2. Nodem targets markets where secondary buyers are scarce and pricing discovery is thin. What has underwriting portfolios in these geographies taught you about valuation that you wouldn't have learned in more established markets?

I’d actually flip the question. I think the bigger risk isn’t the obscure stuff. It’s the well-traded momentum names where valuation discipline erodes. You stop doing fundamental analysis. That’s the real risk: anchoring to what others are doing. Independent, bottom-up underwriting is what keeps you safe, irrespective of the geography.

We cover pretty much every geography and private asset class at this point, so we see a real mix. I've been an emerging market investor for much of my career, so I've had to deal with uncertainty and the lack of price discovery the entire time. The lesson is fairly simple, whether it's developed or frontier markets: do your own homework, particularly when looking at it from the credit side.

3. You’ve described many of your clients as ‘non-sellers’ – people who want liquidity but don’t want to give up their positions. How do you distinguish a genuine non-seller from someone who actually should be selling (what does it look like in practice), and how do you help them think through the decision?

The answer definitely isn’t always NAV lending.

A warning sign is concentrated assets with no exit visibility, where someone is seeking a NAV loan because that’s effectively what the portfolio is worth – say, thirty percent of NAV. That’s not a non-seller; that’s someone who should probably be selling.

The best portfolios we see are the opposite: growing, well-diversified, and could easily sell in the secondary market, but don’t want to. Often, they actually want to buy more of their own portfolio companies using a NAV loan – modestly levering the portfolio – and they use our cheaper capital.

The first thing we discuss is: here are the five to sometimes ten options you have from a liquidity perspective. It’s a mathematical equation. What do you think this portfolio will do? What’s our cost of capital versus current secondary pricing? We run them through everything, and if a secondary sale makes more sense, we’ll make referrals.

4. You went from being part of a $300M AUM firm to launching your own thing. Looking back, was there a moment where Nodem almost didn’t happen – and what pushed you through it?

I grew with Sturgeon from zero to $300 million, so I'd already seen the ups and downs of building an investment firm, which builds some resilience. One of the lessons I learned there is to start with a big early backer. We have Lepercq, which is a family office that bought into our vision early. That can see you through some of the harder moments.

The hardest moments are when the high-quality deal flow dips. You always think: Is there enough high-quality transactions out there to sustain this? Do people actually want my product? And then you have to adapt: lower your cost of capital, optimize the product, etc.

But what keeps you going is, one, the undeniable data on the volume of unrealized value out there; two, the fact that NAV lending is well established in other asset classes, such as buyout, so there is a well-trodden path; and three, nothing can beat executing truly win-win, fantastic deals.

5. NAV lending means underwriting private portfolios with limited comparable data. Looking back, which assessment surprised you the most – and what did it change about how you think about risk?

This goes for whatever asset class you're in, but we looked at a portfolio early on where the NAVs looked healthy, yet on a line-by-line basis, it was much weaker. You really learn to almost ignore NAVs on a capital account statement. While they can be a useful guide for trajectory, they can often be a vanity metric.

As an LP, I’d recommend proactively applying haircuts to VC/PE headline NAVs in line with public markets’ performance.

6. NAV lending has moved from niche to mainstream with some of the biggest names in private equity entering the space (EQT, Patrimium, and others). How does the wave of institutional entrants change the landscape for a firm like Nodem?

It's certainly positive. A few years ago, nearly all my conversations were about explaining what NAV lending is. Not actionable transactions. These larger players have gone out and educated the market as to what this is, so there's now a much better understanding.

Also, nearly all the names you mentioned are making $200 million in single transactions on multi-billion-dollar portfolios. There’s a huge gap for those lending sub-$100 million. Whilst Venture has matured and is now better suited to modest NAV loan usage, there are very few players like Nodem who understand the asset class and can be comfortable with portfolios of individual companies with a wide range of eventual outcomes.