Fundviews Podcast

Greg interviews John Beldy from Season 1 of Fundviews Podcast, on the first ever "Update" episode. John started putting together his fund in early 2020 right before COVID, but has found that there is a better fit with a Separately Managed Account approach. He has partnered with Exceed Investments, a mutual fund manager to offer these services to the very fragmented RIA space across the United States.

Greg interviews Ryan Craft, Founder of Saluda Grade. Ryan grew up in South Florida, before attending Georgetown University and making his way to Wall Street. Ryan surrounded himself with very intelligent and thought provoking people throughout his career, which took him from Merrill Lynch, Merging with Bank of America, then to RBC and Baird before launching his own firm, Saluda Grade. Ryan has built a specialty in the residential mortgage securitization business throughout his career, and focuses on providing efficient capital to operators, funds, and managers in underserved asset classes. Saluda Grade provides both equity and debt financing for these groups, and is constantly building into new areas.

Greg interviews Herald Van der Linde. Herald grew up in the Netherlands near the German border and studied Macroeconomics before moving to Jakarta, Indonesia. He worked for a firm that merged with UBS as an equity research analyst, before taking a role in South Africa focused on strategy and macroeconomics. After a few years there, he moved back to Asia and eventually settled down in Hong Kong. Today, Herald is the Chief Asia Equity Strategist at HSBC. He has written 3 books over the years including his most recent “Asia’s Stock Markets from the Group Up.” He dedicates time each year to studying something new, and thoroughly enjoys his research and Asian culture.

Greg interviews Chris Drose, founder of Bleecker Street Capital. Chris grew up in South Carolina, and became interested in failure and failing companies at a young age. He worked for several hedge funds after graduating college and recently took the plunge to launch his own firm and fund with a short selling bias. Chris discusses his views on the short market and the different styles as well as how he identifies positions. He is off to a roaring start with Bleecker street, and I’m sure will be expanding over the coming years.

Greg interviews Levi Benkert. Levi grew up all over the world, traveling with his family focused on missionary type work. He flipped his first house as a teenager and started a small chain of coffee shops in Sacramento, before scaling up his real estate business. 2008 hit both his business and personal life quite hard, and Levi and his family moved to Ethiopia to start an orphanage for children coming from extremely difficult situations. Over 6 years, he actively worked on the non-profit and built up several other large businesses in the country and surrounding region. Subsequently he moved back to the United States and settled down in Austin Texas. He stepped back from the non-profit finally and sold the businesses in order to launch Harbor Capital, and investment firm focused on Industrial Real Estate Opportunities.

Greg interviews James A Fok. James is a veteran financial and strategic advisor to corporations and governments, as well as a brilliant author. He grew up in Hong Kong before attending college in London and eventually found his way back to Hong Kong where he resides today. James spent the early part of his career in Investment Banking in Europe and Asia, before joining the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing as a senior executive for almost a decade. He played in integral role at the exchange, working on several major initiatives such as the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect programme. His book, FINANCIAL COLD WAR: A View of Sino-US Relations from the financial markets is available around the world.

Greg Interviews Bryce Gilleland, of Asha Capital Partners. Bryce grew up in Southern California, working his way through the corporate finance world for large utilities companies before completing his MBA at UC Berkeley. After his MBA, Bryce jumped into the Cryptocurrency world, launching his first fund - Coincidence. Bryce recently launched Asha Capital Partners, and switched gears to focus on underwriting managers in the space to provide a more stable, diversified, and institutional offering for those that want to avoid deep drawdowns and negative volatility. Bryce talks about the industry as it is today, and the strategies they focus on at Asha Capital Partners.

Greg interviews Gershie Vann, Founder of Magma Capital Funds. Gershie grew up in Brooklyn and California before studying Jewish Law for several years. He started his career in Chicago working for ReMED, focused on operational process improvements and data analytics. Gershie then moved to Concerto where he honed his business intelligence skills. After reading Ray Dalio’s book (Principles), Gershie decided it was time to take the plunge and launch Magma Capital, with a focus on building automated trading strategies that optimize risk in daily market environments.

Greg interviews Dean Myerow, Founder of Southern Waters Capital. Dean grew up north of Boston, and graduated from University of Miami Law School before jumping into the bond sales and trading markets on Wall Street. Dean co-founded Bergen Capital, which created an online exchange of bond quotes before getting acquired by BB&T. After years of special situations fixed income and capital markets, Dean moved back down to South Florida. What was a potential quiet retirement, turned into several entrepreneurial endeavors. Dean launched Southern Waters Capital, an asset management shop focused on real estate development and fixed income trading. Dean is also an active community member, and non-profit advocate through the Friendship Circle of Greater Fort Lauderdale.

Greg interviews author and investigator of financial wrongdoings, Jared Bibler. Jared graduated from MIT with a master’s in engineering before making his mark on Wall Street. The combination of advanced systems engineering, and financial knowledge allowed Jared to excel at building more efficient and robust processes within several banks. Eventually Jared picked up and moved to Iceland, working for one of the top 3 banks in Iceland for a several years. The Iceland crisis in 2008 hit, and Jared was brought in as lead investigator to figure out what had happened. Today, Jared resides in Switzerland and just released his book, “Iceland’s Secret: The Untold Story of the World’s Biggest Con”.

Greg interviews Heeten Doshi, founder of Doshi Capital Management. After some first-hand money management experience at Rutgers, Heeten decided to go into investment management. Heeten started his career in a rotational leadership program at Lucent as the company stock took a tumble from $90 to less than $1 a share. It took several years and several companies later (along with two masters’ degree and a CFA) but he eventually ended up at Morgan Stanley as an equity analyst. Heeten was a rising star and moved over to BBH where he managed a team of equity analysts formulating equity strategy for many multi-billion dollar hedge funds and investment shops. After a while Heeten realized that he wanted to go solo and put his analysis into action. He launched Doshi Capital Management and has been managing an algo fund with an absolute return target for the past 9 years. Today the firm has expanded, and now donates 5% of the performance fee to a foundation to help people in need all around the world.

Greg interviews Zeb Portonova, founder of GEM Funds. Zeb grew up in Arizona, and attended Cornell, University of Florida, Harvard and Duke. He first took a position in the public office side of things before jumping into Real Estate development. He eventually made a move into Pharmaceuticals through a firm that his family had helped build many decades ago, named Eli Lilly. Zeb went on to become CEO of several large multinationals, before finally starting his own investments funds in various opportunity zone verticals. Zeb has always donated his time and money to causes he believes in, and today is no different. He has built several investment verticals including hydroponic farming, solar installations, and cryptocurrency mining. Zeb and his partners are extremely excited, but also looking forward to a long overdue vacation down the line.

Greg interviews John Beldy, Founder of Sentry Capital Management. John reminisces back to the days of the crazy stock market floors and screaming market makers before things became digital. He was an options market maker and later became an options expert for Charles Schwab’s advisors. After a decade of providing hedging strategy consultation to Investment Advisors, coupled with his extensive ETF and Option trading experience, John decided to launch his own fund. Using options strategies and passive ETF investing, John aims to provide exposure to the broad equity markets while reducing the volatility and risk by a substantial amount. Little known fact – John was a professional bowler before becoming a financial guru and fund manager.

Today’s guest is Adam Hagfors, Co-founder and CIO of Silverpeak. Adam grew up in the Midwest, and spent the majority of his career working at Accenture, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan and UBS. Through these roles Adam has become a specialist in all things credit. Adam launched a firm called Silverpeak Credit Partners with his partners about 5 years ago, focused on private credit investments of about 10 to 30 Million dollars. Adam explains the importance of being with the right team and the right partners as you grow your business, and the importance of being patient and disciplined as an entrepreneur.

Greg interviews Christophe Forsinetti, founder of OBOR Capital. Christophe grew up all over Africa, Asia and Europe as his mother worked for the UN and he enjoyed learning about new countries. He quickly became fascinated with Microfinance and after working for a successful startup in Mexico, he moved to Madagascar to build a microfinance company from the ground up. Christophe eventually decided to move back to his mother’s home country of Cambodia, and started a VC fund called OBOR, focused on providing capital and advice to help small companies grow to the point where they can attract international investment. Christophe has a very interesting background, and always thinks about the social impact he is making as much as the commercial success if his investments.

Today’s guests are Ruth Amundsen and Alden Cleanthes. Ruth is an engineer spending most of her career at NASA and Alden runs a digital art company and has always advocated for clean air, clean water, and environmental awareness. These two rockstars combined efforts to launch Norfolk Solar Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund. Norfolk Solar installs solar at no cost to local businesses and non-profits in Qualified Opportunity Zones. The owner of the building gets the benefit of the free solar electricity after the system payoff period of about 7 years, while investors get to reap the rewards of a tax break on capital gains and modest investments returns. Ruth and Alden are continuously building into new markets, and are building a team of like minded individuals to tackle solar installation at a national level. Their impact is incredible and changing the way people finance solar panels.

Greg interviews Kevin Wojton on this week's episode. Kevin moved to New York city after graduating with a double major in Finance and Mandarin. He worked in Banking at Citibank for a couple years before moving to Hong Kong, travelling china, authoring a book called “Climb China” and then moving back to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Kevin is constantly learning new things. He learned to code as a full stack software developer, and now runs an Opportunity zone fund and a technology VC fund in Cleveland, while simultaneously building a rock climbing gym within an old masonic temple. Kevin is a very entrepreneurial spirit always looking at the true impact he’s making in local communities.

Greg interviews Mike Zlotnik on the second episode of season 2. Mike moved to the US from Moldova (USSR) at a very young age. After a 15 year career in IT and Risk Management, Mike made the shift over to Real Estate Investing. Mike joined the Tempo Fund in 2009, and eventually went on to launch several other real estate focused funds with Tempo as CEO. Mike speaks about the importance of keeping fees low, and diversification. Mike hosts the BigMikeFund Podcast and consults as a business coach on the side.

Greg interviews Eros Resmini on the first episode of season 2. Eros speaks about the early days growing up in Silicon Valley, and how he naturally gravitated towards startups and entrepreneurship. Eros launched his career at Hewlett Packard through an MBA rotational program, before joining a gaming platform company run by Jason Citron called OpenFeint. OpenFeint was sold to a Japanese company called GREE for $104 Million. Eros then went on to help shape Discord in an operational role as CMO. Finally he fell back to his roots of helping young startups grow through his group called The Mini Fund focused on angel investing and advisory.

Molly Canfield-Poapst interviews Greg Poapst. Greg is the host of the Fundviews Podcast and Head of Operations for Glide Capital. Greg grew up in Brockville, Canada and moved to Ottawa, Canada to study at Carleton University. Greg speaks about his time studying at Carleton, and how he figured out his career path. He switched majors three times and went back for an additional year of finance courses in order to learn more and find a foot in the door in investment management. Greg speaks about how important it was for him to speak with investment professionals to discover what he wanted to do, and the persistence that kept him going throughout those years. Greg founded Fundviews in order to give other students and professionals the ability to learn from the experience of others. Today, Greg resides in Miami, Florida with his wife Molly. He looks forward to continued stories and conversations on Fundviews in the future.