According to Neil Keegan, co-founder and CEO of disruptive technology fund Marlinspike, it was his background in the Navy that shaped the mission-driven ethos of his firm. The fund focuses on innovative companies that are solving challenges around national security while also exploring creative commercial applications. 

Finding a company that is making the world a better place is what gets Neil and his partners really excited. The fund focuses on five key growth and innovation sectors — AI and analytics, autonomy, robotics, aerospace, and cyber. 

In this episode of Fund Flow, Neil and host Jon Finger discuss how he and his partners apply their previous military training to push for success, and channel their excitement into investments where the opportunity to have a huge impact across multiple sectors is evident. 

During this episode, Neil shares his views on where investment in privately-held companies in the space industry will be focused, citing SpaceX as an example of how space exploration is changing to be faster and more efficient. 

Neil also has advice for building relationships with LPs, overcoming hesitations that newer funds might encounter, and how to position your team for success. 

For someone looking to raise their first fund, Neil reminds them they need to be ready for a long haul. “It's not for the faint of heart,” he says. “You've got to really commit and fully understand why you're doing it. You've got to have that fire in your belly to do it.” 

💡 Featured Guest 💡

Name: Neil Keegan

What he does: Neil is the co-managing partner and CEO at Marlinspike Partners. Before founding Marlinspike, he was the CEO of Roanoke Capital Management.

Organization: Marlinspike

Connect: LinkedIn

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You are listening to Fund Flow, a podcast for emerging managers offering insights into the journey of new and aspiring fund managers seeking to have access in a crowded market. Tune in as McGuireWoods partner and host, Jon Finger, is joined by guests ranging from first time fund managers to proven emerging managers, experienced LPs poised to back emerging managers, and other key participants in the emerging manager ecosystem. Hear their real world perspectives and gain actionable tips to help inform your strategy and position yourself for a successful fund closing.

Welcome to Fund Flow, a podcast for emerging managers. I'm Jon Finger. Today, I'm joined by Neil Keegan, co-founder and CEO of Marlinspike Partners, the general partner of the Marlinspike Disruptive Technology Fund. Prior to Marlinspike, Neil was the CEO and CIO of a single family office. He is a Goldman alum and a U.S. Navy veteran. Marlinspike is a specialist dual-use fund, solely focused on investing in companies pioneering technologies that address core national security interests with massive commercial applications. As part of that, they focus on five key growth in innovation sectors, AI and analytics, autonomy, robotics, aerospace and cyber. So Neil, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you on.

Jon, thank you so much and happy new year.

Happy New Year to you and everyone listening. So maybe Neil, let's start and talk about the firm's military background, expertise, and investing experience that led the group to the founding of Marlinspike.

Sure. Those are great questions and that's really the core of who we are, if not the military background, somewhat of a military or mission driven ethos. So for me, you mentioned I was a Navy veteran. I'm a graduate of the Naval Academy and probably served for six years in active duty. One of my other partners, Chip Walter, a little bit older, was also a Naval Academy graduate. He was a P3 pilot, was in the Navy 28 years, was a retired captain, which was an O-6, had a major command. Then he went to go work with General Petraeus in Afghanistan.

Then he followed the general to the CIA and was there for eight years and then left the CIA after working with the Innovation Center and very closely with EQTel to go stand up and run Northrop Grumman's BC program. Mislav Tolusic, our chief investment officer and my co-managing partner, while not military, he certainly has a military ethos and that mindset. He's a real get it done kind of guy. His background is an aerospace engineering with a deep expertise in investing in this specific dual-use space. He's got about 15 years or so, which pretty much makes him a dinosaur for this relatively new space of investing.

We've got a few other folks on the team. Nick Snow, he's our lone West Point graduate, so we like to give him a hard time, especially around Army Navy Week, although they did win this year. So hats off to Army. After his time in the Army, he was working in private equity doing a lot of work with Carlisle. So we were happy to have him come over and join the team. Darryl Smith, one of our advisors, another academy graduate, former Marine, Wharton grad, was at Platinum Private Equity. So he's been a terrific member of our advisory team.

The other core members of the team, Tim Busby and Will Close, while not military, again, have the same hard charging attitude and a focus on the mission, which is really to find these innovative companies that are doing something unique and innovative and solving challenges for national security, but also have the ability to create very innovative commercial applications, and frankly, make the world a better place. As lofty as that sounds, but that really does get us excited in finding these unique companies.

Absolutely. So let's maybe start with the conception of Marlinspike and then how has it evolved from there to where you are today?

Sure, great question. I think we're always evolving and always changing, and hopefully for the better. For me, it really started after having run a family office for 11 years, being a generalist portfolio manager and running that company and having some great success and really enjoying that. But I felt like I was missing this passion for investing in things that were really important and impactful for me. So again, technology companies that are solving problems specifically for national security.

I also like the asymmetry of these types of investments where there's a lot of downside protection built in when these companies have use cases for the intelligence community or the Department of Defense where they can get some early contracts, some early wins, non-dilutive capital, and then really iterate and then once their products or services are ready to really expand into the commercial market, they're ready to go. So it really started with that investment mindset.

I knew having been on the other side, evaluating funds and being an LP, that to actually have a fund, we would have to have a meaningful track record, a great team, and the expertise in a particular strategy, and a strategy that I think people would really care about and want to get behind. So we started Marlinspike Capital in the summer of 2020 really on a deal by deal basis. We had great success putting together an SPB in a company called Palantir. We were last money in. We had a great result, about a 3.7X in about six months. So over a 1,300% IRR, returned stock to our investors.

Then that really opened the door to do more deals in our space. The deal flow was really incredible. We went on to do about 10 other deals over an 18 month period. Interestingly enough, COVID was I think an accelerant for us because we did a lot over Zoom. We were able to cover a lot of ground and we moved pretty quickly to get a lot of deals done. Then as we were closing out 2021, we were attracting some really good people and some great talent. and Mislav and I thought, "You know what, I think we've got something here," especially with some big mega trends that were happening with great power competition, increased defense spending, the need for innovation.

We thought, "Look, this was a really interesting space that needs a lot of capital and needs a lot of innovation." So we were excited about putting more capital together in a more formalized and efficient way in a fund versus being deal by deal one at a time. It wasn't really an efficient model to attract and deploy capital as well as having a really great team around that.

That's great. Well, I appreciate you touching on some of those indicators both internally but then also in the market that it was really ripe for the fundraise.

Although, I will say, I think we did pick the top of the market to push go on the fund. So looking back, I have no regrets, right? But I think it's interesting because I think we probably would be farther along with our capital raising had we push go a year before. However, it's a really fascinating time to put capital to work. So I think when we look back in a couple years, I think we'll be pleased with the grind of putting the team together, putting capital out into a choppy market, trying to make sense of what's going on in the market, getting the best deal. So I think when we look back this vintage period of our fund one, '22, '23, '24, which will be the bulk of the capital, I think we'll look back and we'll be pretty happy that this was the time we deployed capital.

Yeah, no, I think that's a really interesting observation and I think you're right about that in the sense that the cream always rises to the top, right? So no question, it's a challenging period right now, but the groups like yourselves that are making through it, I think it's pretty comfortable to say that there's probably a good reason for that and you'll look back on it, and knock on wood, you'll be having some great success. So I certainly agree with that.

The military background, I've talked to, both just in my practice but then also on the podcast, a variety of different GPs, but the core military background that the team brings to the table, what are some of those attributes that you think have helped the team get through this challenging environment, but to your point, thrive in it as well?

Well, I think certainly having the ability to lean on some of our experiences with going through challenging times at the academy and then certain situations in the military, look, you always fall back on your training. That's why I think it makes United States, the fighting force, the men and women out there that are protecting us. I mean, they train, they train, they train, and that's really why we're so good. So I think a lot of us are really reverted back to our training. Then why do you train? Because you have a mission. We are, to a person on the team, very mission driven.

We're very unified in what we want to do and we know that we're making an impact every day. We're finding these companies that are moving the needle and can really make a difference for our country and then ultimately create these really innovative, fascinating commercial applications. So everyone's excited about that. The neat thing is that while we've got a unified mission, we've got complementary skill sets and we lean on each other and we have this term, we say one Marlinspike. So we win together, we lose together, we're in the foxhole together, and that's really the ethos that we have at the firm. We're attracting that type of talent and that's what really drives and motivates the team.

The second thing beyond mission driven is we have this phrase, we call it expect to win. That's something that I learned while at Navy. That was a slogan we had on the lacrosse team. Now, we didn't win every game, but we went out, we prepared, we hustled, we worked hard, and every time we hit the field, we expected to win. So we take that same ethos into everything that we do. Our country, our companies, our team, again, we might not always win, but we're going to be prepared, we're going to be ready and we're going to expect to win. If we don't, we're going to learn from our mistakes. We're going to iterate, we're going to get better and we're going to get back in the game and we're going to come back stronger.

Then lastly, another good one that personally I like is I've got a flag in my room that says don't give up the ship. So you may or may not have known to this, but this is kind of a famous naval rallying cry. It goes back to the War of 1812. The U.S. Navy was really in its infancy and we were outmanned, outgunned, and you can say outclassed in terms of ships by, at the time, the mighty Royal Navy, but we ultimately prevailed. So every day you just can't give up that ship. You just got to keep at it, keep going and to be persistent.

I love it. I absolutely love it. Clearly in developing your strategy, the team is playing to your strengths, which is obviously I think, one, differentiated you, but two, also been part of your success. Maybe talk a little bit about the dual-use technology component of your strategy, how that was crafted and ultimately implemented to date.

Sure. So dual-use is pretty fascinating and it really goes back for decades, right? So if you think of the early stages of the internet, I mean, this was a creation effectively by the precursor to DARPA. A lot of things we use in everyday life that are ubiquitous, even the touchscreen phone, the internet, radar, think about the whole space infrastructure, I mean, these were all really military innovations that ultimately got into the commercial landscape. So it's been around for a while, but in terms of an investible asset class, it's relatively new and gaining a lot of traction.

I think we were a little earlier to the space, and again, attracted by the mission of it. So can we find these really unique companies like Voyager Space, for example, is one of our companies. They're a space infrastructure company and they want a contract to build the next private space station. So for those of you that might not know, the International Space Station is old, it's really falling apart, it's coming to the end of its life. If we don't have an answer for that, then the only other space station that's up there right now is a Chinese space station. So we need to have an answer for that. So we get to do this. We get to invest in a really neat company like this that is making a real difference for national security and frankly for humanity.

Secondly, this disruptive technology, for us, it's every day, it's really fascinating. It's this combination of unique founders and what we like to say is investing in the best of the bold. So we find these great entrepreneurs like Alex Fielding and Steve Wozniak, the co-founders of Privateer Space. So they've created a company where they're going after the issue of orbital space debris and how to map that. So really if you think about it, they're creating a space data company and we get to work with innovators like that. It's fascinating to be able to be part of that growth and to really then help them along.

Then lastly, I mentioned a little of this at the top of the podcast is the return focus. We really love the asymmetry of it where there's a lot of downside protection built into these companies where they're getting early wins and then ultimately can scale in a huge way under the commercial side. A third example of that would be Elroy Air. It's one of our portfolio companies. This is a cargo drone company, so it's fully autonomous. Hybrid gas electric, can fly 300 miles with a 500 pound payload, and it's got multiple use cases. It's got use cases for the military, for humanitarian causes, and also commercial.

Now, they got started out, they won a $3 million contract with the Air Force to continue to build the prototype drone, to get to the full flight envelope and to establish the mission. As they continue to progress, they've got a huge backlog of orders, over 2.3 billion in orders with commercial customers like FedEx, CVS and Ravn Alaska. So those early revenues and early contracts give a company like Elroy the chance to get through their full flight envelope, and then scale into the commercial side. So that's where we see it from an investment perspective, downside protection, but really nice upside.

If we can, Neil, I'd love to just circle back on the space piece, one, for my own benefit, but two, I don't think we're going to have someone else on this podcast anytime soon that has the expertise here. I'd love for you to just share even just those most basic observations, right? You talked about the International Space Station, but any other core observations just around space that you might be able to share with the listeners? Right, we all see the headlines. I think the reality is a lot of us don't have a good sense for some of those core issues. Anything else that you might share with the audience?

Sure. Look, it's a great topic and it's super fascinating. It's a personal passion of mine. We're right here in the D.C. area, and I took my kids to the National Air and Space Museum. There's actually two, many people don't know, there's one downtown in the mall and then there's one out in Virginia, Northern Virginia, and it's a huge hangar. So if you ever get a chance, you should go. One of the really neat things is they actually have a space shuttle there. I believe it's the Discovery and it is spectacular when you get upfront and you can actually look at this magnificent creation that we created.

So what I think has been fascinating about space just over the last call it two decades is after the space shuttle program got shut down, we really didn't have a way to get to space. My hat's got to go off to Elon Musk and the team at SpaceX for really proving that we could get back to space and we could do it in a fast and efficient and a much cheaper process really led by the private sector. So he put it all on the line and created SpaceX and they proved that we can get back to space and do it in a smart and efficient fashion. So I think the last decade has really shown us that the launch costs have really come down dramatically, which really opened up the whole space economy.

So I think that decade is all about getting to space. So I think the next decade is going to be about what are we going to do in space. That's why we really liked Voyager Space because it's an infrastructure company. They're a holding company that's buying companies that are operating in space and generating revenue. These are real companies. These are companies that have hypersonic missile propulsion systems, they have robotic arms, they own an airlock on the space station. When they build their space station, they're not going to be the only one.

So effectively, I think that we've learned as a country that it's better to have the private sector involved and it's better if we don't have just Voyager Space at a space station. We have Blue Origin with Jeff Bezos and team, they're building a space station as well, Northrop Grumman. So I think that the future of at least space stations in the near term, and we're going to have a series of outposts instead of just one international space station that we have to share, which incidentally obviously we're sharing with the Russians, which is problematic now, but a series of privately owned infrastructure space stations out in space, which then give us the ability then to get to the moon.

Once we get to the moon and can operate efficiently there, onto Mars and beyond. So it's just fascinating to be part of this world or this ecosystem, which I only think is going to grow. That's not just our belief, but if you look at a lot of the research out there, I think it was Bank of America that thinks it's going to be a trillion dollar economy by the end of the decade and they might be wrong because it might be bigger than that.

That's great. Thanks for that, Neil. I'd like to shift a bit towards the fundraise side and thinking about as you crafted the strategy, what were the most important considerations for Marlinspike when pursuing and then choosing LPs to partner with?

Sure. Look, what we say here is that for Marlinspike to be successful, we need three core things. Number one, we need phenomenal LPs to be our investors. We need incredible investments because the investment returns are going to be the lifeblood of the franchise as we go forward. Then three, operationally, we need to be operationally excellent and make sure that we're really running this organization as smoothly and efficiently as possible. If you don't have all three, it's just not going to work. So we needed to have the right team in place to credibly go out and frankly ask for money because it's a big ask.

You're asking an investor to tie up money for a long period of time. We're a seven year fund with two one year extension, so call it nine years at the latest. I mean, that's a long relationship and it's a big ask. It's a big trust us ask. So we were fortunate that with our early success, with our deal by deal and SPVs that we had, a really good group of investors that had success with us, believed in us, got to know us. So we went to them first with the idea of the fund. We were very fortunate to have an anchor investor say, "I believe in you. We're going to back you."

They brought other investors to the table. So we got out of the gate with what we knew was going to be a good first close, having some great anchor investors that would then help us put capital work early. Our strategy was not to go out and raise the fund and then close it and then do make investments. Our strategy was to continually raise, do rolling closes and then demonstrate that we could operate and execute as a team and find these great companies and make great investments.

So we wouldn't be anywhere without our LPs and especially our LPs that were there early for us because now when we're meeting new folks and we're spending more time with institutions and endowments, they've got a good look at who we are and how we operate and can look at the deals and how we underwrite and all the deal memos. So where we are today is dramatically different than where we were, I mean, just a short year ago.

Sure. So thinking back over the past 12 months, what were the most common reasons that LPs were hesitant to invest with you as a first time fund?

I think for other GPs that are out there with first time funds, these will be common. Number one, length of track record. So some folks want to see a full investment cycle and that's totally fair. So we started really in 2020 with the pre-funded investments, and you could look at that as really fund one, although it wasn't really put together in a portfolio fashion. So we didn't want to be disingenuous by saying, "That was fund one and this is fund two." So those are relatively early investments, and although we've had success, I mean these investments need time to play out. So the track record is good on the realized and unrealized side, but some folks want to see it all the way through and we get that.

Two is size. So we've had good success with some larger groups that haven't really had much exposure to this space, but really like it for a lot of the reasons that you might suggest. Huge tailwinds. I mean, the National Defense Authorization Act was $858 billion. So there's a lot of money coming into this aerospace and defense space. A lot of it's going towards innovation. This is recession resilient. There's low correlation. So there's a lot of things to about our space in general, but even on a $100 million fund, some groups want want to write a 20 or $50 million check, and they're just like, "Look, hey, come back when you're at 250 on fund two or fund three, but we want to track you and we want to follow you."

So while those messages are hard to hear, it's fine. It's just part of the game and we're committed to building those relationships because, again, for us, this is the franchise and we want those folks to take the time to get to know us and sometimes it could take years to develop those.

Then I guess the last thing is maybe just a general hesitance to work with a team that's new. It just takes time. We've had good success in the family office space and we've had good success in different pockets of geography, and we've made commitments to go back to places like Dallas and St. Louis where we've got a good group of LPs and people that really get what we're doing and get what we're all about. So we make a commitment to them, then we keep going back and we make a commitment to that particular geography or that town or that area, and we go back and we get to know our LPs because they need to know us and we need to know them, but it just takes time.

Sure. You mentioned the team aspect. I think it's always a bit more nuanced than that. Sure, you're not a team that spun out of X, Y, Z private equity and had been working together for 20 years, but how did you approach that question about effectively how is the team going to work together and how do we underwrite that?

Sure. So for us, we actually had been working together for a number of years for Elroy Air, for example. That was really the deal that brought the executive team together. This was the company that Mislav, my partner, and he's known the CEO for almost five years. We had done another counter drone company together and he said, "Hey, we really ought to look at Elroy Air and get to know Dave Merrill." So we did on his suggestion, which led to us making a $3 million commitment in their safe round. We ended up leading and pricing their A round and some other notable investors came alongside us like Lockheed Martin and Prosperity7, which is Saudi Aramco's venture arm.

Ultimately, we put them in the fund as well. Alongside that Chip Walter, our other partner, he was at Northrop Grumman and he was looking at Elroy Air, and they were spending a lot of time with them and they really liked them. What was interesting is that at Northrop, he's got a bench of 40,000 engineers that he could tap into, and he is still got great relationships. One of the neat things about our ecosystem is that it's unlike buyout to some degree where it's winner take all. With a lot of the other folks that are investing in this space, they're also mission driven.

So we like to have other smart investors, smart collaborators. So for us to work with the Northrop Grumman or an L3 or EQTel, I mean, that's just what we do. So those relationships are very strong. I realized from working with Chip, even when he was at Northrop that, "Wow, this is the guy that we need to have." Mislav who is CIO at AM13, I was like, "Wow, this guy has such deep industry expertise. This is the guy that I need to partner with." That really put together I is a pretty powerful combination that I think mitigates a lot of risk because it's not like we're right out of college and we came up with a great idea in an napkin.

We've all been around the block, I guess, more than a couple times, and this is what we really want to do. So I feel like we want this to be our last stop and we're all chips in and we want to make the biggest impact. I think when people get to know that, get to know us, they can kind of see that and feel that and smell that on us. It goes a long way to build trust and confidence.

Absolutely. So recognizing a host of complexities involved with raising a first time fund, what are some teachable moments you and the team encountered along the way?

That might go beyond the allotted time, Jon? Many teachable moments. Let's see. Well, I think one is you just got to keep pulling, especially as it relates to raising capital. So I'll kind of focus the comments around that. You just got to keep pulling threads, I think, and follow the energy. Where you've got some traction and you find folks that really understand and want to understand what you're doing, you just got to keep going. You can't be shy. You've got to ask for who are the other people that would have interest in what we're doing? Or do you have other investors that you want to bring to our event? Or could you share our podcast with them?

So it's about kind of building that ecosystem and continuing to ask. When I look at our current investor base, they've all really come from trusted sources and trusted referral. It's hard to go cold and just expect someone to write a meaningful check. So I think it's that continual building of relationships is really huge. The second thing that I think we've done well is that there's this phrase called the OODA loop. Have you heard of that?

I have not.

So it's somewhat of a military term, and I'll tip my hand to, he's an Air Force Colonel, Jon Boyd, and OODA is an acronym and it stands for observe, orient, decide, and Act. So the parallel is if you're in a situation like with a foreign adversary, if you can get inside of their planning cycle or their decision loop, that's when you win. So what we try to do is, especially if we're talking to sophisticated family offices or institutional investors, we really try to dig in what's your process and what do you need and how can we help you be successful in understanding what the decision matrix look like.

So for example, if they will ask for sample memos that they put together for managers, and then we'll replicate it and basically give it back to them in their format that they want to see. So it is a lot of extra work, but we found that if you can make it easy for people to digest and understand and put what we're putting together the way that they want to see it and the way that they can understand it and what's most important to them, then we've found that we can achieve success in a quicker fashion and with a higher probability fashion.

That's great. Over the past couple years as this emerging manager ecosystem and environment has evolved and changed, as it always does, I think it's definitely important now to have a true specialization as an emerging manager to differentiate yourself and then also to make it where someone feels like they have to say yes to coming into your fund. What do you foresee for the future as it relates to LPs' willingness requirement to invest with emerging managers that have a unique specialization like Marlinspike? Do you see that continuing? How do you see that changing?

Yeah, I think anecdotally, I do think there is a renewed interest in specialists over generalists, smaller funds over larger ones. I think as an allocator, at some point, you've got to take some risk, right? Because I think that it's been proven that emerging managers can put up really spectacular returns. It's not really a surprise. If you think about the incentives, the incentives are totally aligned because we know as a team, if we don't put up great returns, there's not going to be a fund two or a fund three. I mean, forget about it. So you couldn't be more aligned and you couldn't find a team of individuals that's hungrier for success and for doing things the right way at that first, second, and third fund, but primarily the first fund.

So I think it's that unique mix of experience, but also energy that the team that really any emerging manager team needs to bring to the table. I think you've got to have that. I haven't met any other GPs that are emerging managers that don't share that same drive and passion because you have to have it because it's hard. I mean, it is not easy and not everybody's going to make it, but at least you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror and know that you gave it you all you got.

As you think about the future of the emerging manager ecosystem, what changes would you hope to see in the coming years?

Well, I'd actually like to really see that for folks that say they're doing emerging managers to actually then back it up and do it, or maybe be a little bit more transparent about their process, because I think they would probably save themselves a lot of time and the managers a lot of time. So I think that's probably the number one thing. So for example, if there's an emerging manager conference, I think clearly you're going to attract GPs that want to meet great LPs, but for the LPs that go, they probably shouldn't go unless they're really open for business.

Then if you're open for business, maybe be just very transparent and maybe you can put it on your webpage of, "Hey, here's what we're looking for. Here's the process, here are the steps, here's the timeframe. If you think you could be a fit, let's have a conversation. If you're not going to fit this criteria, then come back when you're ready." Which I think is totally fair. I mean, I think that would be really powerful for the emerging manager and LP ecosystem.

That's great. Well, Neil, you've touched on a lot of really strong and insightful nuggets along the way, but maybe just as a close here, what pieces of advice would you give to someone who wants to raise their first fund, maybe has an idea and an expertise and wants to put it into action? What are some additional nuggets that you could provide to the audience?

Sure. Look, it's not for the faint of heart. So you've got to really commit and fully understand why you're doing it. You've just got to have that fire in your belly to do it. I mean, you also have to make sure you've got staying power. You're going to have startup expenses, your GP commit. You got to take care feeding on the home front, and these are some tough decisions, and you're asking for long-term money, so you better be ready for a long-term ride and you've got to be able to see it through. You've got to enjoy who you're working with, and as crazy as the sounds, you've got to enjoy the journey every day because there's ups and downs every day. So you've got a buckle your chin strap.

One of our other CEOs, Nathan Kundtz from Rendered AI, I actually encourage you to follow him on LinkedIn, he's got this great series about being an entrepreneur. Basically he says, "Look, when the go in gets tough, you have to think about it and say, you know what, we get to do this. I mean, this is an opportunity, even though it's hard." I think that's right, because every day I'm excited to come to work with my team, our investors, our portfolio companies, because you know what, at the end of the day, we're on a mission, we're making an impact and we're completely aligned to put up great returns. So I think if you don't have that mindset, this probably isn't the game for you.

That's great. Well, Neil, thank you for joining us today on Fun Flow and sharing your great insights and experience. I appreciate your time. I appreciate everything you and the team are doing within the ecosystem and in particular with your truly wonderful and differentiated specialization. I appreciate our listeners for joining us and hope you join us next time.

Well, thank you so much, Jon, and I look forward to seeing you in Dallas soon and I look forward to coming to the conference in May. It's going to be a great one. You put on a terrific event. Thank you for doing this for the emerging manager ecosystem because we need great sponsors and advisors out there like you that really help. Because at the end of the day, we're putting up a capital, we're putting capital into companies, and these companies have real people that are working there. So there's a lot of good people out there and great entrepreneurs that need the emerging manager ecosystem to fund these innovative startups, because together everyone's making an impact. Thank you.

Thanks, Neil.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Fund Flow. To learn more about today's discussion, please email host Jon Finger at jfinger@mcguirewoods.com. We look forward to hearing from you. This series was recorded and is being made available by McGuireWoods for informational purposes only. By accessing this series, you acknowledge that McGuireWoods makes no warranty, guarantee or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in this installment. The views, information, or opinions expressed are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect those of McGuireWoods'. This series should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state and should not be construed as an offer to make or consider any investment or course of action.