Welcome to Edition 02.
The path to institutional capital is not a mystery. It is a set of relationships, decisions, and rooms that move differently depending on where you stand: the manager building toward the next allocation, the operator with capital to deploy, the allocator deciding where it goes, the professional building toward the seat.
This edition is about the people working those rooms, and the rooms where they meet.
THE INFRASTRUCTURE IS WORKING
This past March, CAN convened 50+ investors, general partners, founders, and capital allocators at Roots & Water Wine Room in the Dallas Design District. Delegations traveled in from nine markets: Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Atlanta, Nashville, Houston, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Dallas itself.
The room held 26 founders and general partners actively raising or deploying capital, 6 LPs, and average deal sizes ranging from $10M to $100M.
What happened in the room wasn't networking. It was organic matchmaking, engineered through intentional curation and executed in real time by CAN leadership working the floor with purpose.
"The sequencing is intentional. We're not throwing events. We're pressure-testing whether the infrastructure we're building actually works in real markets with real people. Three cities tells you we're serious. The raise sizes in the room tell you who we're building for." Jay Holmes, Founder & Chairman, Capital Alliance Network
→ Check out the Dallas recap: Read Now
WHAT'S NEXT
NYC Open Capital Social, June 24
CAN returns to Manhattan for the next stop in the Open Capital Series. Attendance is by approval and capacity is limited.
Expected in the room: representatives from a leading institutional multi-generational family offices, several global banking and wealth platforms, a regional commercial bank, and active capital advisory firms. Alongside the asset managers, sponsors, searchers and operators building inside the CAN ecosystem.
If that's the conversation you want to be near, request your seat.
→ Reserve your seat in NYC (members inquire on discount pricing)
MEET THE ROOM
Meet the Speakers: NYC Open Capital Social
The path from emerging manager to institutional allocation is narrow, gated, and rarely explained by the people who actually walk it. On June 24 in New York, four of them sit down to do exactly that.
Kenneth A. Goodwin Jr. founded Jeanensis Capital Markets on Wall Street in 2015 and has spent the last decade at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets. Nnamdi Dillon Iwu shapes the policy environment private investment operates inside, as Vice President at the American Investment Council. Blair Carl Smith has sat on both sides of the table — co-managing a $5.2 billion emerging manager portfolio at the New York State Common Retirement Fund, and now driving Access to Capital at the Milken Institute. Taffi Ayodele leads emerging manager strategy at the Office of the New York City Comptroller, deciding where some of the country's largest public pension dollars get allocated next.
Four seats. Four perspectives on the same question.
MARKET BRIEF
Americans Are Worried About Retirement. Could This Be the Solution?
A recent BlackRock survey found that more Americans fear running out of money in retirement than fear dying too soon. Meanwhile, fewer than 4,000 companies remain listed on the public stock market — and that number keeps shrinking. The math on a public-markets-only retirement is getting harder to defend.
In this week's Monday Markets Brief, Tariq Collins explores what just changed. Robinhood's Venture Fund 1 (NYSE: RV1) opened private market access to retail investors at $25 per share — no accreditation, no minimums, no performance fees. The episode walks through the initial portfolio (Airwallex, Databricks, Ramp, Stripe, and more), the mechanics of a real-world LBO, and the baby boomer exit wave shaping one of the largest private market opportunities in a generation.
The question isn't whether private markets matter to your financial future. It's whether you're positioned to participate.
THE SIGNAL
The path to institutional scale follows a pattern. Deep sector expertise. Consistently high returns within that lane. Performance credibility leveraged into adjacent asset classes and larger allocations.
The State of Black Capital Markets report documents where that pattern is producing results in 2026:
Vista Equity Partners: 650+ transactions across 25 years. The firm's repeatable playbook in enterprise software now extends into private credit, sponsor credit, and capital solutions for AI-enabled businesses.
TIAA: $294 billion General Account managed by an investment team building fixed income strategies that deliver lifetime income to 403(b) participants. Institutional-scale capital allocation with measurable outcomes.
Kuramo Capital: $3.5 billion in catalytic capital deployed across 30+ countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. 650,000+ jobs created. A multi-asset strategy targeting 3x returns within 7–10 years for foreign investors.
Ethiopian Investment Holdings: Recently signed a memorandum of understanding with RUSAL to develop a $1 billion aluminum smelter, demonstrating sovereign-scale capital coordination attracting major foreign direct investment.
The pattern across all five: sector mastery first, scale second. The full report walks through how each firm built the credibility that unlocked their next allocation.
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Stanley Lewis, Founder & CEO, A28 Therapeutics
Dr. Stanley Lewis doesn't fit the typical biotech founder profile. He treated HIV patients through the epidemic's darkest era, took TROGARZO through FDA approval for multi-drug resistant HIV, and raised $100 million for his previous company along the way.
Now he's building A28 Therapeutics, developing cancer treatments modeled on honeybee venom. While competitors chase CAR T-cell therapies and gene therapy platforms, A28 is targeting something simpler: the electrical charge that cancer cells carry and healthy cells don't.
It is a deliberate move against the industry's drift toward complexity, shaped by a regulatory philosophy he earned the hard way.
"It's never a straight line. Never a straight line. Never a straight line."
Dr. Stanley Lewis, Founder & CEO, A28 Therapeutics
ALLIANCE SPOTLIGHT
The Silver Tsunami Is HERE!
Capital Access Holdings leads Deal Utility, CAN's NYC CCP Track, channeling Executive Entrepreneur-Through-Acquisition buyers, sponsors and searchers into MEP supplier succession, routing capital and operators into structured, repeatable acquisition pathways across the lower middle market.
Interested in becoming an Alliance Partner?
The Alliance Marketplace is open to vetted service providers, infrastructure platforms, and capital partners whose work aligns with the operators inside the CAN ecosystem.
→ Inquire: [email protected]
JOIN THE NETWORK
A Network Built for the Builders
You are building something. A fund. A firm. A portfolio. A career inside the rooms where capital decisions get made.
CAN is a private network for asset managers, sponsors, searchers, allocators, and professionals working in private capital markets. Members convene in person and online, share what they're working on, and find each other across the layers of the capital stack.
CAN's mission is to support the building of $1 trillion in aggregate AUM and enterprise valuations inside the network by 2055. That mission is the through-line for everything we do. Members who join are joining the community working toward it.
If that's a community you want to be part of, we'd like to hear from you.
A Final Note
“..Play the long game, not the wrong game.
Capital compounds. Relationships compound. Reputation compounds. Everything that lasts in this business is built slowly, on purpose, with people who show up the same way every time.
That's what CAN is. That's what we're building..”
Until next edition,
