Preferred Return Podcast
The Power of Consistency, Transparency, & Company Culture
ABOUT THE EPISODE
Welcome back to Altvia’s Preferred Return Podcast! In this episode, our host and Chief Strategy Officer, Jeff Williams, sits down with Gui Costin, founder and CEO of Dakota, to chat about the strategic partnership between Altvia and Dakota and the importance of providing premium customer service.
Gui and Jeff also offer up some industry projections including: technology automation advancements, delivering higher quality investment strategies at lower investment minimums, and increasing efficiency for transaction facilitation.
This is a must-listen episode that shines a light on how both Altvia and Dakota leverage data and a customer-centric ethos to establish a competitive advantage.
ABOUT THE EPISODE
Welcome back to Altvia’s Preferred Return Podcast! In this episode, our host and Chief Strategy Officer, Jeff Williams, sits down with Gui Costin, founder and CEO of Dakota, to discuss the value of company culture, the definition of success, and his market projections for the private equity space.
Founded in 2006 to provide investment firms with complete visibility into the institutional and private wealth markets, Gui analyzes the importance of focusing on the controllables and establishing core principles to define success for united growth. Hear how he leans into Dakota’s competitive advantages to stay ahead of the competition and establish expectations upfront to foster a customer centric company.
Tune in to hear about the value of Altvia’s strategic partnership with Dakota and future industry projections including: technology automation advancements, delivering higher quality investment strategies at lower investment minimums, and increasing efficiency of the transaction facilitation.
MENTIONED CONTENT
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:05] Jeff Williams: Well, Gui Costin, appreciate you coming on to Preferred Return, I feel you might be the most interesting man in the world, man. I’m probably not the only one to, to have told you that, but, uh, for the listeners that don’t know about you, maybe give a little bit of background on yourself.
[00:00:23] Gui Costin: Sure. My name’s Gui Costin and I’m the founder CEO of Dakota, and we’ve founded our firm in 2006, and we’ve been partners with a number of investment firms raising capital for them in the past 17 years. And about four years ago, we really expanded the business and now we have 60 employees where we built out a database for investment firms across both institutional and intermediary channels.
[00:00:47] And it’s been a real blast of a business to build because you end up interacting with so many more people than I normally wouldn’t on the main part of the business. So it’s been a lot of fun.
[00:00:56] Jeff Williams: And a little bit about your background, pre Dakota. I mean, you’ve done a number of things.
[00:01:02] Gui Costin: Yeah. So, I got out of college in 1989. Played on the golf team, and I spent the beginning part of my career in the real estate business. Lived in San Francisco, represented Starbucks Coffee, did about 150 locations for them, which is a lot of fun. The Bay Area is a beautiful place to be.
[00:01:20] And we saw these little towns and that was a great time. Then in the early 2000’s, moved back to Philadelphia. And I got into the investment fundraising business in one with Turner went in three with a firm called Cramer Rosenthal McGlynn. And then in 2006, decided to launch our firm Dakota in partnership with Edgewood Management, which has really been our guiding light since 2006.
[00:01:42] And, also the Townsend Group out of Cleveland, who was an institutional estate consultant. And we created two real estate funded funds, business funds with that. And that launched our company in ’06.
[00:01:52] Jeff Williams: Amazing. So you’re from Philadelphia. Well, you know I was in Philly visiting y’all. By the way, your offices are incredible. The studio speaks for itself. And you know, I haven’t spent a ton of time in Philly, but I got the sense that there’s definitely a couple of Companies in this market there. There’s a lot of pride there.
[00:02:17] You know, that’s something that’s always known about folks from Philly is they love Philly. And you know, I thought it, especially post Covid versus some cities. I thought the whole vibe there was amazing. I thought the sort of little community of technology companies. Super cool. Crossbeam is another.
[00:02:37] I’ve mentioned them before on this podcast. I love that company. But yeah, the whole Philly scene, is a cool vibe and my understanding from Dom is that, that you guys kind of took over some of that space in the building you’re in kinda early in Covid, and took advantage and man, an amazing space.
[00:02:54] Gui Costin: Yeah, it’s worked out great and I just think it’s so important to have a really great work environment, for everybody to work within. And, so we definitely invested pretty heavily in the office space and in the studio, so that’s behind us, but it really creates a great environment for everyone to be able to come down and work in and not sit in an 800 square foot apartment in downtown Philly as a 23 year old.