Pitch The PM

In 2019, Ken Griffin, Founder & CEO of Citadel, was looking for some of the best risk-takers on Wall Street. He landed on Rich Falk-Wallace, then a top analyst at Viking, who went on to become a Portfolio Manager at Citadel’s Surveyor Capital.
So what comes next after becoming a PM at Citadel at 29?
For the past five years, Rich has been building Arcana, a financial technology platform designed to help the world’s top hedge funds and asset managers make smarter decisions, faster. His philosophy is heavily influenced by Steve Jobs: obsess over the details and build products that genuinely delight customers.
In this episode, Rich breaks down the secular growth of beta-zero products, the rapid expansion of separately managed accounts (SMAs), the rise of alpha capture, and how human investment signals can complement quantitative systems. We also discuss portfolio construction, product-market fit, and how Arcana is integrating AI across its platform while staying focused on the customer.
“How did you convince Stanley Druckenmiller to be your seed investor?”
“The problem of portfolio construction is way closer to solved than that last mile of, ‘What’s a good idea?’”
“The allocation of dollars in public markets is headed towards beta one or beta zero products.”
“SMA-type products are growing massively in every direction. And that comes from allocators of every kind — sovereign wealth funds, endowments…”
Topics: Arcana, Citadel, Surveyor Capital, Viking, Hedge Funds, Financial Technology, Separately Managed Accounts, Beta Zero, Alpha Capture, Portfolio Construction, Investment Research, Artificial Intelligence, APIs, MCPs, Product-Market Fit
*Not Investment Advice
[00:00:27] Rich’s journey from distressed credit and public equities into financial technology.
[00:02:20] Why timing, experience, and energy pushed him to make the entrepreneurial leap.
[00:04:07] Why domain expertise helps — but nobody has a “right to win.”
[00:08:43] What it takes to earn backing and why product obsession matters.
[00:11:07] Arcana’s “platform maximalist” approach to software, APIs, MCPs, Excel, and LLMs.
[00:14:35] “If you think something is easy, it’s because you’re the buyer.”
[00:17:11] Why founders need to forget how hard something is and focus on the customer experience.
[00:19:56] Learning to love the incremental process of building.
[00:22:38] Finding product-market fit and the shift toward beta-one and beta-zero products.
[00:26:52] Why separately managed accounts are growing explosively.
[00:28:11] What an SMA is and how it differs from a commingled fund.
[00:31:03] How Arcana helps allocators analyze risk, performance, attribution, and repeatability.
[00:34:20] Mock portfolios, analyst tracking, and creating better feedback loops for investment talent.
[00:40:58] Alpha capture and turning human conviction signals into systematic portfolios.
[00:45:45] How Arcana uses AI internally to build software.
[00:47:32] Measuring the ROI of AI and token spending.
[00:49:58] MCPs, on-platform AI, and giving different investors different ways to access the same insights.
[00:54:51] Is Arcana a software company or a data company? Why Rich sees it as both.
[00:59:17] Rich’s philosophy of delighting customers and continually improving the product.
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Pitch The PM Links:
📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates, new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board:
https://pitchthepm.substack.com/
Doug Garber on LinkedIn for daily market color:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508
Rich Falk-Wallace Links:
Rich Falk-Wallace on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-falk-wallace/
Arcana:
https://www.arcana.io/

Daniel Pilling, Co-PM of the Sands Capital Global Growth Fund, has spent nearly 20 years investing across long-only and long-short strategies, including time at Fidelity, Millennium, and Balyasny. Today at Sands Capital, he takes a very different approach: concentrated, deep-dive investing in high-quality growth companies with the potential to compound for years.
In this episode, Daniel breaks down why he believes the AI investment cycle is still incredibly early. We discuss $NVDIA, $TSMC, $ASML, memory, AI agents, the return on GPU infrastructure, and why compute could remain supply constrained for a long time. Daniel also explains why Anthropic's growth has been unlike anything he's seen before and how Sands thinks about finding the long-term winners as AI diffuses across the economy.
If you're wondering whether the AI trade has gone too far—or whether we're still at the beginning of a much larger cycle—this conversation offers a long-term investor's framework for thinking about what comes next.
"I've never seen anything like this."
"We're going to be supply constrained in terms of compute for a very long time."
“The reason for that is, again, the low penetration and the high ROI of what’s happening.”
"Anthropic and agentic AI is incredible. And it's just going viral and the pace of adoption is unheard of."
Stocks: $NVDA, $TSM, $MU, $ASML, $AMZN, $GOOGL, $META, $AMD, $ZM
Topics: Sands Capital, Artificial Intelligence, NVIDIA, TSMC, ASML, Memory, AI Agents, Anthropic, Compute, Semiconductors, GPU Economics, Long-Term Investing, AI Infrastructure, AI Innovator Fund
*Not Investment Advice

[00:00:00] Introduction to Daniel Pilling, Co-PM of the Sands Capital Global Growth Fund.
[00:01:15] Daniel’s path from banking and multi-manager investing to long-term growth.
[00:03:02] How Daniel became obsessed with investing at 12.
[00:04:13] Why Daniel left Millennium and Balyasny for Sands Capital.
[00:05:14] Sands Capital’s philosophy: concentrated portfolios, deep research, and long-term ownership.
[00:07:32] Why memory and NVIDIA remain high-conviction AI investments.
[00:09:54] NVIDIA’s market share and why open-source AI could support GPU demand.
[00:12:20] Why NVIDIA, Cerebras, Trainium, and TPUs can all win.
[00:14:13] The case for a memory shortage as AI agents scale.
[00:19:00] Why memory may not follow a traditional cyclical pattern.
[00:22:13] AI infrastructure returns and increasingly valuable compute.
[00:23:48] Why rising older-GPU prices challenge depreciation concerns.
[00:24:23] Anthropic’s growth, Zoom during COVID, and rapid agentic AI adoption.
[00:26:46] Why AI compute could remain supply constrained and create an “upside cliff.”
[00:28:34] Why Daniel compares AI adoption to electricity.
[00:30:42] How AI could make investment research faster and more effective.
[00:32:03] Why ASML and TSMC remain key AI infrastructure constraints.
[00:34:28] Generating differentiated returns through multi-year views.
[00:37:52] Why 99% of daily market information doesn’t matter.
[00:39:52] Humility in investing and recognizing when the Zoom thesis changed.
[00:43:42] Why AI remains early, underpenetrated, and rapidly improving.
[00:46:22] Sands Capital’s AI exposure across semis, memory, cloud, and software.
[00:52:56] The case for Meta despite rising CapEx and declining free cash flow.
[00:56:45] The fund’s AI exposure and global diversification.
[00:58:14] The AI Innovator Fund thesis: low penetration, constrained compute, and AI winners.

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Pitch The PM Links:
📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates and new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board: ⁠https://pitchthepm.substack.com/⁠Doug Garber on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508 
Sands Capital Links:Daniel Pilling on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-pilling-14343116/Sands Capital: https://www.sandscapital.com/

Tom Hardin, formerly known as “Tipper X,” helped the FBI unravel one of the largest insider trading investigations in hedge fund history. The FBI flipped him, convinced him to wear a wire that built more than 20 cases. The hero of the story was Tom’s wife, who stood by him the entire time, allowing him to survive the intense emotional weight.
In this episode, Tom walks through how he crossed the line, how easy it was to rationalize small trades as harmless, and how a handful of decisions ultimately destroyed his career. He explains what happened when the FBI approached him on the street, what it was like wearing a wire for two years, and why the $46,000 he made from four trades ended up being the price of his career. 
We also discuss the practical lessons investors should take from his story: why who you surround yourself with is the most important decision of your career, why compliance should be treated as a career protector, and how being in a pressured performance situation can change how good people act. 
Tom is now the author of Wired on Wall Street
"I blew up my career for $46,000."
 "Cheating is a choice."
“You have to think about who you're surrounding yourself with.” 
“If you're even that close to the line, you have to have a conversation with compliance.” 
*Not investment or legal advice.

Topics: Insider Trading, Tipper X, Hedge Funds, FBI, MNPI, Compliance,Securities Fraud, Risk Management, Investment Research, Wall Street 
 
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:30] Tom Hardin’s history as Tipper X and role in the FBI insider trading investigation
[00:01:51] The FBI confronts Tom about four trades
[00:04:36] Why Tom advises contacting a lawyer before speaking to law enforcement
[00:05:03] How fund pressure began shifting Tom’s decision-making
[00:10:52] Receiving an acquisition tip and deciding whether to act
[00:11:10] Crossing the line by passing the tip to another investor
[00:13:17] The need, opportunity, and rationalization behind Tom’s trade
[00:14:53] How his boss’s response reinforced Tom’s rationalization
[00:16:42] How information-sharing escalated into a $15,000 payoff
[00:18:57] Discovering others had already cooperated with law enforcement
[00:21:41] Wearing a wire without a lawyer or cooperation agreement
[00:24:24] Drawing a line with the FBI and being exposed as Tipper X
[00:25:46] How cooperation affected sentencing and Tom’s felony convictions
[00:27:58] The line between cooperation and entrapment as an informant
[00:31:51] Telling his wife, panic attacks, and her support during the investigation
[00:36:03] How running gave Tom structure after his career ended
[00:37:03] Insider trading: material, non-public information and breach of duty
[00:39:42] Compliance questions around using LLMs in investment research
[00:40:38] Why research notes matter when trades are questioned later
[00:42:29] Risks from an investor’s research and outside relationships
[00:44:05] Expert networks and risks around political intelligence firms
[00:46:53] Risks for public company board members with material information
[00:47:41] Congressional stock trading and proposed restrictions
[00:50:21] The lasting effects of a felony conviction and federal expungement
[00:53:33] Why Tom calls compliance the “chief career protector”

💡 This episode is powered by:
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AlphaSense: Request a Demo
Pitch The PM Links:
📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates and new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board: ⁠https://pitchthepm.substack.com/⁠Doug Garber on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508 
Tipper X Links: 
Tom Hardin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tipperx 
Tipper X: https://www.tipperx.com/ 
Wired On Wall Street Book: https://www.tipperx.com/book
Tipper X on X: https://x.com/iamtipperx

My former colleague and banking guru, James Abbott, is living his passion with the launch of Diligence Capital Management (DCM).

DCM runs a concentrated, net-long financials strategy alongside a tighter-net long/short financials portfolio. James and his team bring more than 50 years of combined experience in financial services—and a deep understanding of how banks operate, where they underperform, and what it takes to improve them.

In this episode, James explains why DCM became actively involved with Eagle Bancorp ($EGBN), how he identified an underperforming bank in need of change, and why he believes the market is still underestimating its earnings power.

We also discuss lessons from the 2008 financial crisis and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, as well as why spending time inside a business can create an investing edge that is difficult to replicate from the outside.

"My goal was to be a portfolio manager just like Peter Lynch." 

"The market just doesn't really appreciate what's going on here." 

"The deep homework concept... go deeper than anybody else does." 

"The company should be earning about $6 a share." 

Stocks: $EGBN, $ZION 

Not Investment Advice. 
______________________________________________________________________
[00:00:00] Introduction to James Abbott and the Eagle Bancorp investment thesis 
[00:02:14] How a Peter Lynch article inspired James Abbott’s investing career 
[00:03:46] Early career experiences at SNL Financial and FBR 
[00:05:44] Reflections on FBR’s research culture and working alongside Dan Ives 
[00:07:03] Lessons from generating positive returns during the 2008 financial crisis 
[00:08:07] Moving from the sell side to executive leadership at Zions Bancorporation 
[00:09:17] Building a significant ownership stake in Zions through personal investment 
[00:10:28] Founding Diligence Capital Management and launching the firm 
[00:11:46] The impact of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and banking sector contagion 
[00:13:43] How market narratives and deposit flows can pressure banks 
[00:15:02] Diligence Capital Management’s portfolio construction and leverage approach 
[00:16:22] Activist investing through special purpose vehicles and concentrated opportunities 
[00:16:37] Why Eagle Bancorp became a high-conviction investment 
[00:17:48] Assessing Eagle Bancorp’s earnings power and excess capital 
[00:19:09] Concentration risk and the challenges facing Eagle Bancorp 
[00:20:47] Commercial real estate exposure and concerns around stale loan-to-value metrics 
[00:22:31] Insights into bank credit quality, appraisals, and regulatory oversight 
[00:24:35] Recommendations to strengthen Eagle Bancorp’s board composition 
[00:27:32] Office loan concentration and portfolio risk management 
[00:29:57] The process of engaging management and advocating for change 
[00:31:51] Corporate governance reforms and separating the chairman and CEO roles 
[00:34:22] Historical governance challenges at Eagle Bancorp 
[00:36:09] Proposed board additions and turnaround expertise 
[00:37:14] The push for a three-year performance improvement plan 
[00:38:48] Market reaction to credit loss reserves and the stock’s recovery 
[00:40:27] Why Diligence Capital believed the market mispriced Eagle Bancorp 
[00:41:14] The path to achieving $6 per share in earnings power 
[00:42:20] Closing thoughts on activism, value creation, and the future of Eagle 
______________________________________________________________________

Pitch The PM Episode Links:
Doug Garber on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508 
📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates and new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board: ⁠https://pitchthepm.substack.com/⁠

James Abbott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-r-abbott-investor  

This episode is powered by:
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I met Tim Arthurs, the second week when I joined Millennium and knew he was an “A” player. He still has notes from every time he called me on a stock. He’s a process guy. And it has led to his success. 

He founded Seaport Research Partners, which has become the fastest-growing independent equity research platform by attracting the top research analysts and empowering them with aligned incentives. Early in his career, he moonlighted as a QB coach for Heisman winner and #1 overall pick Bryce Young teaching him the importance of the right motion and process.  

“What have I learned from some of my biggest failures is keep getting up. You're bendable, you're not breakable”
"You can't be a big man at night and a little man in the morning"
We cover:
The Bryce Young story — a Craigslist posting, a dad who lied about his kid's age, and six months of tennis balls and candy wrappers before he ever touched a football. It starts with good habits

The MiFID II unlock: how unbundling and vote/rate-card transparency exposed what individual analysts are actually worth — and made an eat-what-you-kill platform possible for the first time

The brutal math of the sell side: ~3,500 published analysts in North America, and two-thirds of coverage is "watered-down, check-the-box" — subsidized by banking and syndicate

How Seaport recruits the top 1% of the 1%: never a recruiter, 550+ interviews, ~40 offers, 30+ conversions — the clients feed the talent

The reference-check questions that actually work: "When did they make you money?" and "What's a 60-minute meeting with them worth?" — asked across 20-30 buy-siders until the trend is undeniable

The 3-step analyst checklist: investment judgment (best call, worst call, the consensus view you think is wrong), research edge (what do you produce that clients can't get elsewhere — and what's proprietary in the process), and client franchise (your top 15 advocates who raise their hand no matter what)

The salesperson hierarchy: good salespeople are concierge, great ones sell outcomes — "we get paid to anticipate, not analyze" — and the cream of the crop sell feelings: becoming an extension of the client's investment process

"You can't be a big man at night and a little man in the morning"

Why analysts leave the bulge: "Why do I get comped down 10-15% a year when my franchise wasn't down?" — and what they control at Seaport: coverage, distribution, pricing, input and output

The three-stage distribution model: ~400-500 readership, top-100 tactical, top-40 opt-in

Proof of concept: #1 global market-share gainer at some of the biggest wallets on the planet, 3 → 30+ analysts in five years, and only one analyst ever lost

The next five years: the best 45 analysts in the U.S., replicating the model in Europe and Asia, and filling the void the bulge brackets left

Triathlons, 1,440 minutes a day, and the 5% you owe yourself — plus the cause closest to home: the Epilepsy Foundation of Chicago and his daughter Athena

_______________________________________________________________

💡 This episode is powered by Fiscal.AI - Delivering Modern Financial Data Infrastructure

Pitch The PM Episode Links:
Doug Garber on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508 
📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates and new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board: ⁠https://pitchthepm.substack.com/⁠

Links:
Tim Arthurs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-arthurs-06b3179/
Seaport Research Partners: https://seaportrp.com/
Seaport Global: https://seaportglobal.com/
Chicago Epilepsy Foundation: https://epilepsychicago.org/