[00:03:20] Jeff Williams: Yes, I can attest firsthand. Great. Big topic here. Let’s demystify it a little bit. I want to Set the stage and you know what you’re not on the slide one f Jef Head of Engineering. Why don’t you give us just a little bit of background? 

[00:03:41] Jef Rice: Yeah, no problem I’ve been at Altvia for about a year a year as of six days ago I think prior to that was with a company called Zip Recruiter and helped them grow and then go IPO And was on their enterprise software side of things. So we managed a truckload of data and did all kinds of interesting things with it and have been sort of on the startup side of things in my career for quite some time and see this side of it.

[00:04:08] So happy to get back to a place where we’re making a difference with our customers and getting dirty with data.

[00:04:14] Jeff Williams: Yeah. Love that. Thanks for coming to work here, man. Appreciate it. Let’s demystify this topic just a little bit, and we’re gonna jump in and get some thoughts here. I interact quite a bit with our customers with with folks that we’re talking to in the market.

[00:04:32] And the topic, of course, is unified data creating a competitive edge. And I so often hear people saying we have a data problem. And if you’ve ever interacted with me about that topic, you’ll know that I appreciate it, that there isn’t necessarily just this data problem in a vacuum.

[00:04:50] Nobody really has a data problem to the extent that there’s the sort of data police that are forcing you to do something. Now there are obviously regulatory. Authorities and things like that where data is relevant. And I guess that’s the point is the data is a symptom of a problem, but in reality, it’s not sort of a problem on its own.

[00:05:08] What often manifests itself as a data problem is the wrangling of data as it pertains to reporting problems. So there are, you know, regulatory reporting problems that people have in the sense that they struggle to report to regulatory authorities. There are internal management reporting problems that are the result of data.

[00:05:33] And of course, there are external stakeholder reporting problems that are the result of data. One way or the other. It commonly manifests itself in this little graphic here, and I’ll disclose that I spent an early part of my career as sort of, this person here in the middle, but the basic gist is you’ve got sort of disparate data across systems, maybe cloud…

[00:05:58] Sometimes you need people to help you with that. And then sometimes you hand it to Excel wizards or to business analysts of some sort. And oftentimes you’ve now taken a cut of the data and you’re saying, hey, go produce this management report for us, spend a couple of nights and weekends not sleeping to do that and ultimately come up with this really fancy report.

[00:06:06] But the executive in question oftentimes looks at it and goes, that’s either not good enough for us to actually share, or it’s not quite what I. I was thinking, can we cut it this way instead? And what isn’t necessarily explicit here is how that process goes back to the beginning, and you start it all over again, and it’s even more fun the next time around.

[00:06:28] I want to just set that stage here and come back to the panelists a little bit. Either of you have identify with that problem? I do myself. Let’s talk a little bit about sort of the relevance of problems, data-related problems as it relates to report reporting. So how is it that we came to know each other?

[00:06:50] Let’s go back a little bit. Monica, you want to kick us off?

[00:06:54] Monica Romano: Sure. Yeah, so I think there’s a twofold, right? One is data. We have data in different areas whether we utilize iLevel for our portfolio monitoring, then we use third-party administrator, which uses Intact, and then, we have Excel files, and a lot of other types of data stored in different areas.

[00:07:16] And the issue is one, aggregating all of that data. How do you want organized data in an appropriate manner that you’ll be able to report on and create efficiencies? And then the second component of it is, how you create these visualizations so they’re interactive and they’re helpful for your LPs or whoever the audience is to look at and analyze that data.

[00:07:41] And then it’s also making sure you’re able to push that data out in a secure manner. So I think those were the main challenges that we were focused on, and I say I’d have to give credit to our founder. I’ve always felt that we should be fully transparent to our LPs their LPs, and their investors in our funds, they have faith in our portfolio companies, so they should have access to the data and, have access to the financial things, et cetera, at our portfolio companies, and what is the appropriate solution to deliver that rather than sending out a bunch of PDFs.

[00:08:22] Jeff Williams: I happen to know from having worked closely with you that you’re really good at Excel. You’ve seen some of your word product with Excel. And so I know that in many cases, because that data has been disparate and from coming from all these different places that been a lot of headaches. You spent in Excel.

[00:08:41] The same is true of you, Kelly. Okay. And, I’m going to make this official on a live webinar and I’ve said on many occasions, I don’t often learn new tricks for new formulas in Excel from too many people I have from you. You’re amazing at it. You’ve played that role before, right?

[00:09:03] Kelly O’Kane: Proclaimed Excel junkie. I get targeted on Instagram a lot with Excel tips and tricks. So that’s how I learn. But it’s a fun part of the job is getting deep into the data, but I found that When I was building visualizations in Excel, it was 80 percent of my time was just getting the data clean, and then 20 percent of the time was the fun stuff and working with the data and deriving insights.

[00:09:23] So as we were looking for tools to do that more effectively, and quite frankly, more efficiently as I’ve tried to become more senior in my role. I can’t be in Excel as much. We were looking for a partner to really help support keeping the data clean so that we could do all of the insight derivations ourselves and spend more of our time focused on that.

[00:09:43] Jeff Williams: Yeah, and I think even in the course of working on stuff with you that on many occasions we’ve had that situation where you get the data into Excel and then you realize you didn’t get all the data into Excel and you have to go back and do some of those steps. Back together or back over again.

[00:10:02] Lovely. So everybody’s experienced these problems. Hopefully, nobody else on the webinar audience or in the webinar audience has had these problems, but I’m almost certain that they have again, if you’re just joining us, please feel free to jump into the chat, and ask questions. We would love to get your thoughts. Let’s move on quickly.

[00:10:21] This is a great note, but It’s this unresolved problem. One of the big kind of key themes of what Altvia is focused on is just that solving that problem, right? So if we have the ability to solve the sort of disparate data problems and unify it. We think that you spend more time gathering insights.

[00:10:43] You spend more time going on the offensive and flexing your capabilities and answering questions that you have. And I always say in many cases, answering questions you didn’t know you had, or you didn’t know to ask. One of the key principles of that is accessing the data on the fly and connecting to it and its original source instead of taking exports to Excel.

[00:11:07] Warehousing and in some cases, data lakes as well to build the transformations of how that data relates to itself without necessarily sinking it all into each other’s databases and then start to build those analyses and those reports and those visuals in the cloud. Young superstar Excel analyst doesn’t have their computer blow up on them or doesn’t so that they can take a vacation as well.

[00:11:32] And other people can access these things and then start to get that right to those people in real time. So let’s talk a little bit about that. You guys both experienced problems. How was it that you came to engage with us? What was it that that led you here? And if you can talk about the stuff that we’ve been working on together to solve this problem.

[00:11:53] Monica, you want to start us?

[00:11:56] Monica Romano: Yeah, so what led me to Altvia is, one, figuring out a solution that could help aggregate our data. Pulling the information from our administrator that’s been a big project that the team has been working really hard on. When you want to report on your PCAP statements or underlying investor information when that’s all living at the administrator’s what’s the appropriate way to pull that information to be able to, report on it and have it live on your portal.

[00:12:24] It was finding the right solution and we were really impressed with just the Answers product. And just like Jeff and the team building out proper dashboards and giving it more of a modern feel too. There might be some other solutions out there that, one, they might not be able to aggregate the data as well, but also the it just doesn’t have a good look and feel and it’s not as easy for our LPs to utilize.

[00:12:58] And then the other component was also needing to find a solution on being able to marry that data. So marrying that data with iLevel part of the project that we’re working on. That the team is working really hard on is, one is showing our PCAP statements and answers. And then, we have several co-investors or whether it’s members of our GP, it’s also showing that additional level in and having our carried interest for some of the partners here or the GP members to be able to share that information and also give them that.

[00:13:32] A little bit more access to their data, understand what the carry is on a deal-by-deal basis to actually give them the full picture as well. So we care about the LPs, we care about you’re an LPs and you are part of Brighton Park, we really just want to give you full access to your information so you understand what the value of your access is.

[00:13:55] Jeff Williams: And as you say that, that very last statement that we want to give you full access to your information. It sounds like it’s a given. And yet it’s not right. It turns out that the doing that is that previous slide. It’s pretty difficult. And it oftentimes isn’t necessarily offered proactively.

[00:14:13] In many cases, you have to ask. And that, unfortunately, may trigger off a process where a young investment professional with really good Excel skills may end up sleeping on office couches for a minute. Kelly, an interesting story. We go way back as well. I’d love to hear how it is you came to be.

[00:14:36] And if you can talk just a little bit about really the division you started with you were heavily involved in kind of building out salesforce.com, for yourself and that goes way back, but a lot has happened since. Let’s hear how you came to be familiar with Altvia and some of the stuff we’ve worked on.

[00:14:54] Kelly O’Kane: Yeah, absolutely. We made the transition from access, which is a now defunct Microsoft product to Salesforce in 2017. And we were actually using outsourced consultants to help us build out a platform. And what we realized is those consultants, they really understood Salesforce, but they really didn’t understand our business.

[00:15:13] And so as I was I knew I needed to find somebody that could actually understand what it is that I do on a day to day basis and understand the problems that I was facing. So we actually came to Altvia through CRM and the AIM product and also we were trying to create unified. Like single pane of glass for our LPs.

[00:15:34] So that’s also where we found ShareSecure and started hosting our investor portal, but also our fundraising data room on ShareSecure. So now we, and on the IR team are all in on Altvia and making sure that our LPs have a really streamlined experience with both the reporting that we have to do on a kind of contractual basis, but also serving up insights that they may not be getting.

[00:15:58] Things that they had to request from us historically because we didn’t have easy access to the data. Now we are I would call it six months into our Answers journey which came out of a big dream and vision that I had to unlock our data for our LPs and give them a better experience of our portfolio.

[00:16:17] And I’ve worked really closely with Dubs and the team to make sure that not only the visual experience but actually the questions that an LP might have about our portfolio can be easily answered based on all of the interactions that I’ve had with them in the past, we know what their top of mind questions are so how can we serve that up to them in a really easy way. And so that’s where we are in the journey. I’ve been really excited by it because we’ve had LPs actually say to us. Oh, this is so much better than XYZ firm, our top competitor. And that makes my life so much better because I know that our LPs are getting value from the experience and it’s giving us a literal competitive advantage over our competitors.

[00:16:56] Jeff Williams: Yeah, competitive edge. That’s what we’re here for. So I’m interested in talking, IVP goes way back. You’ve got a lot of data. I’ve seen it. It’s fascinating. And you know what we didn’t do was, make any of that data up. We didn’t go back and change the history of IVP. We simply just took it and presented it in a way that the LPs in question here seemed novel and differentiated.

[00:17:23] Is it really is, that way, even in cutting edge, Sandhill Road, venture capital, right?

[00:17:29] Kelly O’Kane: Yeah. Our history goes back to 1980. I won’t say we unlocked all of that data, but we certainly unlocked a lot of it and we use iLevel for our portfolio data.

[00:17:37] We use Excel for a lot of our financial data and to be able to bring all of that together and showcase to our LPs, just what they should care about has been a real differentiator for us.

[00:17:47] Jeff Williams: Yeah, and I guess kind of one thing that if we go back to this slide here, we don’t have, Diane on with us, but we’re thinking about Diane.

[00:17:56] Diane’s a great example of somebody who played this role. Really what kind of triggered the conversations to do this was just the pain associated with, Providing the same sort of output, simply just in Excel, right? So that was implied to be this self serve. Hey, here’s the file, go nuts with it, play with the data.

[00:18:16] Talk a little bit about that. That was a pretty painful process to put that together with that much data going back through history and the disparity of it, where it was coming from to compose that. 

[00:18:27] Kelly O’Kane: Yeah, we basically would produce this Excel file on a quarterly basis. And every quarter, the QA of that data, the streamlining of that data, making sure that the data was actually reporting out the same as it had the prior quarter. All of that seems very trivial and oh, that should be pretty easy. Aren’t you pulling from the same data source? But it actually got quite complicated because of how many different data sources we had to point to.

[00:18:52] And quite frankly, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but the complexity of the iLevel Integration that we have just the schema that we’re working with makes it so that I can’t self serve on it. So I had to go to Diane to get the data. Now I can go to Answers to get that data and download something that I can have complete trust in.

[00:19:11] So we’re using it on the back end as well as we’re using it on the front end for our LPs.

[00:19:15] Jeff Williams: Yeah, look, I’ll defend iLevel all day. I think it’s an outstanding product, outstanding service. You guys have a lot of, long history there, a lot of data. It has gotten fairly complex, but also misses out a little bit on some of the other data that becomes an opportunity.

[00:19:29] As it relates to LPs, right? It fails to account for some of the sort of fund accounting, stuff that gets into PCAPs and stuff like that. Super. I want to talk a little bit, then continue that thread of what really becomes possible. Monica, you mentioned that Brighton Park’s founder started out with the mindset of, creating something different and being transparent and stuff.

[00:19:53] How do we think that is? What is it about starting a firm and being transparent right off the bat that, that is interesting?

[00:20:02] Monica Romano: Yeah I think he, one looks at it through the eyes of an LP, and, I think for a long time in private equity in general, my understanding is a lot of things end up kind of being in this box where you don’t have full transparency into each of your underlying portfolio companies, you have the information that’s delivered to you on your schedule investments, on your audit finance statements, or depending on what you’re reporting on in your quarterly report, but oftentimes those quarterly reports take a very long time to put together when you’re aggregating all that data from your portfolio companies, going through, doing the write up having people close the book all different times.

[00:20:46] So there’s always a lag also when you’re reporting these old PDF statements. So it’s also great to be able to give people information more live. When there is a change it could run through to the system from a portfolio company standpoint and there’s always access to really understand if there’s a new investment, for instance, and the new investment is in the UK.

[00:21:10] They can log in and see that there’s a new investment in the UK. Before waiting for the quarterly report, and if they missed a memo, or if they missed our PR around the deal specifically. So it’s just been great to be able to, one, prioritize our LPs and, really give them full access.

[00:21:31] Jeff Williams: Yeah, and we talk a lot about the LPs and I have this sort of thing that I’ve refused to erase now for a couple of years on my whiteboard here that you obviously can’t see but it’s got in stars make LPs money. And what that means is why is anybody at a firm like yours actually here?

[00:21:50] And I think oftentimes we talk to folks like on the deal team and it’s I’m here to find the best deals and that’s absolutely true. I think everybody agrees on that. But that wasn’t something they were endowed with upon being born was like, this is your life’s purpose, right?

[00:22:06] There’s actually another purpose for doing that. And that is to, make LPs money is the key point of the whiteboard. What I mean, is we’re talking about LPs, being transparent, showing them how you’re making the money showing them, and providing a differentiated way. What are the sorts of things we’re hearing LPs, but from LPs, I also want to go a little further and not limit us here.

[00:22:31] What are the opportunities for decisions and stuff like that? We’re looking at a lot of investment-side type data. I think, we’re getting these projects wrapped up for you and going live and stuff. Kelly, can you talk a little bit about how you see the opportunity to look at some of this data and actually bring the investment team in and start to make decisions in turn?

[00:22:54] Kelly O’Kane: Yeah, I have this huge internal dashboard that I use with the investment team to help us think through portfolio management and Dubs, you don’t know this yet, but it’s coming to you. My dream is that live in Answers so that we can have to the moment instead of on a quarterly basis, what decisions we should be making around our portfolio, around portfolio construction, around portfolio liquidity, that’s going to drive the best results for our LPs.

[00:23:23] I think in venture specifically, there has been a maturation of the industry over time, but a lot less sophistication around thinking about the end of life of certain funds and portfolios. And, all of the focus and attention is around the initial investment and follow-on investments.

[00:23:39] And there’s a lot of excitement there, but what happens when you need to exit the portfolio company? And I think data can support a lot of those decisions, a lot more effective than gut intuition because it’s a lot less practiced in the industry. So that’s something that I’m really excited to be able to transition over.

[00:23:55] And right now my Excel spreadsheets are great, but I’m really the only one who can navigate them because I overbuilt them. 

[00:24:02] Jeff Williams: Because you’re really good at Excel. And so this is amazing. I can’t wait to see this. However, it also is really interesting because in that case, it sounds like we’ve helped you organize this data a little better. We’ve provided you with a very flexible way to interact with it and explore it, ask it questions and what have you. And you’ve done that all on your own. It seems I’m finding out here live in front of an audience. Yeah. So tell us about that.

[00:24:35] That’s interesting because the temptation oftentimes, going back to this previous slide is to just take it and export it to Excel because that’s the sort of thing that you’re most familiar with. But once it’s properly organized and you can access it, you don’t have to take cuts of it that come out in Excel you’ve had a good outcome or good experiences with building some of these visuals that are pointed at more the internal investment team.

[00:25:04] Kelly O’Kane: Yeah I will. I haven’t built it yet, but I have the framework for it in Excel and I think it’s going to be pretty easy to port over to Answers once we do because the data is captive for us.

[00:25:19] Jeff Williams: I also know you’ve built your own dashboards outside of that, too.

[00:25:25] Great. Can’t wait to see it. I want to tease this slide here while we’re talking about how Altvia has taken on this problem in a novel way to solve it. I do want to bring in the master 1F Jef. Talk to us a little bit about how you see this. I think that you had a lot of differing emotions about what was going on here in this market when you came to work here a year or so ago, especially, coming off of what you were doing at Zip Recruiter with incredible volumes of data and, very dynamic talk to us a little bit about like your take here. What did you feel? Where did you see opportunity? And then, walk us through a little bit about what we’ve put in place here to make this all happen.

[00:26:08] Jef Rice: Sure. I think the biggest thing I felt was just the untapped opportunity which was good. There’s obviously lots of operational data sitting around in different systems, but there wasn’t a great way to combine it. And so based on some of the experience I had at ZipRecruiter, where we ran essentially 23 independent businesses that worked together but had to share data, we had a very similar approach where we could pull it in and then do interesting things with it.

[00:26:36] So I was excited about the opportunity. What we’ve tried to focus on, this last year and into this year is a lot of noise around, and I said this at our CAB event. The first step of all of it is just gathering your data into one place and making sense out of that data because otherwise itbdoesn’t really have any context and that’s what it needs to have.

[00:27:01] So we’ve implemented this data lake into our services that allow us to pull data from lots of different sources. And as you guys have been front-row participants in this process, being able to pull things in from accounting systems and in from co-systems and Excel and all the other ad hoc places, as well as your CRM data and data from your portals as well, all into one place.

[00:27:27] And I think it’s made us faster. It’s made us more nimble from that standpoint, and it makes us more capable of pivoting and doing interesting things with the data, which is all we’re really trying to do at the end of the day. So our focus has been around making it easier to get that data in and then creating a nice solid foundation so that we can do cool stuff on top of it.

[00:27:48] We try to stay on the R and D side of things, try to stay a little bit ahead of the curve, and we’re starting to play with it. Interesting ways of extracting unstructured data. So lots of times you’re not getting something nice from your port-cos. They just send you a PDF and you either throw humans at it because they extract that data.

[00:28:07] But we’re now able to start to throw some AI and ML at those PDFs and pull the structured data out so that it’s naturally into your lake. We’re doing the same with unstructured data that comes from emails and slack and Whatsapp and all kinds of other places. And we’re able to summarize that using AI, which is nice, because especially from an interaction standpoint. You get a manager report that’s 46 pages, and I can dig into it if I want to, but I’d rather have you just tell me what it says, pretty simply.

[00:28:38] We also have the ability to start to relate that to other things that are in the lake automatically. So now you know it’s for a fund and these three people were mentioned and this is the fund manager that should also be alerted that this stuff’s in here, as well as just starting to have a conversation with it, because I think everybody on the call especially knows that first presentation of data is great.

[00:28:59] It’s good that it’s interactive, but it almost always causes them to ask that next level of question, and it’s the next level that you have to be really responsive and be able to get back. So we’re playing around with some capabilities that let them ask that in an automated or AI way that will allow them to ask that question and answer that question within the toolset based on the data as well.

[00:29:20] Hopefully you can feel that we’re super excited about what we think this is going to bring both from the LP experience, but also even just deal sourcing and things that you might be trying to do internally with this data. But that’s that’s my story. That’s what this thing is all about.

[00:29:35] Jeff Williams: I know you well enough to know this is you really excited. I can hear it in your voice and we’re thrilled to have you. So thank you. So I want to throw it back to Kelly and Monica. What do we see as the next thing? I think that in large part, what we’ve talked about is we’re catching up to some of the stuff that hasn’t necessarily been super prevalent in the market.

[00:29:58] And, Kelly, you mentioned LPs saying, wow, it’s so much better than your primary competitor that I love that. What if we didn’t limit ourselves to catching up and what are some of the things that are opportunities and trends and what have you to both have been very visionary? For as long as I’ve known you what type of stuff are you thinking about next?

[00:30:22] Monica Romano: I think that first I would say I agree with Jef in terms of everything AI. We have been starting to look for ways to be able to add large language models on top of, our iLevel data. So be able to utilize the data lake with all the information, so it’s putting together large language models and just being able to dissect that data in different ways.

[00:30:49] And we would have never this done prior to that.

[00:30:56] Kelly O’Kane: I also think there’s a lot of, and I’ve said this already before, but let it like insight derivation that can be done that hasn’t been possible before because the data hasn’t been in one place. So I’m really excited. Jef, when you’re talking about being able to ask questions of the data that’s what I’m doing all day long as I’m trying to develop data narratives to tell our LPs or bring to life our portfolio for our LPs as I’m asking questions of the data.

[00:31:22] And seeing what answer it gives me, but I’ve only been able to do that in silos historically. So when all of our data is in one place, what does that mean for their storytelling? It goes from like a kid’s book to a YA novel at that point. And like, how much more engaging can that be? So I’m really excited about that.

[00:31:38] I’m also excited from a product perspective to give our LPs a much more engaging experience. Instead of coming into a portal where there’s like just a list of documents, how can we drop them into a digital version of IVP and give them like our top news headlines and the things that we’re excited about in the portfolio and some insights that we’ve just discovered or maybe how many deals we’re looking at this week that will give them more of a dynamic view of what’s going on, which I mean, let’s be real at the end of the day, I hope leads to more people committing to IVP over time or having a stronger relationship with IVP that they don’t want to drop over time.

[00:32:17] Jeff Williams: I love that. I’m getting excited hearing stuff like that.

[00:32:24] Jef Rice: Just so you know, Kelly, I’m going to get in trouble with our VP of product, but you’re going to love what’s coming up in ShareSecure if that’s what you’re after.

[00:32:38] Jeff Williams: Wow. You are going to be in trouble, but I like it. That’s one of the things I love about you. Yeah, some really exciting stuff. And, Kelly you mentioned, we’ve all four of us, talked quite a bit about what it would look like to throw the experience as it’s known today of being an LP in this market and interacting with GP-provided technology totally on its head. And so there’s some really exciting stuff we’ve really from the beginning tried to throw that on its head and kind of reimagine it from the ground up.

[00:33:12] When you start to have data, it’s well organized, it’s accessible, it can be brought together. Relatively painlessly you start to get into some really interesting possibilities there.

[00:33:39] I do want to start to wind us down a little bit. Hour-long webinars are certainly a lot. What sort of, I would put the two of you ahead of many of the folks we talked to in terms of vision.

[00:33:53] You’re out in front really dabbling with some of the sort of cutting edge stuff that, that we’re doing and what we’re seeing. What have you learned? What sort of advice would you give others who are starting to think about head, heading down this path?

[00:34:16] Kelly O’Kane: It’s in that vein, but don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. I think the more I have understood how the product works, how the databases interact, how we have identified and fixed problems. We were literally just talking about something that we discovered yesterday and how we fixed it.

[00:34:33] It gives me the insight and inspiration to dream bigger and try and do more with our data. And I think it unlocks a lot of creativity that if I wasn’t getting my hands dirty, I probably would be a little bit more boxed in. So I think we all have way too many things on our plates and not enough time, but I think when I move forward, two or three years where I think we will be because I’m spending my time trying to understand where we are today, I think it’s gonna be so much further than if I just let it pass and let somebody else do that work for me.

[00:35:12] Monica Romano: Yeah, I agree. I’d say thinking about it has made your job or your life a little bit easier creating efficiencies helping the team as a whole and I also think it’s helpful to really understand or just start thinking through what’s your goal and what’s your end output.

[00:35:28] So as you’re building things, even though you’re going to have multiple steps, it’s not going to happen overnight, but, while you start building one dashboard, is there some of that data that you’ll be wanting to utilize down the road for other types of dashboards so that your data is set in a way that you can continue to utilize in different areas, different types of reporting, etc.

[00:35:50] Jeff Williams: Yeah, I would just add, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’ve worked closely with both of you. And I would say that one thing that I admire about you both is you’re ambitious and it comes in the form of just phrases like, is that possible? Is this, a good question, you are unafraid I think in both of your cases to think big and to be ambitious about the type of experience or the outcome that you’re looking to produce and, partner with us to try to find ways to make that possible.

[00:36:22] And I think with very few exceptions. I wanna say that to cover me, but none, right off the bat that I can think of. That has helped to push us to be able to do that stuff. And I think that’s really important. I think we’ve talked a lot about not limiting yourself and really going big on the differentiated front.

[00:36:42] Monica Romano: I just want to add one thing. I just want to say it’s also helpful to have a partner that’s willing to go down that and dabble with you down that road. When I showed Jeff and team a lot of snippets of what I was interested in a lot of other vendors are like, no, we can’t really do that.

[00:36:59] Or they almost seemed a little bit overwhelmed. Whereas this team was like, yeah, we can get this done or we’ll figure it out. And I feel like it’s been learning for all of us but I think it’s great to have a partner that you’re actually pushing each other And then it’s also great down the road and to continue to also get insights from the team. Like here is that initial mock-up you wanted, but I think you should have this dashboard.

[00:37:25] So it’s great to really have a thought partner along throughout the whole process.

[00:37:30] Jeff Williams: Yeah. And I think that to my point prior, it’s a partnership. That’s one of our core values that we operate as part of our DNA is to be ambitious and to evolve our thinking and our capabilities.

[00:37:45] We take that very seriously. And one thing that maybe isn’t always as obvious, is the need for our partners and customers to push us, so that’s a very important dynamic, Jef. What sort of stuff would you say as a cutting-edge technologist? What does the future hold?

[00:38:06] Jef Rice: I think you have to be courageous a little bit too, and just try stuff out and be alright with the fact that maybe it takes you down a dead end sometimes, but you learned along the way what doesn’t work is sometimes just as valuable as what does work. From that standpoint, I think that’s what we’ve tried to architect the platform around the idea that you could fail fast and learn from it and then move on to the next piece and figure out how to turn it into real value and just give yourself the ability to try everything and see what works.

[00:38:34] But, Josh already told me shut up about the new stuff, so I won’t give you any more hints about the future, but it’s not too far away either.

[00:38:42] Jeff Williams: Yeah. Can’t go back. We’re live, Josh. Sorry. Thank you for joining us here. I got a question in the chat here. 

[00:38:52] Integrating AI insights into data presentation for LPs is exciting and seems like it’d be a serious competitive advantage. Do lots of LPs ask for things like this or even expect them in these days where AI is getting a lot of attention? In five years, do you think AI insights will be part of everything?

[00:39:09] I love that question. Thank you, Andy. And so you know, we touched on the AI buzz a little bit. You get a lot of noise up front, and they’re oftentimes very marketing-heavy.

[00:39:26] Of course, Kelly, Monica, both of your firms are very in the business of backing, companies that are at various stages of, building new technologies and things like that. What’s your take on AI here? In five years is AI doing everything or is there still a place for LPs and GPs to build relationships?

[00:39:56] Kelly O’Kane: I think relationships will always be part of the business. I don’t think we can get away from that, but I will be a little bit bold and saying, I don’t think it’s actually five years out. I think it’s probably a year out that we’ll have a co-pilot with us.

[00:40:08] In every surface area that we touch, whether that’s you’re using Microsoft Copilot across all of your Microsoft products or your online using perplexity portfolio company plug trying to get better information faster. I think there will be a copilot for Altvia. I hope there is at some point but I think that’s going to be the way that we interact with data and the world.

[00:40:31] Generally, I think where it becomes a competitive edge is in the underlying data. Have you organized your data? So that when you query it, you are actually getting insightful answers versus factual answers. And I think that’s what’s gonna make the difference.

[00:40:51] Monica Romano: Yeah, I agree with that.

[00:40:52]  I think AI is a very hot topic in general, but I think LPs are all interested in what is the firm doing to get ready for AI? So what are we doing? What are we taking putting in place? We are also utilizing AI a lot on the deal side sourcing, etc.

[00:41:16] So I think it’s just thinking of many different ways, whether it’s how to create efficiencies, whether you’re deal sourcing at the reporting level. And it’s just making sure that firms are facing AI and knowing that it’s coming and planning for it. I think it’s inevitable.

[00:41:36] Jeff Williams: Yeah I totally agree.

[00:41:39] I think it’s inevitable already, right? There’s no going back. I think Kelly, you point something out something really important, which is that this is at the end of the day, a relationship-based service, right? A financial service. And it’s hard to imagine that relationships and trust and all those sorts of things would ever not be a part of it.

[00:41:58] But and I’ve even gone as far as to say, it’s a bit like dating and getting married. Financially, right? And that’s an important thing to have a relationship through. It’s really interesting to think about the possibility of having a sort of co-pilot, if you will, to be with you to coach you along and to help you find insights goes back to the same sort of, topic here that we got started with, which is I’m imagining this sort of almost satirical scenario where you’ve got like a dating coach telling you all of the wrong things.

[00:42:28] You’ve got your AI copilot that is looking at all this bad data. That’s all over the place and telling you to tell them this and that. And it’s inevitable that you’re blowing it at that point. But, it comes back ultimately to bringing your data together and then taking the technology and putting it on top.

[00:42:46] Last question here. But let’s just wrap up here with final thoughts. We’ve talked a lot about the future, but anything that we’ve failed to cover here that is on your mind or, what excites you about just getting together and talking about this?

[00:43:13] What are LPs going to be saying for you, Monica, here soon when we really get in front of folks? I know you’re excited about it, so I won’t ask you if you are…

[00:43:25] Monica Romano: Yeah. I just think that opportunities are endless here. So as I mentioned before, don’t be afraid to explore different avenues or think of creative solutions, whether it’s from the LP side, whether it’s to support the IR team whether it’s for the deal folks, I just think that when you have your data in an organized manner, there’s so much more capability.

[00:43:49] So I think it’s just get excited for it and don’t be afraid.

[00:44:02] Kelly O’Kane: One of the things I didn’t mention before is to really know your customer too. So I think of our LPs, business user personas, and analyst personas. And how can I serve each of them so that their individual LP experiences can be designed for them? And so that’s something that gets me really excited about just having access to this data and being able to play with it.

[00:44:24]  I can literally design for individual LP personas. I’m going to think that’ll make a difference in their trust in our relationship because I really get them.

[00:44:33] Jeff Williams: Yeah, I love that. I’m glad you added that. It makes me think of, at one point I was digging around, and the Internet is full of, all sorts of advice and all sorts of, very valuable companies and tremendous wealth that’s been created about, helping to enable customer experience.

[00:44:50] At the end of the day, it’s a service market. Service markets are crowded and require differentiation and there’s a big role in thinking through who the people that make up the customer, what is it they want and what is it sort of actual customer experience is intentional and differentiated, and everything we’ve been talking about here today.

[00:45:11] This was fun. Thank you so much. Thank you to everybody who’s joined us.