Episode summary
Venkat Subramaniam, Co-Founder of DealsPlus - Why Investors Need Better Infrastructure Now
Alt Goes Mainstream
· · Hosts: Michael Sidgmore · Guests: Venkat Subramaniam
Summary
Venkat Subramaniam argues that private equity’s back office has been trapped in an Excel-heavy, manual workflow that makes cap tables, transactions, and entity structures slow and error-prone. He says DealsPlus was built to create a single source of truth for the “messy middle” between funds and portfolio companies, where recurring work like quarterly valuations, annual audits, and exits all depend on accurate underlying ownership data.
He says the hardest part of building for private equity is complexity: multiple legal entities, jurisdictions, currencies, debt and equity instruments, and many stakeholders across tax, audit, deal teams, valuation teams, and portfolio company management. In his view, venture-style cap table tools are not enough; private equity needs software that also handles legal entity relationships, structure charts, waterfalls, and document-backed workflows.
Subramaniam thinks the market is moving from point solutions toward best-in-class applications connected by APIs, with data warehouses or cubes unifying the stack. He expects the biggest gains to come from bottom-up infrastructure, because clean source data can improve reporting, audits, exits, carry modeling, and investor transparency across the firm.
Key takeaways
- Venkat Subramaniam says private equity needs software built for its complexity, not venture-style cap table tools.
- He estimates a mid-market PE fund with about 20 portfolio companies across multiple jurisdictions can waste over a thousand hours a year.
- Subramaniam says quarterly valuations are the best recurring wedge because clean cap table data improves annual audits and exits.
- He believes the future is best-in-class point solutions connected through APIs and data warehouses, not one all-in-one platform.
- He says smaller funds can benefit faster, but larger funds face the bigger behavioral-change challenge.
- Subramaniam expects a faster private markets software shift over the next 5 to 10 years.
Notable quotes
“we kind of zeroed in on cap tables but specifically from the standpoint of quarterly reporting function”
“the complexity in private equity is that for example the capitals are never at one level”
“Excel is a great tool. We we worked with Excel for many many years and I still love Excel”
“I think there'll be a a rapid one happening the next 5 to 10 years”
How the episode opens
This episode of the Alco Mainstream podcast is brought to you by Ultimus, a leading full-ervice fund administrator for asset managers in private and public markets. As private markets continue to move into the mainstream, the industry requires infrastructure solutions that help funds and investors keep pace. Ultimus is a leading full-ervice fund administrator for asset managers in both private and public markets, offering a wide range of capabilities across registered funds, private funds, and public plans, as well as outsourced middle office services.
Delivering operational excellence, Ultimus helps firms manage the everchanging regulatory environment while meeting the needs of their institutional and retail investors. Ultimus provides comprehensive operational support and fund governance services to help managers successfully launch retail alternative products. Trusted by institutions, investment consultants, registered investment adviserss, state governments, and fund managers, Ultimus provides solutions for nearly every investment structure in the marketplace.
Visit www.ultimusf fundsolutions.com to learn more about Ultimus' technology-enhanced services and solutions or contact Ultimus executive vice president of business development Gary Harris on email at g har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har harris at ultimus funundsolutions.com. We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream. We're going mainstream.
Everybody's going to eat. We're going mainstream. All my family see you on mainream.
We're going mainream from Wall Street to Melrose Avenue. We're going mainream. Venture capitalists to athletes to creators to the person who is collecting trading cards.
We're going mainream and a collision of culture and finance. We're going mainstream. Welcome back to the Alco mainstream podcast.
Today's episode is with a founder who is building missionritical software for private equity firms. We are joined by Venet Submanium, the co-founder of deals plus to discuss why he has built deals plus.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- private equity software
- cap table management
- private markets digitization
- single source of truth
- post-investment operations tech
Companies and tickers mentioned
- DealsPlus
- EY UK
Watch the episode
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Alt Goes Mainstream, this episode and its artwork belong to Michael Sidgmore. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
