The WealthTech Podcast Transcript

Host: Mark Wickersham

Guests: Michael Muniz, Chief Strategy Office Canoe Intelligence and Dennis Mangalindan, Director of Family office Sales 

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Mark Wickersham: All right, Mike and Dennis, welcome to the Wealth Tech Podcast. I am happy to have you guys on the show. We're going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, alternative investment data management, which has been, I think, one of the biggest productivity…

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Mark Wickersham: innovations in the family office space in the past 5 years, for sure, and it's certainly a space that has evolved

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Mark Wickersham: far beyond just gathering documents and converting data, and now into providing insights into transparency. Would you guys both mind kind of giving a brief introduction to yourself, and then, Mike, if you wouldn't mind giving an overview of Canoe Intelligence, that'd be great.

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Mike Muniz: Yeah, sure thing. Dennis, you want to kick off, and I'll jump in?

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Dennis Mangalindan: Dennis McLinden, Senior Director of Sales, 22 plus years of working in FinTech, the last two and a half months at Canoe. Prior to that, I was at SEI Family Office Services slash Archway for 14 plus years. I actually come from an accounting family. There's seven accountants in my family, so you can say I was born with debits and credits in my cradle.

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Mike Muniz: Alright, and I'm Mike Muniz, I'm one of the founding partners of Canoe, Chief Strategy Officer of the business.

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Mike Muniz: Mark, appreciate you having us on. We're really excited, to be here. My background's, I come from the private markets alternative space. I started at Cambridge Associates.

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Mike Muniz: And,

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Mike Muniz: have spent the last 15 plus years in the startup world working with alternative investors on both the GP and the LP side.

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Mike Muniz: And more specifically about, you know, Canoe, we launched this business in 2017. We spun Canoe out of a family office in New York City.

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Mike Muniz: That family office, Portage Partners, had built a technology that effectively replaced or filled the role of their back office.

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Mike Muniz: This tech went out and gathered documents from their managers, extracted data.

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Mike Muniz: And fed that data into a front end that they also had built.

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Mike Muniz: I was brought in, along with a partner, to assess the commercial viability of Canoe. And the first time we saw the platform process documents in seconds.

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Mike Muniz: Our jaws effectively hit the floor, and we knew that this is something that anyone allocating to alternative funds, private funds, would benefit from.

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Mike Muniz: as, you know, I think your listeners know very well, prior to the last several years where, sort of, technology has been introduced into the space.

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Mike Muniz: Anyone allocating to alternative funds, We're managing those funds from an accounting perspective, a reporting perspective, an analytical perspective.

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Mike Muniz: with bodies, with people. Those people could have been their own team, they could have been offshore, managed service providers, but any… anything related to gathering capital account statements and financial statements and tax documents like K1s or capital call notices,

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Mike Muniz: It was all done with people, and this technology was the first to market that really transformed how firms could manage their alternatives.

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Mike Muniz: free up time to focus on higher-order activities. And, we've been fortunate enough to build a fantastic client base, across not just the single-family and wealth space, but the institutional space. We have 400…

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Mike Muniz: 50 clients going to 500 by the end of the year, around the world. And, you know, we like to say that at Canoe, we help firms reduce risk across their organization.

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Mike Muniz: We help firms create operational leverage, and ultimately, we help firms get to the answer, or get to the decision with more confidence and far faster than they were prior. So, it's been a great ride, and excited to tell you more.

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Mark Wickersham: Well, that's great. I love, hearing about innovation that gets spun directly out of the family office. I mean, you know the problem, you live the problem. If anybody knows anything about family offices, they know one is that they have high exposure to alternative investments, and two, this used to be really a…

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Mark Wickersham: A pervasive problem without a solution that had to be thrown at it with bodies, and not just bodies, but often it was a high-level.

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Mike Muniz: Yeah. A CFO that was having to interrogate documents and to be able to translate that information into their accounting system.

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Mark Wickersham: I know, talking to some family offices back in the day and doing some research around this, it was, you know, one family office talked about how it was, you know, it was like a job of cleaning bathrooms at the airport, like, you know, somebody's gotta do it, you know, and it's an important function, but nobody wanted that first mile kind of activity.

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Mark Wickersham: To be done, and obviously,

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Mark Wickersham: Canoe's gone far beyond that, but I'd love to talk about… a little bit more about what makes Canoe unique.

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Mike Muniz: Sure. Yeah, Mark, I might steal that, bathroom, airport bathroom analogy, I like it. It, it, you know, I'd say from our perspective, we've seen, we've seen this, this sort of category evolve over the last.

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Mike Muniz: 8 years. And so what made Canoe unique to start maybe isn't what makes Canoe unique today, but,

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Mike Muniz: First and foremost, I think, Taking a technology-first approach.

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Mike Muniz: And… Identifying where to fill… bring humans into the loop has really resonated. So our view is that

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Mike Muniz: This is not, you know, post-investment operational workflows for alternatives is not something that firms will ever be able to completely set and forget.

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Mike Muniz: But there's so much low-hanging fruit with respect to redundancy, manual, menial work.

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Mike Muniz: as you mentioned, often performed by high, you know, highly paid professionals, CIOs even, in some cases.

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Mike Muniz: technology can automate the vast majority of this, so we've been really thoughtful, I think, in terms of building our platform to be driven by technology first and foremost, which brings, you know, significant data quality and accuracy, speed.

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Mike Muniz: you know, reliability and redundancy in a good way, while also identifying and directing people to leverage their expertise where it's best leveraged. So that's been our approach. The other piece, I think, is, you know, something that we're really proud of is

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Mike Muniz: we don't think of this as a point solution, right? So you think of, you know, the key pain points, hey, I have to go gather my documents from portals, I have to get the ending balance out of a capital account statement, I have to get the net cash flow, cash amount.

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Mike Muniz: From a cash flow.

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Mike Muniz: In reality, this is a broader end-to-end workflow problem. And so, for us, it starts with going and gathering documents from portals, from original sources, from emails.

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Mike Muniz: Identifying those documents, making those documents available to our clients throughout the organization, in some cases to their end clients.

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Mike Muniz: Validating that information as it's extracted, normalizing the data that's extracted, then… and then…

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Mike Muniz: Importantly, feeding that data where our clients can action it downstream. That can be in an accounting platform, like Archway, as we've heard from Dennis, could be an analytics or reporting tool. And so, thinking about where to apply technology at each point of this workflow.

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Mike Muniz: to provide the best, most automated experience has been really, really important for us and for our clients. The last thing I'll say is.

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Mike Muniz: Our clients we view as a complete differentiator. So we work, as I mentioned, across the entirety… entire spectrum of alternative investors.

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Mike Muniz: From, you know, high net worth individuals with 50 positions up to some of the largest asset servicers, and consultants managing 50,000 plus positions. And,

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Mike Muniz: As part of that, we've built a really sophisticated institutional-oriented client base.

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Mike Muniz: that… Has helped us elevate

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Mike Muniz: the output of the platform for the benefit of everybody. And, you know, I think that's been really… that's resonated

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Mike Muniz: Really well across our client base, and I think is…

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Mike Muniz: you know, different from some of the other players. We come from the space, we've been in the space, we've been on the other side, and we work with some of the most, you know, sophisticated, prestigious investors in the world. So I think that experience, is different in a really good way for us.

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Mike Muniz: Dennis, I don't know if you'd add anything.

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Dennis Mangalindan: I want to piggyback on what you just shared about technology first, and most folks don't know this, but I have known the co-founders since they incubated back at Portage way back in the day.

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Dennis Mangalindan: And the tipping point was always technology builds the platform. Technology's at the heart of everything that we do, and so I've seen the evolution of the application from 2017 all the way to the present day, and I'm astounded at how much thought goes into perfecting the application and solving these problems that we consider to be, oh, not so difficult, but when you really get into the weeds of it, it is challenging.

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Dennis Mangalindan: I think the other thing to think about is the culture of Canoe really is conducive to this tech platform.

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Dennis Mangalindan: everyone is hyper-focused on understanding what goes on within the back office, within the operations. The people that they brought in really have what I would call wide industry knowledge, and one thing that I love about Canoe, a third of our workforce are engineers.

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Dennis Mangalindan: That's incredible. We are putting very smart people and asking them to tackle very diff… problems, and sometimes people don't realize the depth of the problems that we face, but to Mike's point, when you've got some of the largest allocators around the world using our product, it really brings to the forefront what we're trying to do and how we're solving it.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, Canoe's certainly a market leader with, some marquee clients, great client base, great, great partner, network as well.

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Mark Wickersham: Dennis, we've had an opportunity to go way back. I think we probably first met when you were at Financial Navigator, and certainly when you were at Archway. Over your two decades of experience and work with family offices, what have been some of the

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Mark Wickersham: common problems that family offices have kind of come to you with that you've seen, and how have you seen…

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Mark Wickersham: That shift, over, say, the past 5 years?

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Dennis Mangalindan: You know, family offices and the saying, if you've seen one family office, you've only seen one family office, is… still rings true to this day.

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Dennis Mangalindan: Many of them are looking for the right way to solve a problem, but the problem is there is no blueprint out there. But what I have seen family offices do repeatedly is they're now embracing this idea of outsourcing as part of the back office for accounting, reconciliation, and reporting. They're really leaning on experts to help them understand how they can bring their data together and report on it.

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Dennis Mangalindan: Many of them are also now open to the idea of leveraging consultants to help them think through some of the problems, and whether the consultants are helping them pick technology, whether the consultants are helping them find a service provider.

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Dennis Mangalindan: That's something that many family offices were closed off to for many years. Just because you've got the best and brightest working doesn't necessarily mean you have the expertise. And now they're actually going out, talking to people, learning, going to events, picking the brains of folks like yourself to understand, you know, how can we do this better?

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Dennis Mangalindan: I think some of the challenges that family offices face today is integrating all the systems they have in their fintech stack and getting the value out of it.

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Dennis Mangalindan: I've seen family offices go out and buy software every time there's a problem. Oh, we're gonna buy another piece of software, and next thing you know, you've got 7, 8,

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Dennis Mangalindan: platforms. But, you know, the saying, you know, jack of all trades, but master of none. And you're not using the software to its full capabilities because you continue to bring in other applications, and I think that's a detriment

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Dennis Mangalindan: to the organization and to what vendors are trying to do. I think if they spent more time talking to vendors, getting more training, really understanding how those applications can work, they can really solve it without having to throw money at it.

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Mark Wickersham: I think those are good points. I definitely see that the family offices are much more professional, looking to modernize.

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Mark Wickersham: More open to outsourcing, certainly, more open to using consultants.

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Mark Wickersham: To help them, figure out, you know, should I outsource, who should I outsource with, technology, what's their tech stack, how should the tech stack look. Implementation tends to be still a big issue, change management's still a certain…

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Mark Wickersham: Huge issue for family offices, and firms in general. It's not just

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Mark Wickersham: Specific to them, that that's more of a people issue than a technology issue, but…

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Mark Wickersham: You're seeing certainly a lot more professionalization within the family office.

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Mark Wickersham: Which is great.

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Mark Wickersham: Mike, let's talk about, you know.

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Mark Wickersham: alternative investments, there's a ton of friction within that process, right? And that…

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Mark Wickersham: that… it seems like in some ways, especially the LP to GP interaction, it kind of, you know, went from a fax to a PDF and didn't seem to involve much beyond that. Can you talk about the various points of…

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Mark Wickersham: Of friction, and what… how family offices can gain efficiencies throughout the… kind of the investment life cycle.

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Mike Muniz: Yeah, yeah, it's such a great point. You know, in the privates, we still live in this analog, PDF-heavy world.

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Mike Muniz: And… you know, I think there's… at some point in the future, we're likely to move to a digital…

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Mike Muniz: mechanism through which information is exchanged that doesn't exist today. What I think we focus on at Canoe is trying to create that experience for the end investor, for the family office.

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Mike Muniz: While managing, you know, the frictions that come along with the PDF. And so,

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Mike Muniz: You know, the big things for us is how do we provide access to the documents and the information at, you know, at your fingertips?

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Mike Muniz: a lot of times, family offices deal with, you know, hey, I… one person went and downloaded the K1 here and saved it into this area, and oh, it's on their desktop, and…

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Mike Muniz: I gotta get that to my accountant, and another one is, you know, managing the execution of a capital call, and it's saved in the drive, but it's saved to the wrong folder.

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Mike Muniz: There's so much that… There's so much… so many touchpoints associated with…

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Mike Muniz: An investment after you make it, that it's very easy to make some of these mistakes.

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Mark Wickersham: Especially when you're focused on other things. And so, you know, our job is to come in and gather the documents.

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Mike Muniz: Remove the frictions associated with logging into portals.

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Mike Muniz: save those documents down, provide access to our… to the entire org, and then ultimately get the information from those documents that our clients need, to drive institutional quality reporting and insight. And, you know, so that's… that's our approach. You know, I think…

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Mike Muniz: Everyone right now is trying to do more with less, and so…

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Mike Muniz: This is not just about accounting or reporting. I mentioned tax, I mentioned treasury, compliance, front office, you know, running poor, you know, fund monitoring or diligence on new funds.

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Mike Muniz: this…

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Mike Muniz: problem touches, sort of, the entire back to middle, the front office of an organization, and our view is that centralizing the throughput and the flow of data and information through a single platform like Canoe provides a lot of, you know, leverage and reduces a lot of risk.

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Mark Wickersham: So using Canoe as a single platform, kind of…

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Mike Muniz: helps minimize some of the things, like lack of security master, Q-SIPs.

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Mark Wickersham: Standard pricing, those type of things that you see in the public market side, right? But…

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Mike Muniz: Absolutely.

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Mark Wickersham: available in the alts. I think one of the things, too, is that the technology has come a long ways, mainly because of AI. I think OCR never really worked or didn't work to the level of degree of accuracy that you needed to actually make it worthwhile or productive.

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Mark Wickersham: Tell me, how has AI impacted…

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Mark Wickersham: Canoein specifically, but also kind of the whole Alts investment data management ecosystem.

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Mike Muniz: Yeah, it's been… Interesting, really amazing to see over the last 18 months how…

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Mike Muniz: quickly technology has evolved. I think, you know, your listeners would probably, you know, can attest to that. So you're right, you know, OCR templates and models of the past were not really effective.

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Mike Muniz: So we've always been sort of using more of the natural language processing, AI-oriented approach, because the…

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Mike Muniz: Formatting and depth of information reported

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Mike Muniz: in these documents, it's just, you know, you need a little bit more flexibility and intelligence as part of the process. So,

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Mike Muniz: what I think has been interesting is…

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Mike Muniz: You know, we find that the most sophisticated family offices think of data as an asset, not as a chore.

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Mike Muniz: And with AI,

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Mike Muniz: You have the ability to access data far more efficiently, and ultimately use that data in ways that you maybe

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Mike Muniz: hadn't used it in the past, and so I think…

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Mike Muniz: tapping that and trying to, you know, leverage AI to make better decisions, faster decisions.

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Mike Muniz: Get more information about the underlying holdings of a fund, the historical track record of a fund.

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Mike Muniz: The themes going on in the market

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Mike Muniz: All of that is sort of more readily available with…

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Mike Muniz: the emergence and adoption of AI, and so I think that's been the big focus for us, is how do we lean into clients who do view data as an asset, and want to use AI to unlock that asset more than they have in the past?

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think that's, you know, AI in a couple places. One is just the fundamental… taking structured… unstructured information, converting it into structured information, being really good at it, right?

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Mike Muniz: Lovely.

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Mark Wickersham: huge efficiency gains that are being unlocked there, but the other one, too, is that these family offices have always sat on a huge pile of data, but there hasn't necessarily been able to leverage that data. I think, you know, to your point, data's the new oil, right?

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Mark Wickersham: You need to be able to… if your data's scattered everywhere, and you're not able to even sometimes just struggle to get your hands on it, never mind to be able to get insights from it, that you're now seeing AI really be able to provide a lot of insights.

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Mike Muniz: on that, which I think is great.

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Mark Wickersham: Dennis!

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Mark Wickersham: you know… best-of-breed, comprehensive, all-in-ones. You've been, you know, both sides of the…

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Mark Wickersham: the stack there, you know, there's not one right answer, both…

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Mark Wickersham: are appropriate. It depends on the, I think, a lot of different reasons for the family's personality, technology personality, or operational requirements. But even the all-in-ones still need to integrate. There's no really one system that can truly do it all.

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Mark Wickersham: Talk to me a little bit about what is Canoe's approach to

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Mark Wickersham: integrations, and, you know, how… or have you seen the industry move forward with, kind of, open APIs and really embrace that kind of, you know, ecosystem approach?

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Dennis Mangalindan: That's a great question, but before we dive into integrations, I think we should talk a little bit about data portability. With firms ramping up their tech stacks and family offices becoming more adept at eliminating duplicate of entry.

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Dennis Mangalindan: There's a desire to reuse repurposed data across one or many systems, and whether that's a general ledger, portfolio performance system.

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Dennis Mangalindan: there's an idea that firms own their own data, which means they know that there is an opportunity to push data across multiple applications. And with that in mind, you're…

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Dennis Mangalindan: question about integrations comes into play. There is this desire for cross-pollination of financial and investment data into downstream systems, and

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Dennis Mangalindan: Canoo has developed integrations with the leading GLs, portfolio management systems, widely used by not just family offices, but by institutions, OCIOs, asset allocators, and others across the board. We're system agnostic, and we want to build integration and give clients the ability to import their data

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Dennis Mangalindan: via upload templates, through APIs, and we're going to continue to develop these partnerships across the board, and pushing those goalposts to ensure compatibility across many systems.

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Dennis Mangalindan: Now, this idea of open APIs and data standards and alternatives, you know, it's gonna continue. We're big on APIs. In fact, oftentimes when we talk about APIs, we push out our developer kit. Many vendors who are

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Dennis Mangalindan: tech-savvy, can appreciate that. Now, what's interesting, Mark, is with data standards, and Mike can attest to this, we grew up with,

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Dennis Mangalindan: OFX, QFX, QFI data file formats from the brokerage and the custodial world, and those are the standards back in the day. There is no standard right now, from what I have seen. What we do have is ILPA,

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Dennis Mangalindan: format for reporting. It's a great foundation, but we have yet to see any company take that to the next level. Hopefully that'll happen in the coming years.

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Mark Wickersham: It's, it makes sense. I often say that the three biggest tech trends that have been impacting family offices all begin with an A, right? A, AI, API, and Alts Data Management. Alts data management has really got a, you know, takes all three of those impacts.

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Mark Wickersham: Let's talk about… What is next for the alternative investment industry?

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Mark Wickersham: A lot of people talking about alts going mainstream, even before we…

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Mark Wickersham: You get down to the individual retail.

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Mike Muniz: I'm here.

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Mark Wickersham: starting to see the advisors, multifamily offices, even just regular REAs that are serving more of a mass affluent starting to get interested in it, starting to have clients that have exposure to that asset class.

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Mark Wickersham: Certainly, the degree of tolerance for inefficiency is a lot lower when you get into those markets, but where's the market going in terms of democratization of alternatives?

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Mike Muniz: Yeah, it's a topic, we have, discussions about internally and externally at seemingly every week, Mark. I'd say, before I answer that, two things to add to the West.

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Mike Muniz: question. We are seeing a lot of Snowflake and Databricks, so you think of, you know, how are firms leveraging

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Mike Muniz: Data internally as an asset, and sort of consolidating

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Mike Muniz: That becomes an interesting sort of data lake, data warehousing becomes an interesting,

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Mike Muniz: architecture, and we see that at, sort of, the largest firms, that's starting to trickle down. The other piece is standardization, and that'll actually segue a bit into my response to your democratization comment, but, there is a lack of standardization, I think, partially

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Mike Muniz: on both sides. Both sides are to blame, meaning I don't know that LPs amongst themselves can agree on what a standard format or depth level of reporting from an alternative fund manager would be.

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Mike Muniz: Everyone sort of defines standard themselves.

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Mike Muniz: they need to get the data where they need it to go, and that's, for them, standard. On the flip side, GPs aren't necessarily being…

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Mike Muniz: Regulated the same way public funds are, and aren't, you know, mandated to provide any level of depth.

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Mike Muniz: outside of, you know, what they feel comfortable with. And so, our view is that a central platform that kind of creates an exchange of information

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Mike Muniz: that sort of reduces friction associated with standardization is an immediate answer, right? And Canoe does that, right? We provide LPs and allocators data in their standard so that they can action it and use it, and we get all the data from the GPs that they're reporting, not just

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Mike Muniz: the ending balance, not just the net cash flow, and so that access to more data at your fingertips as a canoe client is really, really valuable. On the democratization piece.

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Mike Muniz: you know, I think you're starting to see…

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Mike Muniz: I mentioned earlier this idea that,

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Mike Muniz: the private markets don't operate the same way public markets do. It's very clear. Very analog.

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Mike Muniz: I do think we at Canoe think that at some point in the future, that's gonna change. There will be a convergence.

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Mike Muniz: And I think you're starting to see that in two ways right now. Obviously, access, and so platforms like Case, like iCapital, like Moonfair, and others, are making it easier for

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Mike Muniz: Individuals, high net worth, folks managing capital at large scales.

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Mike Muniz: With limited Alts exposure to access funds that they weren't accessing in the past.

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Mike Muniz: The other is vehicle structure, and so you're seeing a lot of evergreen funds.

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Mike Muniz: Come to market. There's a massive wave.

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Mike Muniz: designed to make it… make the investment into alts

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Mike Muniz: closer to the experience of public markets investing, right? More of, like, a hedge fund style investing… investment.

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Mike Muniz: And if you talk to… we talk to GPs every… every day, most of the big GPs have either launched Evergreen Fund vehicles or are in the process of doing so.

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Mike Muniz: even talk to secondaries funds and fund-to-funds, and they're doing the same. So, trying to capture that wave, GPs are absolutely focused on that through platforms and through vehicle structures. So, what does that mean? It means that you're ultimately going to have, if you're, you know, you talk to, KKR,

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Mike Muniz: It took them 30 years to get to 2,000 LPs.

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Mike Muniz: they estimate that they'll get to 10,000 LPs in the next 5 years.

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Mike Muniz: And so, there is going to be an influx of investors

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Mike Muniz: that brings natural burdens associated with scale and operational efficiencies, and so we're sort of right in the sweet spot. I think we're gonna see,

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Mike Muniz: A lot more of this… trend as GPs

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Mike Muniz: look to chase fees and chase more investors, and that's… that's sort of…

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Mike Muniz: You know, this is the pocket that is untapped for them.

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Mike Muniz: And I think they're gonna do what they can to go capture this… part of this wave.

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Mark Wickersham: Would you say it's fair to say, almost like the mutual fund, like the brokerage analogy, where you get a mutual fund supermarket that you're starting to see.

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Mark Wickersham: Some of these providers, CAS and some of these other ones, kind of replicate that with these alternative investment, kind of broad market, you know, exposures. Hey, come in, got our platform.

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Mark Wickersham: We've done our due diligence on these funds, and we've taken the friction out of the ones that we do provide, much like what happened with mutual funds on the Schwab and Fidelity platforms.

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Dennis Mangalindan: I want to ask something really quick, Mark. You guys will all recall, in August this year, the current administration put forth an executive order. The title of that executive order was Democratization of Access to Alternative Assets. It really is opening the door for wider adoption, and to piggyback on what Mike said.

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Dennis Mangalindan: You know, that adoption would be through target date funds, managed accounts, collective investment trusts. While great in theory, the adoption may take some time, and there's a reason for years that alternative assets were available only to institutional and accredited investors. They're incredibly complex, and they require a deep understanding of the industry and market.

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Dennis Mangalindan: And Mike alluded to something, the secondaries market. You know, 2024 saw the highest volume of transactions, some say as high as $140 billion, and 2025 is going to be an even bigger banner year. The telltale signs for growth are all there, you know, improved infrastructure, and I also know it's because I'm getting more invites to conferences around the world for alternative assets. And I think the last thing that's going to help growth is

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Dennis Mangalindan: there's a tremendous amount of dry powder. There's hundreds of billions of dollars sitting on the sideline.

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Dennis Mangalindan: And GPs, LPs, they don't want to sit there. And so it has to be deployed somehow, and I think that the time has come for that to happen.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I mean, I think they're even talking about, you know.

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Mark Wickersham: alt access into your 401K, I mean, you're talking about a kind of a completely different investor that would be getting involved in the asset class.

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Mark Wickersham: It is a really interesting time for…

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Mark Wickersham: The industry for private markets in general, but also, you know, being fueled by the technology providers that do make it possible.

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Mark Wickersham: Let's talk about… AI more broadly, how is AI…

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Mark Wickersham: Impacting the family office landscape, and where do we see family offices potentially missing the boat?

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Dennis Mangalindan: And I personally believe AI is slowly changing the tech landscape for family office, and the reason why I say that is family offices have a tendency to not become early adopters of tech.

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Dennis Mangalindan: If we look at a traditional bell curve.

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Dennis Mangalindan: 2.5% on the right side are innovators, the next 12.5% are early adopters, 34% are early majority, 34% are late majority, and then 16% are the laggers. The vast majority of family offices fall into that 68%

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Dennis Mangalindan: They'll adopt AI once it's proven, and everyone I've talked to right now is in a wait-and-see mode. AI, unfortunately, introduced risks, and since most firms don't have a CTO, a CIO, a head of technology, adoption will be slow across the entire organization. Now.

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Dennis Mangalindan: Are family offices missing the boat?

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Dennis Mangalindan: A little bit, but you can…

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Dennis Mangalindan: Adopt AI by incorporating it into some simple tasks. Scheduling meetings, taking meeting notes, sorting emails, summarizing documents, and even planning. You can dip your toe into AI without completely immersing yourself in the deep end.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I do think, well, one of the ways they're going to have access to AI is through the vendors that they currently use as they update their.

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Mark Wickersham: product roadmaps, right? Canoe's a good example of that. What are you seeing, Mike?

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Mike Muniz: Yeah, I'd say, you know, just at the conferences I've been to this year, you… Almost every conference

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Mike Muniz: year to date, that AI has been…

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Mike Muniz: one of the breakout thread, kind of like the tracks, if you will, or has been the primary focus. So, it's, it's very buzzy.

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Mike Muniz: I think that… I'd agree with Dennis, I think,

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Mike Muniz: only a small percentage of family offices that you speak to feel really good about how they've implemented AI. I think they're just still early innings on trying to identify where to introduce AI and how to measure that impact. I think, Mark, you're spot on. Right now, the quickest way to get that exposure is through vendors.

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Mike Muniz: Who are innovative, and,

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Mike Muniz: are leveraging cutting-edge and building cutting-edge technology. But it's… it's… there's no question, it's talk… it's talk in the town. Everyone… everyone is… this is front of mind for…

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Mike Muniz: Everyone.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, it's, I think that they have a right to be cautious. I do think there's some, you know, I think if they rush into it, or… I think that the one of the problems that family offices could have is they're so restrictive on it that this shadow adoption ends up happening where their clients are using, or they're…

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Mark Wickersham: employees are using AI, maybe not in a controlled way without the guardrails in place, that they… you need to balance that innovation with the proper guardrails. I think that's one of it. I also think, to your point, too, Mike, with the vendors, like.

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Mark Wickersham: Family offices should be having discussions with their technology vendors to understand what their AI technology roadmap is. I think it would be kind of a red flag if they didn't have an AI technology roadmap. I mean, so a lot of the things that they… a tech vendor may be using AI for, it doesn't necessarily…

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Mark Wickersham: immediately impact them, or impact them in a visible way, such as writing code or QA, quality testing, reconciliation of first-mile data, certainly are the big choices. I do think on the… you're seeing on the RA side.

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Mark Wickersham: AI adoption with meeting notes and meeting takers saving a lot of time, and that certainly can be applied to family offices when you're

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Mark Wickersham: Doing discovery, due diligence, having meetings with, with,

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Mark Wickersham: fund managers, that's a great way to be able to capture that information, to be able to catalog that information. Tell me about Canoe Labs and what you guys are doing on that front. You guys have an AI innovation lab.

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Mark Wickersham: Sounds really interesting, but I'd love to hear from you directly on what you're doing.

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Mike Muniz: Yeah, yeah, it's a nice segue from the last conversation.

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Mike Muniz: you know, we've… the reality, we've been using AI for, you know, 5 plus years, and the focus for us has been, how can we create as much operational efficiency as possible, so our clients don't necessarily see, or get to interact directly with the AI, right?

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Mike Muniz: tool goes and gets the documents, pulls data out. In some cases, there's exception, and that's where, you know, humans are brought in to identify and sort of make judgment calls.

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Mike Muniz: But, you know, historically, we've been focused on creating an operational output or experience that is second to none. As part of that, though, we've built up

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Mike Muniz: You know, a collection of documents and data for our clients, a repository, if you will.

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Mike Muniz: We're also using, you know, some of the most advanced, finely-tuned LLMs in the space.

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Mike Muniz: with a training data set that is unparalleled. And so our clients started, as we thought about our own, you know, long-term vision and our roadmap, and we started talking to clients.

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Mike Muniz: It made so much sense that, hey, let's… take those…

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Mike Muniz: variables and think of them as an asset, and give clients exposure to or access to the AI. And so, Canoe Labs is really… it's twofold. It's an innovation hub, but it's also a…

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Mike Muniz: sort of face to our underlying technology, and a venue through which our clients can interact with their documents and their data more directly, can interrogate the information through a chat or a prompt-based experience, and so that's sort of where

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Mike Muniz: you know, user experiences are going in general, and so you take the underlying technology that we have, set it on top of the document data set that our clients have through Canoe, and you can get to, you know, a really powerful front end for

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Mike Muniz: back-middle front office users, right? So, CIOs can go in and ask questions of their documents, can summarize information across multiple managers over multiple periods, can start to think about, you know, ways to visualize the information.

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Mike Muniz: Can, you know, for ops professionals who are investing globally, you know, foreign language information has always been a challenge.

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Mike Muniz: Let's use, you know, labs to, you know, sort of create a…

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Mike Muniz: unified view of all the data and documents across English-speaking through all of the non-English speaking and reporting managers. And so, you know, that's been, it's been really, really well received.

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Mike Muniz: Given the technology at play.

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Mike Muniz: We're really excited about how fast we can move, and so we're, you know, constantly engaged with our clients across back middle front office teams to assess where we can add more value, and this is certainly going to be core to our strategy there going forward.

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Mark Wickersham: Got it. I mean, nothing's more intuitive than natural language, and to be able to have a… a dialogue with your data, right? And, hey, like, hey.

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Mark Wickersham: Amongst all my fund managers, tell me, you know, who's an outlier on fee structures, or whatever the

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Mark Wickersham: Like, you know, these professionals know how to do their job, and now they don't have to necessarily know how to use the system, right? Yeah.

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Mike Muniz: And, you know, you take the collective, you know, Canoe is a really unique shared footprint and shared intelligence.

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Mike Muniz: you know, you take the collective across our clients, hey, what are some of the other prompts and questions that clients are asking of documents, right? And maybe that's, you know, beneficial to your process. Or, you know, beyond the managers in my portfolio, how do these managers compare on fees

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Mike Muniz: against the broader universe, right? So not just in the context of your own funds and your own investments, but across the entire market, and obviously you want to be, you know, careful there, you know, to not identify things that shouldn't be identified, but

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Mike Muniz: having that broader market perspective and visibility is hugely beneficial and can be hugely insightful, and we're really uniquely positioned to deliver on that. So that's been…

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Mike Muniz: Those tenets have been sort of core to how we've built this and how we're trying to deliver value for our clients.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, that's the benefit that you have at the scale that you're at, that you can.

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Mike Muniz: Exactly.

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Mark Wickersham: Provide those type of insights.

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Mark Wickersham: All right, gentlemen, time to put your Notre Dame- hats on, take a… let's talk predictions. Do you want to talk Super Bowl predictions first, or should we talk about wealth tech?

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Mike Muniz: I heard, the Bears and 49ers match up in the playoffs at some point.

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Mark Wickersham: Here we go.

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Dennis Mangalindan: I'll take that bet.

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Mark Wickersham: catch up.

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Mike Muniz: Yeah, yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: Wealth Deck. I know 5 years is an awfully long time, especially the way things are moving now, but…

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Mark Wickersham: Where do we see the industry going? One, say, three years? Oh, what predictions do we have?

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Dennis Mangalindan: And the.

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Mike Muniz: I'd say… oh, Dennis, you wanna go?

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Dennis Mangalindan: Yeah, I just want to continue that thread that you talked about, natural language processing. Most people don't know this, but Google Translate in 2016 was an AI-based system. They introduced AI, and it led to the ability for AI to comprehend.

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Mike Muniz: And capture broad…

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Dennis Mangalindan: context via complete sentences. I personally believe we're going to be moving towards more verbal commands, much in the way Tony Stark uses Jarvis and Iron Man, his AI assistant. We're already using prompts, and I think it's only a matter of time before we're using our voice to kind of create that visual output.

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Mark Wickersham: I think that makes sense, but you'll get rid of the typing, right?

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Mike Muniz: Yep. What do you got, Mike?

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Mike Muniz: I love that, I love that, Dennis. Yeah, you know, I think, I'll kind of give a view on maybe the alts space, not necessarily the tech… the wealth tech space, but, pseudo-related, I suppose. I think there will ultimately be a central exchange through which GPs and LPs

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Mike Muniz: Engage, and through which information flows bi-directionally.

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Mike Muniz: again, very similar to the public space. And you know, I think that's gonna, you know, allow for more transparency, more access, and, more capital flow. So I think both sides are incentivized to move that direction.

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Mike Muniz: Selfishly, I think he was really well positioned to deliver on that, but it remains to be seen who, you know, who will execute on that idea.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I hope so. I think that would be great. I hope it doesn't go the way of the custodial data feed, which really never got anywhere close to a standard and an.

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Mark Wickersham: I crapshoot. But, I love they ended this podcast on a personal note, with 3 questions that have nothing to do with wealth tech. What is one skill or hobby that you may have that people don't know about?

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Mike Muniz: I'll jump in. I, you know, this may… this may actually be well known, because if you know me, I'm, you know, I'm taking you out and playing golf, but I'm, I'm a big golfer, I'm a golf course architecture nerd, I suppose, design nerd, but, golf… outside of…

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Mike Muniz: Family and canoe, golf is probably, the third biggest priority in my life.

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Mark Wickersham: Through the whole thing, the history of it, the…

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Mike Muniz: History, yeah, golf course design, you know, and obviously getting out and playing as much as I can.

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Mark Wickersham: Anyways.

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Dennis Mangalindan: I'm gonna add something that's kind of different.

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Dennis Mangalindan: I collect vinyl, and I've been doing so for 30 plus years. I used to be a DJ, and I DJ parties, dancing, weddings, bar mitzvahs, underground parties. Today, I still have several thousand records. I have a beautiful console with turntables and a mixer, and on occasion, host little dance parties for my daughter and her friends here at the house, so that's something that I hold near dear to my heart.

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Mark Wickersham: You do, like, a bar mitzvah or something like that, you know, if you need…

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Mark Wickersham: I love it. Yeah, I gave up on my vinyl collection, and I went over to CDs, and you know, I know people love vinyl, and the crack on it.

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Dennis Mangalindan: There should be no cracker. Take care of the records.

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Mark Wickersham: I do love CDs, though. The compression's so much better than the streaming. The kids nowadays, they don't care, like, you know, they listen… they listen to music on YouTube, like, they really don't care about the audio quality. It drives me crazy.

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Mark Wickersham: Favorite travel location?

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Mike Muniz: Kiwa Island is a gem of all gems for me. We go down every year as a family.

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Mark Wickersham: Where's that?

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Mike Muniz: Down in South Carolina, just 45 minutes outside of Charleston.

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Mark Wickersham: Okay.

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Mike Muniz: It's, you know, this sort of serene, quiet island right on the coast, great beaches, and so our family enjoys going down there.

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Dennis Mangalindan: My favorite travel location experience has to be Japan. My wife and I were there in 2017. We luckily had a

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Dennis Mangalindan: six days to explore. I love sushi, I love, sashimi, I love ramen, and I remember Anthony Bourdain saying one time, he quizzed a bunch of chefs, and he said, if you were to only live in one country, where would it be? And everyone said, Japan. So that… that's my vote. I want to go back there again soon.

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Mark Wickersham: Right, sign me up for that, I haven't been, I want to go. Have you ever seen that documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi?

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Mike Muniz: Great.

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Dennis Mangalindan: Yes, phenomen.

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Mark Wickersham: Very good.

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Mark Wickersham: And I still… I miss Anthony Bourdain every day still, man. He was a cultural touchstone, for sure. I would have to say, like, a couple of my favorite travel locations, and there's nothing exotic about it, especially in the U.S. Chicago, Mike, I love Chicago!

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Mike Muniz: Yeah, there we go.

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Mark Wickersham: Great cities in the U.S.

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Mark Wickersham: I put, put New York City up there, too. I can…

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Mark Wickersham: you know, never get enough of those two locations. I think they're great, world-class cities.

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Mark Wickersham: The… a book that you've read recently that you'd recommend?

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Mike Muniz: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. He wrote The Martian.

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Mike Muniz: And, Project Hail Mary is a similar kind of space-oriented, universe-oriented sci-fi. It's actually a movie's coming out, I believe, next year or two years, but it is a page-turner, and it's incredibly well-written and well-researched.

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Mike Muniz: And got sort of a little heartwarming element to it as well, so…

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Mike Muniz: That's a good one, everyone should read that. I like that… I like good sci-fi, you can wade through a lot of crap, but yeah, I'll have to check that one out.

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Dennis Mangalindan: I just, finished Mamba Mentality by Kobe Bryant, and I did not like Kobe growing up. I didn't… I despised him, but I respected his work ethic.

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Dennis Mangalindan: And one of the stories that came up was, during the USA Olympics, while all the other players, like LeBron and Dwayne Wade and Bosch were out partying, coming home at 5 in the morning, Kobe was in the J.

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Dennis Mangalindan: working out, getting your shots in, and I just keep thinking to myself, like, if you want to be really great at your craft, you should focus on that.

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Dennis Mangalindan: Mamba mentality.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I didn't like Kobe, I'm a Celtics fan, but he certainly had to respect him, and I mean, that Celtics,

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Mark Wickersham: Lakers matchup, and those are some of the best in sports, but, certainly, definitely back when Kobe was in his prime back in the day, those were great matchups, as well. So, gentlemen, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you sharing your insights and sharing a little bit about yourself. Thank you so much.

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Dennis Mangalindan: Thank you.

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Mike Muniz: Thanks, Mark, this was great.

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Dennis Mangalindan: Take care. Bye.