven't listened. It's easy to Google him. You said something very interesting there that it's, you alluded to the fact that if a company was raising too quickly, or pursuing investors for their own sake, if I could put it that way, would actually potentially put the business at some harm, or not the optimal, the suboptimal. Can you speak a bit more to that? Why is sort of focus on the wrong type of fundraising might impair this specific type of business? - Well, I don't even know if it's specific to this business. I think, in general, right, if you get on the raise and spend sort of treadmill, again, you are fundamentally putting yourself at risk, either in that you're accepting evaluation, frankly, it was probably beyond what you were able to achieve in terms of realistic growth, and then as a result, having to do down-rounds and those sorts of things, or frankly, the market conditions turn as they have. I mean, in our journey here, we've experienced some major disruptions. COVID certainly was a very scary moment. The interest rate change environment was, again, another meaningful moment when we got a deal done. And then, of course, the turbulence this year that we've seen both with regard to software valuations, but also some of the geopolitical events that are occurring. These are very acute moments of stress for market participants as a whole. But one thing I've always promised our employees is, we do things conservatively, such that this is your safe harbor in the store. We will never put a risk, the fundamentals of our business. And we say that obviously not only to our employees, whom we're responsible for, but our clients as well have entrusted us with their data and critical processes. So you can call it old school conservatism, but we're ones that believe in, basically, living within your means. And it's not to say there are times of J-curve investment, where you may dip into a bit of burn. But I think we've always been very thoughtful and intentional about, when are we leaning in versus not, how to ensure that we're never caught in the situation where we're dependent on market conditions to have a going concern in essence. And just more broadly, I think part of our culture is just maintaining overall discipline with regard to spend and every other aspect of working at chronographs. So the thing I generally ask for is, guys, we want you to be 8% less comfortable here, meaning we're not gonna buy you free lunch every day. You're not gonna take black car overs. We're gonna have a pretty firm cap that applies to everybody in whatever hotel expenses. So again, if you want to optimize those things, go for it. But what I promise you is that we're gonna grant you equity that's real, that it crews value every single year. And if you continue to perform, we'll bring you even more. And to the point, we'll prove that out with liquidity over time as frankly we have. - 8% less comfortable. I like that. - That's our ask. - Hey, you said comfortable for five extra returns. Let's call it. - Fantastic. First on the SaaS box lips there, so you were fundraising through it, through the thick of it. It's probably four or five months into it now. And while it impacted every SaaS business off the top, now we're starting to see the re-emergence of winners and losers. What characterizes, well, first of all, as you were undertaking this, the fundraiser process through this SaaS box lips, did you find that investors could start discerning, which companies were going to win from AI and which were going to lose? Were we that far along? And then second, answer the question, which ones are going to win and which ones are not going to win through AI's impact on SaaS businesses? - Yeah, so I think we once again had absolutely the worst timing possible, frankly, with regard to when we launched our process, we actually launched it in January and then come February, the latest cloud models released, you know, you really saw that sort of moment of, just realization with regard to the fact that again, it seemed like we were approaching this limit on capabilities and then there was a step change and it did cause everybody to sort of pick their heads up and then say, wow, this is advancing faster than seemed even a few months ago. So we were not, in fact, far enough along and I would say the broader state of market conversation for there to be any discernment. I would say we were really navigating, frankly, peak fear in terms of where this is heading, where the market was trading and software specifically. I don't think people had yet worked out their framework or sort of had a differentiate at the time. It was just a broader narrative that all software is going way down in essence or prone to disruption. I think for us, part of our advantage is, frankly, that we have had a very clear thesis throughout on how AI is continuing to evolve. I would give, you know, just absolute credit to my co-founder, again, Michael Bridge, who is our president and CTO, Who? frankly, has been living to the day of the edge of AI. By that, I mean, literally the day at a cloud code, 1.0 was released, like he was in it. We were rolling it out on some of our dev laptops, et cetera. So I think he's done a great job of just being part of, again, the conversation from the outside. I mean, just as an aside, he's an incredibly impressive guy with multiple degrees from MIT and Stanford MBA. So to be sure, there's a reason that I love having a co-founder. But in any case, I think, in short, we just had of you that, hey, the capabilities are incredible. We didn't necessarily predict this sort of step change in capability. But there's still limits to it, right? And I think now you've seen the market sort of realize, OK, this is a tool, like all tools, it has limitations and certain flaws. There's a way in which you can think about it. But again, it's not going to be universally impacting companies in the same way. So all that's to say, I think we were able to articulate that in a much clearer way, I think, during diligence and throughout the conversations. And that was really what saw us through that moan of, again, market stress, and ultimately allowed us to get a deal done. Frankly, with a number of options, I mean, we had a kind of a pretty broad range of options available to us. And again, we felt that that six-treat was the right partner. But you have to comment more in my view of your question. But let me-- Well, I would say what seems to be emerging and makes a ton of sense is that businesses that serve as a system of record are those that are a current value so that those-- almost-- well, clothes favorite term these days seems to be load-bearing. If you speak to clothes a lot, it loves the term load-bearing. And you could argue that we're building an infrastructure of private markets. And so the companies that are load-bearing, when meaning they're just going to serve the data to the AI, are going to be most valuable. So this is a good segue, I think, Charlie. For those, I think most of our listeners, of course, will be very familiar with chronographs business. But for those who aren't, give us a quick encapsulation of exactly what you do and why effectively you are building a system of record in many cases for the private capital markets. Yes, so quickly, chronograph provides data management, valuations, and analytics technology for institutional private capital investors. Our business is fairly unique in the half, exactly half of our clients and they are our limited partners. The other half are general partners. So fundamentally, we have really two product lines, one for LPs, one for GPs, with the primary distinction there being, are you a proactive aggregator of information? Are you a general partner going out to portfolio companies and doing all the things you need to do to enforce your information rights and consume that data that then report out? Or are you a recipient of information? Are you more of a limited partner? Of course, you're just asked for a scan all this, but an LP does, again, receiving information in a very broad way, but without quite the same depth. So I would say in short, for LPs, the challenge is one more of reconciliation and analytics at scale, meaning, you know, how do I understand my portfolio, all the fundamental drivers, every aspect of structure, starting with that ultimate commitment all the way down to the porcos with all of the structure you can see in between whether vehicle is securities, again, the commitment vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. Or are you a GP, where you're thinking about, again, how am I understanding the performance of this asset, how am I managing and governing data over time, including new forms of data, right? If, again, SVB is gonna say go under, and suddenly, you need to understand like where my cash balance is held, that's a good example, is to something that we didn't necessarily predict as a use case, but certainly we see clients undertake various forms of certain new data management every day. And to the point here, we're in an industry that is highly regulated, that has fiduciary obligations and ultimately is audited on a regular basis. And so I would just stress the point around governance. This is a system of record where it's not only, what is the value, but who can change that value? How has it changed over time? How do you resolve conflicts when you have multiple sources of information, et cetera? It's really that those sort of latter questions that we focus on in particular, which I think, frankly, has been a big part of our differentiation over time. - So you as the founder of Chronograph, what year was it founded? - 2016. - 2016, so 10 years. So congratulations on that as well. And tell us, take us back, Charlie. Now, back to Charlie, the founder, in preparing for this interview, I read about your background contextually. People ask me a lot, how I got into private markets and so forth. I didn't work in finance. I worked in government in a finance ministry. And before that, I studied economics and international relations. So it was very heartening to see your similar background at ASU. Tell us about your youth, where you grew up, and then what you studied. - Yeah, so I grew up on a farm in New Mexico about the furthest thing from Wall Street. You could possibly imagine. Definitely, extremely proud of my heritage and upbringing. We were, my parents built the house that we were born in as an Adobe house. - How long had they been on that homestead, if you will? - Well, really since they got married, but my family's been in New Mexico for almost 500 years. So we can completely go back that farm, a Hispanic by heritage. So I can imagine in many ways a more idyllic upbringing in the sense of it was kind of a DIY lifestyle. But on the farm, my dad in 1991 got me a computer. Both my parents were actually educators in terms of their day jobs. And so they believed very much not only in education, but my dad in particular, I think just was always fascinated by technology writ large and really kind of enabled me to lean in. - What kind of computer was it, Charlie? - Gosh, I'd have to look. - I mean, my dad had an Atari in the late '80s. I remember having an Atari in the MS-DOS kind of games that they actually got. - Certainly it was DOS based, I can tell you. - Yeah, so yeah, DOS at age four, call it. - Wow. - But no, I think I grew up as a result with on the early internet, really the early internet itself was sort of my t-hole into the wider world. And so I was just fascinated by everything kind of beyond the limits of our fence and essence. And so as a result, as I was thinking about college, I just wanted to go to basically the biggest place possible coming from a very small town. So that's how I ended up at Arizona State where I got a scholarship. I was very proud and very proud to leave home. And the 120,000 kids and this is sort of peak of the housing bubble in college 2005. And for me, I might as well have been in Dubai 'cause it was just something I never experienced before. But in short, it was very fascinated with the wider world. I had a sense I wanted to, ultimately, the technology executive, I mean, this is certainly before it, became a trendy thing to do. But I also felt like I wanted to ensure understand the world. So I studied international law and institutions, specifically along with international relations, folks more on traditional matters. And I think that was a great degree in that it was interdisciplinary, more akin to sort of a PPE degree, but it gave me an ability to write really well, I felt. It certainly gave me a grounding and how to think about not only politics, but really to study of leadership and leaders over time. And then, of course, economics. Long story short though, I think it was the latter piece that attracted me quite a bit, which is to say, not only economics, but financial economics in particular. And I felt that, okay, if I wanna eventually be, in fact, a tech executive, the best way to get experience would be to go to Wall Street and learn business. So that was how I sort of set out to pursue Wall Street, having had some other entrepreneurial ventures during college. But I gotta say, I didn't learn a damn thing about business on Wall Street, but I certainly learned finance. So I'll pause there before continuing on. - Well, we will keep going on that, but I do wanna make a comment on this institutional background at LSE. I did a degree in economic history. And I studied what was called the new institutional economics. And there's a fellow named Douglas North, who won a Nobel Prize on this topic. And it explains the economic variability of different national economies over time. And I think it doesn't really effectively, but this kind of, I'm an institution's geek, Charlie, and perhaps you hard to, but here we are working amid institutions in their fashion. And it seems to me, like, I think I draw on this a ton that what's happening is as we build out the rules and standards and AI applications in private market, it's really the institutionalization of a new category of private capital at scale, which is ironic, given institutions were the first players, and now you have these high net worth and more wealth channel participants coming in, and that requires an institutionalization of the category. So it's a bit of a play on terms and words, but I think it's a really interesting background and frame to apply to this space of private capital itself. - No, 100% agree. I mean, I'm incredibly grateful for my background and sort of ability, I would say to understand the broader context in which we operate or clients operate, et cetera. I mean, I'll say this very clearly, I fundamentally believe in the value of private capital. I think it's a great thing for the world, the ultimate beneficiaries with the current system we have are, again, folks like my parents, teachers, public servants. I mean, that. - Private capital is public capital, but we forget that private capital is held up to be like the private equity managers in Patagonia vests on Wall Street. That is actually not fully accurate 'cause the manning they're managing belongs to public, the public at large. - 100%, and I think that's something that we never forget here at Chronograph, right? This is ultimately to benefit those folks, and I wouldn't say, like let's be real, we're not saving humanities, right? But at the same time, again, I do believe in globalization, I believe in the flow of capital and ideas for the betterment of the world. And I think if you look at global poverty rates and everything else that is validated in essence by our experience. So yes, there's problems with globalization. Yes, we're living in this moment of populism, et cetera. But I do think, frankly, financial globalization is alive and well and rightly so. I think it's leading in short to better living conditions for humanity as a whole. So getting a bit deep at the moment. - Yeah. - Again, I think we do value, again, kind of the perspective that we have here. I think it is a bit deep and maybe a bit. It's not trying to be self-congratulatory in any way for those of us working in the industry. But I mean, I think it's just an important element to draw back to is that, you know, I was interviewing Luke Flemer at MSCI and asked him what Henry Fernandez said to recruit him from Goldman Sachs to MSCI. And Henry's comment had been that if you improve the information infrastructure of private capital, you can impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people through better allocation decisions and better just infrastructure generally to improve allocation. [BLANK_AUDIO] returns, et cetera, for a lot of different sources of our distributors of capital at scale. So I do think it's an important message to continually remind the industry. And certainly you're seeing, I think, private capital itself be rebranded by a lot of its new leadership these days as it starts targeting a broader swath of the population itself. So by that, you touched on a bit of the entrepreneurial adventures you were undertaking at ASU, Charlie, I think they're deeply relevant. You weren't just studying politics. You were actually, whether it was at the time or just after at a company called Knowledge Board, I think, as CTO, so tell us about that early entrepreneurial adventure before you then measure away to Wall Street and the transition of those first few years into New York. Yeah. So I think I've always had the entrepreneur bug as well for whatever reason. I mean, I started a recording studio in high school, I've actually produced, like, I think it's 28 full, like, the albums, which I can say. So-- Produced 28 albums. Indeed, yeah. What genre? Like rock? Or what? I'm a big metalhead. I mean, country, reggaeton, salsa, metal. I don't think somebody just meeting you, Charlie, would necessarily guess you're a metalhead. Oh, I know. It's a-- it keeps it deep inside, but not just a metalhead, but certainly high school is primarily one. But all genres, I mean, one of them was the number one Christian band in northern Mexico. One was, yeah, just high school punk band, but yeah, in short, that was something I combined a lot of my passions generally, which is to say, you know, I was using Pro Tools and, you know, computers, therefore, and also build web sites on the side for the bands, et cetera. So I was, you know, I just sort of came up making my own money, got to college, and I was only met one of my key mentors, Professor David Jacobson, and he was the head of the school school studies where I was studying, fascinating guy, I won't go into, you know, incredible detail about him. Just really fascinating character who's always been very interested and sort of on the ground. He's not just an academic. I think his career has been one of turning ideas into actual real world change if not businesses. And in short, we saw an opportunity to actually bring a form of data management analytics to collaborations between, in fact, the public sector and private researchers in particular. So that was the first, I was CTO of that business, Dr. Jacobson was the CEO, I can't say, by any venture sass metric, it was a enormous business or great success, but it did actually pay for college, and that was sort of my college job. And so on that measure alone, not graduating with student debt was actually a great outcome and grateful not only to him, but to my parents as well, of course, who helped, uh, helped enable all of that. But yeah, that was my first experience truly with technology to your question. I had some amazing experiences. I got to go to Langley because we actually did a project with the CIA. We did a number of, in fact, sort of, I would say politically or socially oriented projects on the whole. So that really reinforced the drive for me, ultimately, to go learn business, as I said before, so to speak, and then ultimately depart to do something on my coast that just really has been a deep passion throughout. I mean, as you speak, it's almost a focus on how complex institutions organize and protect and distribute information, which is directly tied to what you do today. And then tell us a little bit about that move into New York because I understand it involved a topic you were focused on as an investment bank analyst on data centers, which have become incredibly topical today, which will return to a little later in the conversation as we discuss private credit and its role in the economy going forward. And then of course, moving into Pantheon and some of the role there, which directly precedes your, your work at chronograph. Yeah. So since this is a podcast, can't see, but behind me are a bunch of deal toys, the number of which are data centers. But long story short, I actually was a summer analyst at Morgan Stanley in tech investment banking in 2008, had a really great experience, actually worked on like the Rosetta Stone IPO, which is one of the deal toys back there. And yeah, I was, I remember 2008 on Wall Street, would have been quite a time. It was. I mean, the general sentiment was, Hey, bear services behind this. It's all upside from here. I remember that June, July 2008. So yeah, a little bit, a little bit off, I would say in the end, not forecast, but, but now it was truly fascinating time because we did have a sense that there was something momentous beginning to occur, but then I think just by virtue of the network that we kind of naturally develop as an intern here, we had, yeah, just a really interesting perspective on what became the global financial crisis. But fast forward to September, actually lost my offer when Lehman collapsed, Morgan Stanley was, was under pressure and downsizing. So I had to re-recru, frankly, from a state school, which is a very much a non-Hurge school during the depths of the financial crisis, which was a very tall order. So speaking of that network, I'll forever be grateful to, you know, the folks who took my call or said down with me for coffee, unfortunately was able to land a position, Merrill, which became Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and fell by kind of random happenstance into the real estate group. That was where there was a slot and an offer and I took what I was, what I was given and grateful for it. Yeah, I would say couldn't have fell into an industry group that was more dissimilar to tech. I learned a lot about real estate, but one of the principal learnings was the folks who do real estate, absolutely love real estate, and I appreciate it, but that's not my personality. But as you said, yeah, one of the byproducts was actually, as a tech guy, I got to actually do a bunch of data center deals just by virtue of raising my hand and indicating some interest alone. So that was great. Ultimately though, one of the other things about real estate is it tends to sort of categorize or frankly pigeonhole you in your early career path. And that was what I could sense was starting to happen as I was thinking about moving on to private equity. And so in short, that was actually how I sort of fell into secondary's PE. I wasn't getting a lot of looks outside of just RE opportunities, and I met ultimately tampion through the general recruiting circuit. And I didn't know anything about secondary's. I think that at the time I joined total GMV in the market was like eight billion. It's about 170 billion today. So this esoteric corner, but immediately I was fascinated just given the perspective really that secondary's investors have on private capital markets. So I think that experience was phenomenal in that not only did I get to see really the explosion of a new segment of private equity and private capital that again has become very much a critical tool in fact for institutional investors, but I got to see it coming out of the financial crisis where more than just learning how to underwrite a fund, I would say learn the business of private equity, you have these new and sort of exotic forms of investment like GP stakes, they can be had secondary's in the first place, the rise of co investments. And short, there was new options available to investors. And a lot of that was driven by normative shifts in information availability coming out of 2008. So in short, LPs in 2008 demanded new forms of data on a more regular basis, more than just hey, give me your pcaps. Now it was demonstrated some fundamental performance figures, disclosure, evaluation, methodologies, et cetera, that in turn enabled secondary's and I think and having it in investing for a few years, it occurred to me that hey, there's a broader opportunity here given that the needs are the same to every institution, but for when I could see in my seat, it really felt like the available technology was fundamentally lacking. And as a computer nerd, I think we saw I saw directly sort of a way to weave it all together in a way that today is actually a chronograph. And here we sit in the late summer of 2026 and if there are two topical issues in the world of private capital, they are data centers and secondaries. There may be a few others of equivalent standing, but not many. And so it's interesting to think about how career intertwines. I want to talk a bit about that taxonomy and you mentioned real estate, of course, and real assets. And one of the topics that I find fascinating about private capital these days is this incredible investment flowing into the industrial base called data centers, robotics, new applications of technology. But often in Mark Rowan is certainly on the record about this in recent comments that they're lacks a real taxonomy for declaring what this category is. I've taken to calling it industrial capital of it in some of our events, but you know, you lived it in dealing with real estate expertise and these people who you worked alongside would have been incredible experts at real estate. And yet all of a sudden it's a technology sector too when sometimes these are novel assets now and they have VC behind them and now major institutional investors are starting to explore this sector. Sometimes it gets called real assets. That's not quite right either. Our data centers and robotics and drones going to fit into the infrastructure asset class. Well, not quite. Can you speak a bit from your perspective over working on this for a few decades now, Charlie, like how you view the taxonomy of some of these emerging capital-intense sectors and what LPs would think about them as they start looking at allocating into them? So I mean, just at a high level, right, all these say this data centers, the reason data centers were able to, in essence, do reconversions is because the fundamental nature of the revenue streams were in essence, you know, leasing, right? It was physical space properties. Yes, you have power considerations. You had things like interconnection revenues, meaning like you'd plug two servers in together to do what it sounds like you may have been doing, which is sort of not so few. But the revenue stream itself, more resembled, again, real estate, which is a hybrid asset class, right? It doesn't have the, it does have, excuse me, the equity appreciation potential of equities that it has the coupon of fixed income. So in short, it is sort of in between. I don't know that I would venture to say, to characterize sort of the current wave of data center investment in one way or another. I think this actually touches on something that's fundamental to chronograph on how we approach it, even in terms of the analytics that we provide for, which is to say it's subjective. There is no actual truth here. And I think that's actually a healthy market at work by that. What do you mean by that subject that doesn't, yeah, explain that further? Yeah. So I mean, let's just think of Uber, right? This is sort of a settled question at this point. But if I'm a private markets investor and I have the opportunity to invest in pre-IPO Uber, my view of valuation is going to swing wildly depending on, do I view it as a the SaaS company. do I view it as sort of a services company or do I view it as some sort of other travel support company. There is no objective truth there. There is no right answer right. Different investors can take a different view even with regard to the fundamental categorization of a given asset. And this is something that for our LP clients we actually reveal directly, meaning that we will show you two GPs that classify assets differently. We'll also allow you as an unlimited partner to assert your own view and then again contrast that against those GP categorizations. And so all that's to say, in fact, I think that's part of the value that we provide for, which is to say it is about data and totality. It is about those details where you can actually reveal, hey, these two investors again categorize this asset similarly, or sorry, differently, despite the similarities in every other sort of component of disclosure. And so again, I think ensure that is why I say that's a healthy market because that is what allows true price discovery. That's what allows folks to realize alpha and differentiation is when they have that insight or that edge or that emotive thinking that allows them to see an asset in a slightly different light and realize it's true potential for whatever it may be. Obviously, that's not in every case, but it's in a significant percentage of cases such that to the point, it's a core feature in paradigm within our own platform today. Outgrowing number of cases is very interesting. You used Uber as an example because Travis Kaloneck, the founder of Uber has now come out of stealth. People thought he was working on a soup kitchens company which sounded a little strange, not soup kitchens, cloud kitchens. And now he's come out of stealth with a company called Adams and it turns out these cloud kitchens were just the first part of a vision that is going to be unifying the physical world as a sort of digital computer. And I'll encourage anyone to go and listen to some of his recent podcast discussions because he's now converging things like autonomous vehicles on mining sites and autonomous excavators and manufacturing facilities that are fully AI driven into a unified vision for a company. And so how to classify that. And then to start thinking about the different revenue streams and the different financing models that would exist, for example, for an autonomous crew on a mining site. So for example, you then have potential leasing of the hardware and the robotics of the robots working on the mining site, but also the data stream existing in association with that. And who owns that? Does the mine own it or does Adams own it? And so all these things tie back to valuations as these investors start making capital decisions into these types of businesses that are quite different than any mining company in the past. That's for sure. One practical question I'd have for you on that is, are you seeing some of the VC, we're seeing sort of more tie ups between our emerging types between venture capital and for example, private credit because you might finance the IP through VC and then use like traditional methods of equipment financing on some of the robotics. I think this is all very nascent, by the way. So I'm kind of, I'm not expecting significant answers yet, are you starting to see some of these types of VCs join the platform too who are tying up with more traditional GPs? I don't think we would highlight that as a trend. I mean, we actually don't compete, I would say broadly within DC, I do, I do want to qualify that by saying, if you are in a fully institutional private equity oriented firm, I think of any of the, the mega, mega VCs that is fully in scope before sort of the, the much longer tail VCs that are served by a whole range of more sort of dedicated solutions. I would just say you're probably, we're less present again in that sort of long tail. That is partly the result of just the companies themselves not generating as much data and institutions not expecting as much data, right? One of the reasons I think I often tell LPs who at times will question VC data availability within their portfolio, it's like, well, hey guys, like these companies don't even have a CFO, much less like even a VP of finance often. So they're, you're looking at, yes, the handful metrics in fact that the companies themselves are able to produce. So all this to say, given the scale of data that we help administrative, given the demands of institutional clients who have real needs around institutional data management and their foreign analytics and valuations, et cetera, that tends to be our sweet spot. So in short, I don't have much perspective on that question other than to know that from a future perspective, it was interesting to me, even in your question. So we view the needs of the Cs is actually quite similar to credit investors in that right now. We're actually making a big push into private credit with some great success. They know one of the things that we needed to do that proceeded that was just further fidelity at the security instrument level, meaning that you care more often about what particular security you're in, are you in preferred series A, are you in a safe or whatever it may be? If I'm a venture investor, I think it's obvious that you're a credit investor. You care very much for a secure year and, but in short, that was where we actually needed to do again, just some work to enhance that level of fidelity within our platform to then push further in the direction of credit and actually as a result, we think VC as well. But yeah, just to be clear, the soft bank vision fund was our second GP client. So we have served venture from the outside. It just tends to be more of the mega end of things. That's very interesting. Okay. So just before you founded Chronograph, you're at Pantheon, you're working in a secondary space. I want to touch on this. I understand you went back to school again, to Flatiron, which is sort of high end mid career type of option in Manhattan. Tell us about that experience. I mean, many would not leave finance to go and dive back into understanding software and code for 14 hours a day, but you did Charlie. So explain that to us. Well, let me just stress it was a big, big series of life changes. I mean, I was up for VP at Pantheon. So definitely had through the, continued performance, right? Private equity career track laid out right before me. But I ultimately quit on a Friday. So my father and mom didn't know that I had left my private equity job at the altar. My plan. Did you do this on this birth moment? I mean, obviously you had enrolled in Flatiron and so forth, but I'm curious about that sequence of events of Friday, Saturday, Monday. That's an incredible little stretch. Yeah, definitely, definitely incredible. Now, I'm just forever grateful to my wife, Maria Victoria, who incredible woman, former bank consultant, she was a venture capitalist and then also my VP of products. So she also brought sort of a multi tool threat, if you will. And she was the one who really just said, now's the time to do it. And even you and you have conviction. So we'll have weekly IC. Did you have the vision at this time to start chronograph? Was it something where you were going? Okay. So you were going back to study and understand the technology. And you had the relationship with Michael or was that still to come? Now, once again, grateful to my wife, because I actually met bridge, my co founder, Michael bridge through his wife as well. So our wives colluded in essence to bring us together. She was also doing consulting at the time of my wife. They had worked on a project together and they both had slightly nerdy boyfriends working in private equity who were also computer scientists. And so in short, she like, you should get together. And as men do, we we punted on the question for some time. But ultimately, we, we did, we got it started at a coffee shop. We read to me for coffee and kind of just, we ended up talking all day about technology, private markets, where this all was heading. And in the end, it turned into the coffee shop itself converted into a bar like the end of what's evening came. And we decided to toast with some some whiskey. So we ordered actually both Japanese whiskey and actually right behind me is a bottle of Yanazaki that bridge, just got me actually this elevator 10 year at the end of that initial meeting. But yeah, in short, that was where it started. And again, due credit to both of our wives, both of whom are names Maria and brought us together. So 10 years later, you're having that conversation in 2016 about the state of private markets and private capital and where it's going today. It's 2026. Let's just have that conversation. Where is private capital going next? I'll set this up potentially. You mentioned soft bank. We've talked about sixth street. We've talked about some of the majors in VC. It seems to me that a lot of these brands are just becoming capital providers. And the asset class distinctions we've discussed in the past, VC versus private equity, growth, equity, etc. are breaking down a little bit and people are becoming multi-purpose providers to companies who are growing incredibly fast who need both equity and credit and hybrid solutions. But what is your view on this, Charlie? Well, you have the sort of fundamental problem or challenge for the industry as a whole of the entire asset base historically has been built on defined benefit plans. For our opening, these are public pension plans and providers to retirees who have the ability to invest for the long term. But if you look at the state of public finances, I mean, certainly looking at the national debt here in the United States, it's unclear how stable defined benefit as a whole is going to be moving ahead. So I think there's this natural and organic imperative to expand beyond into defined contribution, be that high net worth or ultimately retail access isn't true north. Further, just as observer of the market, I mean, I want to invest in PE, right? I would love to have the option of having access to the asset class. I mean, frankly, now is a successful executive I do. But again, not until recently did I, whatsoever. And so all this to say, it's a asset class with differentiated returns, we should collectively seek to enable participation in that. And there's this opportunity to continue to diversify. But I don't think private markets will or should look like public markets. I mean, if you look at the current composition, retail is sort of percentage of the overall AUM basis, something around 50 bips and public markets is 25%. So that's all to say, you don't have to assume it's going to go to 25%, but anything more than 50 basis points, again, it's going to result in fairly significant AUM growth for the asset class as a whole. So all as to say, I think some of the regulatory changes that we've seen that enable and encourage access are appropriate, I think the market itself has done a good job of actually figuring out what's the right level disclosure on what cadence. In this case, right, though, you're dealing with sophisticated counter parties who can agree contractually to enable that. But in short, I think you have the right conditions generally for continued growth in the asset class. Given that it has been very successful in generating alpha above what public markets have been able to demonstrate. So in short, the capital should be there. I think the historical return to there. Yes, liquidity is challenged at the moment, but I don't view that as going as an indefinite condition. I mean, at some point, right, like there will be necessarily a unlocking of liquidity, based by nothing else, by virtue of the fact that you have so much dry powder on the sidelines. So what that will likely result in this more, you know, nap to naptrade, meaning from one GP to another. But I can tell you the secondary sky, like, that's not a bad thing, just because a company doesn't go public. It doesn't mean that that's sort of fundamentally bad for the LP. What it does mean actually is an LP is now you have an opportunity to be more thoughtful around exposure to that asset, be it in the form of, again, co-invest if you can secure that or just in general, closer monitoring of of GPs who who are buying assets from another GP where you may have the data history over time. And it's sure if I'm an LP, and actually, I can understand that broader history over just one investment life cycle. And in fact, extend that over many. That to me actually may give me more comfort and sort of risk insight on my portfolio than not. And so again, I don't view it as fundamentally bad thing. So all that's to say, I don't know, you know, specifically what the timeline is, but if I look at all the fundamentals, I think in short, there's just continued conditions for success. And again, I do think that as mentioned, private capital is a good thing for the world. So I'm pleased to say that. There are those who would argue that those excess returns that private capital has generated over the past several decades for institutions were because of the illiquidity premium. And so considering folks like your parents, educators in New Mexico, let's call it for the average investor in the United States or in Europe, who is who is looking to invest in, well, who may be interested in a private markets investment, whether themselves or through their advisor, are the conditions currently in place for that cohort? Let's call it the mass affluent or high net worth category to effectively invest in private capital, for example, on liquidity. We've seen private credit this year and its gates and redemissions are the products in place for that investor cohort to currently access private markets adequately today? Are do we need more product design, better infrastructure, et cetera? Well, part of why I think we're, I hope we can be able to have success is because, yeah, you very much need continued investment in infrastructure data and ultimately productization of components of those by that. I mean, one of the things that stands out to me is, I don't know that an RIA is equipped to advise on manager selection, right? Like, how are they going to differentiate? How are they going to reconcile a stated strategy to an actual demonstrated track record? The industry as a whole, when it comes to, say, retail advisory is actually not well equipped to, I would say, differentiate and ultimately assess managers in the same way that you might be able to add a fund fund or other professional limited partnerships. So that's one aspect that I think, and this is important because so much of the returns come from manager selection on the top quartile returns. Certainly, and I think as well, you want to make sure you're investing in a manager who actually understands their stated segments and sub industries. One of the things that I've seen and observed as a former limited partners where GPs have success, they therefore have bigger funds and they expand focus into sub sectors that they may not have as much familiarity in. And then you see in short returns have come down in essence. So, yeah, I would say RIA and just advisory sort of infrastructure is not there. I don't have a view as to whether that's in the form of some sort of rating system. And I think some of the rating agencies are thinking about this or there's other means that are ultimately enabled, no matter what the solution is with regard to that, where you need proceeding out is data and data infrastructure to distribute that information. So we're, I would say it chronograph more concern with those fundamentals. How are we enabling data exchange between counter parties, whether port coast GPs, GPs to LPs and similar? How do you manage that flow and again, not force frankly artificial standards on it? Because I'm actually sort of anti standards in the industry as a whole, I think it reduces fidelity and specificity in fact. And so how do you maintain that? And again, we have a very specific answer to that in our in our paradigms and data model and similar. And then ultimately, how do you continue to again, move forward the norms of the industry such that there isn't an understanding and the level of comfort around cadence of disclosure and again, depth of disclosure. I think we're in a good place again, institutional institutional. I'm not yet convinced that we have the right, again, normative standards for institutional to retail yet. And by the way, I don't even know if retail investors have the same needs as institutional investors with regard to data transparency and disclosure or if there's something else that's not yet developed with regard to again, what's disclosed and how and how you actually can assess risk in the portfolio, much less take action and realize liquidity drown comfortable. Good for your comment. Given the strength of business you have with major institutions and LPs and institutional LPs, there's a common conception in the industry that there's a tension between the needs and desires of institutional LPs as GP clients and then the wealth channel LPs, if you will, that there's an increasing tension in servicing two sides of the business. Do you see that tension? And what's your perspective on it as the wealth channel rises in private markets? Well, we don't serve a lot of smaller family offices because they actually don't have the same level of data demands that we see. And again, a pension plan or sovereign wealth funds. It is a risk that a GP's focus, for example, is lost on the institutions if they have more and more wealth clients, for example, a small family office. Institutions tend to write the bigger commitment checks. So hard to say. I mean, if anything right, we have seen now, again, what I'll call a normalized standard of disclosure, meaning that on for 70% of the average LPs portfolio, you can have explicit detail on fundamental company levels, financial performance and associated valuation metrics. And in what we provide for comparison to cross those valuations and similar. So I think on the whole, like the industry is in a good state around, again, contractually negotiated and sort of normatively enforced data disclosures. What's unclear to me again is what retail actors actually need or want. You can, it's not clear how much depth is necessary there, given that for a retail investor, yes, you have this sort of sell often if there is an option of liquidity, meaning if we can get to a daily net asset value, and you can have, you know, enable withdrawals. But I'm not sure on an ongoing basis what the right level is. I also don't think it should look like public markets where you're sort of having constant throughput and flow of information. I don't know if that's appropriate, given that one of the great things about private capital is its long-term orientation and ability to write a J curve. So I don't really have a great view on your question. I think technology directly, because it's not clear to me yet what private investors need. I would just go step up and say, what is truly needed ultimately right is information that can feed a model that determines a daily net asset value. So I think in short, you're still likely going to see that owned by institutions in and of themselves who are then, again, packaging and ultimately selling financial products to the retail investors. And I think that's going to certainly be the focus for the next five years as access continues to expand without being sort of the core imperative, which I'm sure some of your other guests have spoken about that. Yeah. My view of this is as the rise of retail in private markets forces better information, disclosure and better information infrastructure, that becomes a good thing for institutions. And it seems to me that that's the that's the path we're on. You said your anti-standard. So let's dive into that. The talk of standards in private markets is ever present. So let's get very specific on exactly what you mean by being anti-standards. I think you're referring to standards of disclosure or reporting a company deal making in the exact same way. But let's get specific and then have that conversation about standards. Yeah. So in general, my view is that the market has iterated to a pretty solid place. Of course, everybody wants more data, right? I mean, who doesn't want more data to help manage risk and hunt for alpha. But more than anything, what we actually see in our client base with regard to sort of data pressure, it's actually timeliness of disclosure rather than depth. Depth again, I think settled in a relatively good place. And by depth, I mean specifics on underlying port codes, including, by the way, what port codes are actually in? I mean, even even 15 years ago, there are cases where they're just sort of be grouped line items of North American investments or what have you side note, you still see this quite a bit in venture. Well, you'll have sort of limited disclosure of call 30% of the portfolio with no fidelity beyond that. So having clarity of like which entities you're actually exposed to to start with, again, generally in a good state, having specific financial performance indicators as well as valuation metrics, generally in a good state, I would say within private capital as a whole. So that generally isn't a good place. I think the thing that the reason that I say I'm anti standards is I don't view sort of trade industry imposed or certainly, you know, regulatory imposed specific, call it column level definitions of what is disclosed is actually being the right answer for disclosure. The reason for that is because in short, companies are different. If we say just report a measure of even revenues, what's the what's the flavor of that revenue? Is it recurring error? Is it, you know, is it? You're talking about private company disclosure rules effectively. Yes. And by this, I mean, what is disclosed from a GP to an LP right? I think that's generally in a good spot. But you have, again, certain trade association saying, well, we'll disclose this measure of profitability. And so if I'm an LP, what I get now is just a generic report that says profit of X or Y. But like, what is the flavor of that? Is that an adjusting bit of figure? Is that a community adjusting bit of figure by removing specificity from the report of, again, produce fidelity? The challenge, yes, is one of reconciliation. across that, but I mean, it was to call a chronograph that's explicitly what we do is give you means of again assessing those differences, highlighting them, but then ultimately reconciling and having comparability, both from what I'll call a top-down and bottoms-up sort of viewpoint. And so again, my view is that the market has solved and is solving this problem and where we've tried to impose standards, either again through regulatory action or through sort of artificial committee design standards, the effect has actually been to again reduce transparency by virtue of either defaulting to less disclosure and just providing only what's requested in the standards, or again, actually at the literal sort of definition model giving you less insight into exactly what is being provisioned and measured. Yeah, that makes sense, Charlie. I do think as we've touched on with this wealth channel dialogue that the sub-docs and documentation process and subscription process is really an area where we will see standards because they're so dramatically different across many different firms. And if you want to start bringing many more and different types of investors on, we need to eliminate some of the paperwork crisis that's emerging underlying some of these, you know, literal subscription processes at GPs, but that's a different element of the of the dialogue than what you're disclosing with or discussing with these disclosure types of rules between GPs and LPs on the company level, firm level. No, it's a fair, fair comment. We deal explicitly with post-sorting investment considerations here at chronographs, a part of this is just perspective bias. But even there, in response, I would say it's likely that they were going to be against sort of gatekeepers and aggregators who will final retail in and they can act in short with the benefit of scale to negotiate specifics with the GPs. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not a complete free market ideologue, frankly. I mean, the market has failings, but here, I think the market on the whole is working pretty dang well and you can call me sort of a Berkian conservative. I believe in small changes one at a time and assess the impact from there in essence. Edmund Berk's first appearance on the Modern Capital podcast. That is nerdy, thank you for that, Charlie. Okay, let's talk about maybe lastly here the elements of private credit because you've worked in secondaries, you've worked across private equity, as you announced your, your raise recently, you purposefully obviously combined it with your focus on a private credit tool that chronograph is offering the market. So explain to us where private credit is today and why you're seeing it as a growth area for the firm. So, I'll comment in this way. I'll say private credit with regard to data disclosure and sort of again, normative standards. All the thing I was just ranting about looks like private equity in fact 15 years ago, which is to say they're the level of norms or low of relatively certainly private equity. So, that's one aspect of this, which is to say LPs are now waking up because of frankly the pressure that that private credit has been under the last couple of months to the need for in fact more transparency and again, baseline levels of information availability. So, we're seeing that drive demand in combination with frankly again, the same conditions we saw on private equity at the outset, which is to say lacking tools. I think penetration of portfolio monitoring solutions within private credit is on the order of three percent or so by our sort of market research. And that compares by the way to call it 40% within the general partner space for private equity. So, still a long way to go, which we love. But again, huge gap on a relative basis. So, we're looking at these conditions saying, okay, LPs are demanding an essence of transparency. GPs don't have great tools for managing this information with Excel still being the default. This seems like against something that's sort of directly within our wheelhouse. We also have the benefit of having a team direct private credit experience, Ryan Crowell, who's our head of product here. He's a former credit investor herself. And so, he brings I think both passion and expertise on what the experience is like in reality to administer a monitor credit portfolio. We've made some really great hires on our team specifically from private credit firms, with folks who've taught me frankly quite a bit because I will say I'm certainly an equity guy and one of the first things they said is you speak like one. So, I've learned some new value to be sure. But happily, this is not a net new product. This is really an expansion of capabilities within our existing general partner solution. We are very much as technologists of the mind that you want to build for abstraction. You want to build for an essence accommodation of specifics without getting into customized development. By that, I mean, again, something should be configurable such that it's relevant for how you think about the world. But we're not going to add chronograph. Build you something specific just for your institution. If we look at frankly, the competitive landscape, that leads to sort of dead ends on the literal development branches. You end up with sort of orphan products. And so, one thing that we focus on quite a bit of chronograph is, again, keeping things consolidated, keeping things in short abstract did, and highly configurable, but doing so within sort of a single umbrella. And so, this in our push into private credit represents exactly that, which is to say, delivering that same level of abstraction to solve very similar all-called synonymous problems that you have in private equity, but in a way that, again, speaks to the specifics of credit monitoring, which entails more of a focus on security instrument and suspension prior, along with, frankly, lower levels of information access, meaning that private credit investors can't demand change reporting from companies. Often, they're just having to accept what's given, which then means you face a similar problem to LPs in that you really want to aggregate every single data point you have available to you and focus on pricing comparability, because you're not going to get to the same level of depth as a passive recipient. Speak specifically to those synonymous problems you're seeing among private credit and private equity platform. I would say focus on capitalization, how that sucks up, how you'd think about buffer. I mean, private equity investors, right, they're often using leverage. And so, you want to know, specifically, what are, what is my covenant buffer? What are the underlying drivers that, again, I need to be sensitive to ensure that we're never taking risk on the equity component? I would say as a credit investor, right, you care very much about the similar considerations. What is fundamental cash loan and profitability? What are, again, risk to that based off of fundamental performance? How can I accrue signals around, say, top-line drivers in changing conditions that may impact or elevate risk in my portfolio? It's similar. So, in short, this is, as mentioned, sort of a suite of feature enhancements, not so much new paradigms. But in a way that, again, I think speaks more to the areas of focus for the individual types of investors. And it starts revealing, I mean, given the state of AI concentration in the market, it starts revealing potential risk areas. If you've got exposure across or being able to even just understand your exposure across your equity and your credit investments to a single firm names, etc. Correct. Correct. Yeah, I mean, aggregation, sector exposure, all the things that we generally deal with on the whole. One other comment I'll quickly make is that, increasingly, we plan to bring together, in fact, what's traditionally called our LP platform and our GP platform. So, I think that's another area where the lines are sort of beginning to blur, which is to say, who's a pure-play LP anymore, right? And you have some of our clients like the Canadian pensions who have major direct investment programs. You have, in short, many different flavors of investment now that, again, I think it really eliminated many of the traditional distinctions. They're still this fundamental distinction of, are you an active driver of information aggregation or are you a passive recipient? So, I do think there are important sort of feature-level considerations that come into play there. But we are on a path towards increasingly having a unified platform with modularization, depending on sort of the nature of the work case or work workflow and use case, excuse me. So, any cursory glance at any of the financial press these days would indicate that private credit is something like the CDO type of arrangement that got us into the 2008 financial crisis and that it's a deeply opaque sector that no one really has data on and that we're driving forward amid concern that potentially we're increasing leverage in the economy and at risk of some kind of systemic problem. What is your perspective on that, Charlie, as you're kind of expanding into the private credit space and have worked on Wall Street for since that exact crisis? Is private credit, I'm not asking if it's building systemic risk because I think that would be a pointed question, but are there features and similarities? Is it justified to argue that private credit is this opaque, highly leveraged asset class that is presenting risk? I think there are probably better market commentators out there than myself when it comes to that question. I mean, I actually don't be there as being the same form of systemic risk in what we see today relative to what it gets sort of directly experienced and observed in 2008, meaning that again, I think the market has largely responded in an appropriate way, which is to say there's probably distributed risk. The question I think that you're asking is, okay, well, despite that risk being distributed across many institutions is now so systemic in terms of the practice that it will cause a broader crisis. My own answer is, I don't know because I'm not an investor anymore, but I view it as unlikely, just given that we use the term private credit sort of a catch all, but that means actually many, many different things with many different forms of securitization and investment structures, risk appetite, pools of again capital to begin with, etc. So yes, there's sort of the megastories, if you will, and there's a certain form structure that has become more invoked, but I'm not so sure that that reflects the same scale of risk that was taken where you had the entire housing economy lever to securitization and similar prior. So again, I'm sure you have many more impressive guests who can comment. Well, including I would go back to some of my comments about pointing to six streets founder Alan Waxman on this exact question, but I would just point out that I think as long as the liquidity issue remains somewhat subtle in private credit and it does, most investors in private have a credit remain long data. institutional investors and so you have a sort of asset liability match and it seems to me it's one of the ironies of this sort of post global financial crisis regulation is that these increased capital requirements at banks led to the rise of private credit and now you have loans being made from long dated institutions into technology sectors and data centers case for example but that seems to me overall if you were to abstract it away or abstract it out to a higher level that you want long dated sort of tenure horizon funds making loans to companies rather than deposit taking banks problems arise when you have short term liabilities and you have depositors for example having to withdraw their cash and all of a sudden those loans been called due because that same capital base has been called upon it seems to me that from an abstract level private credit would be a far more stable system if you were designing it because you have 10 year funds making long dated loans instead of deposit taking institutions doing it and so I'll just say that from an abstract theory perspective it's a better setup yeah my other responses the thing I always try to seek out whenever there's a period to financial stress or what are the conditions of trust I think more than anything my experience over 17 years on Wall Street you has really underscored this is all built on trust everything we do now chronograph in terms of data fidelity and auditability and now certainly in the era of AI a lot of the capabilities that we're delivering are centered on that and user trust more broadly with regard to the financial system one of the things that I think gave us some confidence through again periods of stress be that COVID or or again through the industry change environment etc was I didn't get the sense like I didn't 2008 that trust was sort of compromised meaning that you didn't know exactly what a counterparty whole held you know you didn't you know you didn't in essence trust the folks were going to repay their loans in essence that to me again is a signal that in aggregate there has been a positive shift towards levels of transparency levels of data access tools that can take advantage of that data etc that enables a more fluid and ultimately liquid system and so as a result to me this is the system working sort of in a healthy way and yes there's of course questions and areas of opacity that are lacking in similar but I don't get the sense there's any fundamental degradation of overall system systematic trust and that's that to me it's always one of my primary limits test for how big an issue is this Ronald Reagan was quoting an ancient Russian proverb when he said trust but verify and effectively that seems to be what we're doing in private credit that I trust is the basis but it's helpful to have information verification tools like the ones you're building well we we would agree so it's kind of like give us give us a call or shoot us email excellent Charlie let's wrap up on you've touched on some fascinating areas here from metalhead to fascination with global politics how do you use AI yourself in your personal life Charlie what are your current is it a constant use case are you using it in any interesting ways that you can share constant yeah I I I'm all in on AI I'm never a first adopter actually I have to share spite being a technologist I like to sort of get a solid sense of orientation before I dive in but then once I'm in I'm all in I mean this is true and everything I do and the app sure enough with AI we in 2020 you to call it we're not whatever you know the leading the leading LinkedIn influencers on the topic but I think once there was a sense of sort of what the pattern was all in and so certainly that's true on everything we're doing here a chronograph I mean again we've been grateful to partner with anthropic in our launch of cloud for financial services you know we partner recently with open AI and codex plug-in similar the agony to your question of my personal life yeah my wife I think you know was concerned at one point but I I think you know robustly demonstrated the value of it so yeah use it for everything one of the things I did actually just approved the values my wife as I went around our house I took a picture of all the serial numbers and all our appliances and I had you know I had AI go out and you first identify everything but then pull the PDF manuals then come up with an annual maintenance plan for our house for all the all the things and that was done in about 15 minutes and and it's gonna a great plan since in essence so I love that one it trying to find creative ways of of using it but would just say at this point it's pretty ubiquitous in my own work flows both at work and outside of work have you made any AI music I have not unfortunately music is one of the things that has has fallen by the wayside just in my journey as an entrepreneur you're a purest still yeah well certainly on that yeah not not a big AI music guy I love who knows anymore but yeah unfortunately not much time for for hobbies outside of three kids and my other baby of chronograph my wife was listening to a song recently and I asked her who the performer was and she said I think this is AI and I was quite remarkable I was the first time I'd had that experience Charlie thank you for this conversation chronograph is one of the absolute longstanding but also most impactful firms I would say working on this technology for private capital and certainly at the infrastructure layer which we talk about all the time here you are building that information infrastructure so it's been a pleasure getting to know you and I've enjoyed this conversation I look forward to lots more many more conversations as we continue to proceed through the next couple of years well thank you marketing congratulations to you and the broader team and do look forward to attending private markets forum and due course excellent thanks Charlie thanks for listening to modern capital the next generation of private markets is being built right now and it's reshaping business technology and society I'm Mark Andrew learn more about our work at the private markets forum in each of our upcoming events at private-markets.com see you next time