The World Rewired: AI, Private Markets & the Future of Investing | Ep. 41

I recall in the report, you talked about the need for education in both of those markets.

And again, I'm thrilled to be partnering with your team in developing some new content for the Middle East.

So it's exciting because I think you and I are both passionate about we need to lead with education, make sure everyone on the ground understands how these structures and strategies work in advance.

I did want to pick up on your comment.

And you and I have had this discussion, I think, for a long time.

I don't like the term semi-liquid because I think in many respects, it has provided a false impression to the market that these strategies are liquid, more like a mutual fund, where you know the reality is they're illiquid by nature.

That's, in fact, what makes private markets special.

I prefer the term evergreen or perpetual because it describes what they are on the shelf and available.

with a small liquidity provision, but they're illiquid investments.

I think if we kind of fast forward and we look at today's environment, I think we've found ourselves getting a little bit of trouble with private credit for a number of reasons.

We had some concerns about were there more risk in the market than there should be? I think our research has suggested we do not see any systematic risk with private credit.

We think it's fairly isolated.

But we do think the redemption problem was fueled by a lack of understanding and a lack of appreciation by both advisors and investors that these are illiquid investments.

And I know that's something you covered in the report.

And I know you even went so far as to suggest that maybe we go even further down that path and talk about tokenization.

Maybe just broadly, what are your impressions either from the report or just what you're seeing in the industry about this rise of Evergreen, the role they have ultimately in making these strategies more available to the wealth channel and our need for better and more consistent education?

Yeah, I think I largely agree with everything you've said there, Tony.

Now, let me be abundantly clear, just objectively, I do think there's probably implications for traditional SaaS industry from AI.

I think kind of there's a lot of decapitation of SaaS enterprise industry.

implementations that will be better and more cost efficiently solved for, replaced by Claude and other enterprise capabilities.

So I do think there's real cash flow and valuation implications there.

I don't think we know to what extent yet, but that is real to be concerned about it.

I would also say that, look, we just talked about the Asian crisis.

If you've been through a few cycles, in every single cycle, humans are humans.

And there's no doubt, well, I have no doubt that covenants and underwriting standards probably loosened up a little bit.