Private Equity FunCast

In a corporate carve-out, figuring out what exactly you're buying is the hardest part. It's often a line-by-line exercise, requiring a scalpel to separate what stays and what goes. ParkerGale's Ryan Milligan sits down with his colleague Kevin "KG" Gorman for Corporate Carve-Outs 101: how private equity buys a business unit out of a larger parent, why sellers let those businesses go, how you price...

Her college career office was supposed to forward her resume to a foundation. Instead, Ariel Investments kept it, and she ended up working next to the founder. Liz sits down with Lena Diasti, Chief of Staff to John Rogers, founder, chairman and co-CEO of Ariel Investments. We get into what a Chief of Staff actually does, how to leave investment banking before the "two years" are up, and why relati...

In 1982, Bill Atkinson made Apple's Lisa faster by deleting 2,000 lines of code, and the management form asked how many he wrote. Forty-four years later we're counting tokens instead. Same bug. The good news: with agentic workflows, engineering is finally measurable in terms a board understands. Jim sits down with Kirby Montgomery and Dan Bender of Code & Co. to cover what's worth tracking (speed...

What does it really take to build trust in private equity over a five-to-seven-year hold? Cass sits down with her colleague Nori Welles-Gertz, a principal at Parker Gale, to find out. They talk about why PE is more about relationships and reputation than transactions, and how she moved from consulting into operationally focused lower middle market investing. They also discuss how her college crew...

Investment diligence is all about answering two questions: Do we want to own this business? And what would we do with it if we did? But then the deal closes, and all those problems you identified and opportunities you imagined during diligence become yours to tackle. So where do you even start? In this episode, Ryan and Paul compare notes on what actually happens in the first year of owning a busi...

First, she sketched a med spa roll-up on maternity leave. Then, several law firms said it couldn't be done. Now? She owns five practices. Cass sits down with her old pal from grad school, Amanda Blank, to discuss her path from finance to building Founders Beauty Group, a med spa roll-up where she leads both investing and operations. Amanda explains the MSO structure that makes owning medical pract...

He left private equity, took a 75% pay cut, and joined a 12-person startup that was still finding its footing. Now, Jon Apter helps oversee 1,600 employees as CFO of Accordion – a seat he's held for the last 11 years.  Jon sits down with Devin to explain what really keeps a CFO in the room with sponsors and boards. Drawing on two PE deals and 12 acquisitions, he shares what it takes to get a compa...

What does it take to move from banking to the buyside, and what do you have to figure out once you're there? Liz sits down with Katie Yuan, a private equity associate at Hg in London. They met in 2022 in JPMorgan's investment banking training in New York. Since then, both have made the move from IB to PE. Katie traces her path from studying economics at Cambridge, to two years in JPMorgan's indust...

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

Cass sits down with Brogan Magnarelli, Principal at Riverspan, to talk about her untraditional path into private equity — from point guard at Harvard to account manager at Boingo Wireless, to GE Healthcare sales leadership and finally PE business development.  Brogan shares why gathering skills at every step matters more than following a linear path, how her basketball mindset shaped her career, a...

Devin's mom's only instruction to her financial advisor was "the number should never go down." Downside protection is often the most attractive part of investing in a mega buyout fund, but the latest data from PitchBook calls that into question. PitchBook's Andrew Akers goes deep on why bigger private equity funds don't always outperform smaller ones, why "manager selection skill" might be a myth,...

What does it look like to "plant seeds" so aggressively that serendipity starts looking like a strategy? This week on Parker Gals, Cass sits down with Jessica Patton to trace her path from Detroit to Howard University to landing a rare straight-out-of-college private equity role in New York. Jessica shares how she eventually landed in an impact-oriented role at Andreessen Horowitz, and what it too...

Corporate AI spend in 2026 looked like a teenager loose at the mall with their parents' credit card. No policy, no budget, no discipline about what was purchased and why. That will change in the 2027 budget season, just kicking off. Devin goes deep with Accordion's Justin D'Onofrio using an 8-step framework to get it right. They cover why 91% of PE-backed CFOs can't size their AI spend, and why 83...

What does it look like to go "all in" at every stage of your career, even when you're not on the traditional track? This week on Parker Gals, Liz and Cass sit down with Hannah Song, a former senior associate at Promus Equity Partners who's heading to UChicago Booth this fall. Hannah shares her non-traditional journey from KPMG audit to investment banking at Mesirow to private equity — and opens up...

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.

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

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

What if the thing founders are proudest of in diligence — "AI wrote most of our code" — is actually the reason investors should worry? Jim sits down with Jason Gill and Kirby Montgomery of Code & Co. to talk about what happens when vibe coding meets private equity due diligence, why every diligence summary suddenly looks identical, and why the old scars (custom integrations, undocumented paths, th...

In this episode of Parker Gals, Liz Xu sits down with her former JPMorgan colleague and friend Caroline Carman, Senior Associate at Rallyday Partners, a lower middle market private equity firm based in Denver, Colorado. Caroline shares her journey from leveraged finance analyst to becoming Rallyday's first associate, building the firm's junior team from the ground up. We dive into what drew her to...

Devin and Cass sit down with Kate Hopkins, founder of OneGuide, to break down the 36 AI value creation plays private equity firms and portfolio companies are running right now. From TAM mapping and list building with AI to revenue leakage detection, workflow automation, and agent ecosystem strategy — this episode covers what's actually working, what's not, and what's coming next. OneGuide's "Top 3...

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

The private equity market in 2026 was supposed to rip. So why has it fallen flat? Devin sits down with Steven Buibish, CFA, Director of US Private Equity Research at PitchBook, to break down the first half 2026 data. Deal value in Q2 dropped 38% from Q1. Software dealmaking froze. Mega deals are doing all the heavy lifting, distorting every headline number, and yet prices haven't budged. We're sit...

Welcome to Parker Gals — the podcast by and for women in private equity. Hosts Cass Ziebel and Liz Xu kick off the very first episode from ParkerGale HQ in Chicago, introducing themselves and the show. In this debut episode, you'll hear how Cass stumbled into PE after a 2.5 hour "networking lunch" that turned into an accidental interview, and how Liz almost talked herself out of the job before Cas...

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

PE GUY turned a Snapchat filter into millions of views and a seven-figure business. Host Devin Mathews (a real PE guy) conducts due diligence on Johnny Hilbrant Partridge's background, business model, and the wealthy towns he's taking on next. We sat down with Johnny in PE GUY's natural habitat -- a Winnetka, IL pool house to figure out how a goofy internet character became an oddly accurate and h...