Democratizing Access to Alternative Investments: Insights from iCapital's Lawrence Calcano

Lawrence and I had a great discussion about how to build an alts platform for the wealth management community, why iCapital serves such a big need for wealth managers and banks, how iCapital thinks about democratization of access and focuses on diligence, education, and quality control on their platform.

Show Notes

I’m thrilled to kick off the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast with a special guest - one of the leaders in the alts industry, Lawrence Calcano of iCapital Network.

Lawrence has built iCapital into one of the category defining companies in the alts space. They have democratized access to high quality alternative investment products for the wealth management industry.

Lawrence and the iCapital team have built the de facto operating system for the wealth management community to invest in and access leading institutional quality alternative investment fund managers. 

They’ve grown to almost $70 billion of AUM across 740 funds and 125,000 underlying accounts in less than 7 years.

In the past year alone, iCapital grew their platform assets by over $20 billion and raised $162 million from top growth and strategic investors including Ping An, BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hamilton Lane, and WestCap.

Lawrence has had an an illustrious career as a banker and operator. Prior to iCapital, he was a Partner and Co-Head of the Global Tech Banking Group at Goldman Sachs, where he spent over 17 years advising tech companies on many landmark M&A deals and IPOs. He was named to the Forbes Midas List of influential people in venture capital for 5 out of 6 years from 2001-2006.

And now his second act as an entrepreneur at iCapital may top his first act as a Partner at Goldman.

I hope you enjoy.

What is Alt Goes Mainstream: The Latest on Alternative Investments, WealthTech, & Private Markets?

Alt Goes Mainstream podcast is the place to turn to for interviews with some of the brightest and most experienced minds in the world at the intersection private markets and wealth management. AGM dives into investment strategies like private equity (PE), private credit, venture capital (VC), secondaries, GP stakes, infrastructure, real estate, wealth management, and comprehensively covers tools and frameworks for approaching private markets, such as asset allocation, evergreen funds, model portfolios, and more. For anyone looking to invest into private markets (from experienced wealth managers to family offices to the individual investor looking for a more diversified investment portfolio), you’ll hear inside stories from executives and founders at some of the world’s largest financial institutions, alternative asset managers firms, and wealth management firms. More than a personal finance podcast, Alt Goes Mainstream dives deep into trends, investment strategies, firm building lessons, and innovative technologies that are enabling investors to access private markets.