Finscale in English
00:24:44 · Charlie Tafoya
[00:24:44] S2: There's the invoked two letter word of AI, which everybody's talking about quite a bit. In fact, I just got back from speaking to her in Europe discussing AI and its implications for portfolio monitoring and and private equity broadly. So, you know, just as a technologist, how can one not be excited by the opportunities that AI presents? But when it comes to AI, I think, you know, what we're urging is a bit of candidly sobriety and caution with regard to what's achievable today. It's been incredible to see the rate of change of the solutions that have come to market. I think that's the thing that, you know, we're monitoring most closely is how do how do these solutions and capabilities continue to evolve? Because if simply linearly project, again, it's gonna be striking to see where we're at in two or three years. But today, the reality is that they can't generate alpha on their own. I really don't... I haven't seen anything personally that really I would view as being sufficient and actually providing differentiated insights around how a given asset or portfolio will perform. At the end of the day, underlying performance is a function of human phenomena, repeating behavior, all these, again, qualitative factors that go into actually building a great business or finding a great investment. And so I think where we see the most relevant applications of AI in this moment are around creative uses, which candidly are a little fewer in private equity, but more to the point, productivity uses. And so things like summarization of diligence information or summarization of other long form content you may be getting, noting that, again, LPs receive thousands and thousands of PDFs and reports in any given quarter. And so that's where, you know, we're spending our resources when it comes to integrating AI. Again, that is something that we're quite excited by. But to the point, I think we are... Yeah. I just think realistic around what, you know, what the capability... Actually applicable capabilities are today. But beyond that, beyond AI, which again is is certainly a very in vogue topic, you know, I would just say that to return to some of my opening comments, we're still in the early innings for private equity digitalization as a whole.
00:26:47 · Charlie Tafoya, Solenne Niedercorn
And so for anybody listening out there who has a firm or is part of a firm, I would just say it really starts with getting your data architecture and governance models in place to begin with. How are you gonna administrate data? What tools are you using? Again, what is the governance model for that? Meaning, who can update what and when, etcetera. And happily, there's very strong patterns that have formed, I think, in the industry as as previously mentioned. And there's a lot of consultants out there certainly who can give you great advice on that point. Once you have that architecture in place, you you need... You really need to integrate it into your process. Right? Ensuring that you're moving beyond, again, sort of manual aggregation in Excel to take advantage of these great new capabilities that a number of folks can offer now. And, you know, once you've done that, then you begin to build the foundation of a dataset that then can be used for, you know, different applications, whether analytics or AI driven use cases, etcetera. But until you have that infrastructure in place and you have that integrated into your process, I would say don't try to leapfrog because you're gonna be leapfrogging off the cliff with, you know, no no true support in place. So, we'll pause there, but I think that's how we, view the world today. [00:28:01] S1: Great. So what are your next steps?
00:28:01 · Solenne Niedercorn, Charlie Tafoya
[00:28:01] S1: Great. So what are your next steps? [00:28:03] S2: Continued growth. I mean, candidly, we have almost artificially high win rate to be direct. So, you know, for us, I think it's about just continuing to make sure that folks are aware of Chronograph. Quick aside, we actually didn't market for the first seven years of our existence. In fact, our cumulative spend on marketing for the first seven years was about $8,000. So we really grew strictly through word-of-mouth, which I hope speaks to the strength of our product set as a whole. Certainly, that's changing today as the numbers get bigger. We had Summit Partners come in as an investor at the end of twenty twenty two, and so we gotta make them a risk adjusted return. And as a result, we need to ensure that we're continuing to grow at the rate we've previously grown at. So all I have to say, you know, things like this, certainly our our events across the world, really. We're we're doing a number of events to get the word out, you know, just engaging with our audience on LinkedIn in particular through high quality content. All these things are meant to really introduce us in many cases to folks who may have not heard about us previously. But we have a heck of a track record. We have a phenomenal retention staff. I mean, a 126% in effect. So all this to say, we feel very good about our value add and would welcome the conversation with anybody who's thinking about how they can again take advantage of this new world of information and data that we find ourselves in.
00:29:22 · Solenne Niedercorn, Charlie Tafoya
[00:29:22] S1: Perfect. Thank you very much. Inspiring. I always close my discussion with my guests on a recommendation of a book or a podcast. So Charlie, what is your recommendation? [00:29:35] S2: So I read a lot of books. I tend to have a bit of a split personality between historical nonfiction and science fiction. I'll I'll probably keep it to the former for today. I think we're seeing a lot of change in the world. Geopolitics actually is a area of personal interest to me and has always been. I think for folks who haven't read it, I would highly recommend The Fourth Turning, which looks at generational change. And it's a very compelling argument. It's a bit of a repetitive read because I go into some exhaustive examples to underline your point. But I would just say, of all political science books I've read, and that's what I majored in in university. And again, that's what I read almost exclusively. It is a very compelling explanation for some of the turbulence that really that we're experiencing at this time. So if you're looking for an explanatory framework, it's again a very compelling read I find personally. And again, it helps it gives me some assurance and optimism at least that are in a period of transition and ultimately a new stability will be found. Certainly, that's what I think the world needs ultimately. But we'll leave it at that. [00:30:42] S1: Thank you very much, Charlie. Very inspiring. And congrats for everything you did with Chronograph. See you. [00:30:48] S2: So much.
00:30:48 · Charlie Tafoya, Solenne Niedercorn
[00:30:48] S2: So much. [00:30:50] S1: Thank you all for listening and sharing this moment with us. Don't hesitate to contact me on Twitter or LinkedIn to share your comments and reactions. You can also rate this episode on your favorite podcast platform. See you soon.