Matt Curtolo

Matt Curtolo is an independent LP advisor and 20-year private markets veteran. He spent seven years at Hamilton Lane, ran the venture portfolio at a $25B outsource CIO, and managed a substantial venture book at MetLife before joining Allocate, where he went deep on emerging managers for the first time. He left to do the thing he found himself most drawn to: work one-on-one with GPs and LPs on the hardest parts of fundraising.

His practice lives in the middle. He's not a placement agent, and he's deliberate about that. What he offers is the voice of the LP; the candid feedback that most LPs won't give because there's no real incentive for them to. In an informal survey of over 40 groups he worked with last year, 80% said they get zero or minimal feedback after LP meetings. That gap is where Matt operates.

Our conversation gets into what he looks for in the managers he takes on (self-awareness, humility, receptiveness to feedback), why he thinks LPs are asking the wrong questions about fund performance far too early, and what the industry would look like if LPs just said what they actually thought.

The opacity between what an LP says and what their actions indicate is the single biggest inefficiency in the emerging manager ecosystem.

Full episode below, or on Spotify / Apple Podcasts