Relationships are a powerful currency in private capital. Yet nobody accounts for them that way.
Every investment starts with a path to a CEO or a board. That path lives in one partner’s head, inbox and calendar. Nobody at the firm can see the whole list.
Recently, I sat down with Ken Fine, CEO of Affinity, on the Modern Capital Podcast.
Ken spent five years designing propulsion systems for nuclear submarines, where a single error could sink a boat with the crew still aboard.
Then more than a decade at Financial Engines, taking Bill Sharpe’s Nobel-winning models built for multi-billion dollar pension funds, and turning them into something an ordinary saver could use in a 401(k).
Ken was CEO of Heap when it was acquired. Then a board member called about Affinity.
His first reaction: “a CRM? Hasn’t that been figured out?”
He returned the call as a favor to a friend. Then he saw the data set.
For about a decade, the platform has ingested its customers’ emails and calendar appointments, and mapped out the relationships inside firms and across them.
Basically who knows whom, how and in what context.
By Ken’s count, roughly 40 to 50% of the venture capital market is on it, and the map reaches past those firms to the founders, board members and bankers they deal with. Private equity and private credit are now where it’s growing fastest.
Private equity needed things venture never did. A take-private is material non-public information, so the map has to be walled team by team. And sourcing runs through a deal team, so one partner’s network has to be usable by a principal, a VP and an associate.
Humans can only know so many people… and we recall fewer when it matters.
Too often, the first a firm hears of a deal is the banker’s call, as one bidder among many. Meanwhile, a partner down the hall has known the CEO for years.
A wider canvas of introductions means more deal flow and better outcomes, for both the firm and its LPs.
A few more things we cover:
What designing nuclear submarines teaches you about ownership, and when software needs the opposite
What the Financial Engines playbook means for putting private assets into 401(k) plans
Why the line between a VC firm, a PE firm and a private credit firm is disappearing
The three layers of what comes after the CRM: raw data capture, compliance and agents for sourcing, deal qualification, IC prep and portfolio monitoring
What is left for the human when the agents do the rest
How Ken uses AI every day, from inbox triage to a thought partner he tells to be cynical
"This space, as much or more than most, is relationship-driven. So if you're in the venture world, and you want to make an investment, you're going to need to find a way to get connected to the CEO, or get connected to board members. So leveraging networks is a critical piece of capital within these firms."
Relationships as infrastructure. Ken is putting that currency on the books.
Intelligence is becoming infrastructure in private markets.
That’s the premise of The 2026 Private Markets AI Summit on November 4 in New York, where GPs, LPs and technology leaders examine how AI is being built into the operating layer of private markets.