Welcome to Edition 03.
Half the year is gone. The second half is historically where the market gets interesting and this one arrives with more moving underneath it than the headlines suggest.
This edition opens with what was said in New York City on June 24th. From there, Tariq Collins brings this week's Market Brief, and The Signal follows the money.. where allocators are committing, where dry powder sits, and the capital gap underneath the deal flow.
The coverage begins below.
THE PATH TO INSTITUTIONAL CAPITAL
New York · June 24
CAN's fourth Open Capital Social brought fund managers, LPs, allocators, operators, and platform builders together in New York City, including attendees from Canada, London and the African continent proving we’re a scaling global network. The theme was The Path to Institutional Capital. The conversation went further.
The room walked through five threads worth knowing: why policy is capital and the GPs who skip it pay later, why tokenization is a system change and not a product launch, the three enemies of emerging managers and how to defeat them, why CAN's infrastructure is now being studied internationally, and why social capital is not a soft concept, it is the due diligence most people skip.
"Isolation. Dismissiveness. Shame. Those are the three enemies of success. Avoid them and you will make it. Let them take hold and you will not."
Blair Carl Smith, Senior Director, Milken Institute
→ Read the recap: 5 Takeaways from CAN’s NYC Open Capital Social: Read Now
MARKET BRIEF
Why the boring businesses are the most durable trade in the current market
Tariq lays out his firm's investment thesis in one segment: a principal-driven acquirer of established, cash-flowing small and midsize businesses.. the unglamorous, profitable backbone of the American economy. Cleaners. HVAC. Plumbing. Electrical. Concrete and paving. The businesses that don't make headlines but build the infrastructure that supports the ones that do.
His point: the AI and data center buildout dominating current market coverage is only possible because of the subsidiary businesses that pour the concrete, run the electricity, and lay the plumbing to support it. Those are the businesses that either withstand AI disruption or use AI to enhance their operations — not the ones that get wiped out by it. For readers thinking about acquisition targets, deal flow, or where cash flow durability sits in the current environment, Tariq's framing points to a segment often overlooked and consistently underestimated.
THE SIGNAL
Where capital is flowing, where it's stuck, and what it means for emerging managers and the operators they back
Two institutional allocator programs surfaced public capital activity in late spring 2026, collectively signaling that the institutional path to emerging managers remains active.
New Jersey's Division of Investment confirmed continued activity through its Barings-managed New Jersey Emerging Manager Program II, with the state's first proposed investment in the program approved at up to $250 million and reporting in June 2026 noting New Jersey was actively seeking emerging private equity managers.
SURS — the State Universities Retirement System of Illinois — confirmed continued emerging-manager activity through a $150 million partnership with Fairview Capital, reported in the same window.
Sources & More Details
The dry powder problem: it's not a shortage, it's a distribution problem
The 2026 Mid-Year Buyside Report from GP Stakes News surveys eighteen firms across GP Stakes, GP Financing, and GP Seeding — the capital infrastructure that exists specifically to support managers raising or scaling. The signals are sharp: non-dilutive GP financing originations more than doubled from 2024 to 2025 and are on track to double again in 2026, succession has overtaken commitment funding as the fastest-growing use case, and capital for lower middle market managers ($500M–$5B AUM) remains structurally undercapitalized with only 1.5% of firms raising funds of $1.5B or less have sold a GP stake to date. There is dry powder for emerging and middle-market managers. It is not concentrated in the investors that most managers approach first. The toolkit is broader than it was two years ago. → Read the report
The transaction: 5th Century Partners proves the thesis at $276M
Marques Torbert and Bruce Hampton's Chicago-based firm closed its second fund at $276M in total commitments, nearly double its predecessor, bringing 5CP's total AUM above $550M across funds and co-investment vehicles since launching in 2020. Fund II continues 5CP's strategy of partnering with founder-owned lower middle market healthcare and business services companies, often as the first institutional capital. The capital base is institutional: endowments and foundations, corporate and public pension plans, insurance companies, and family offices, both new and existing investors. Four platform investments are already complete, representing approximately 42% of committed capital. In an environment where most managers are struggling to clear fund targets, 5CP doubled. → Read the release
The missing middle: capitalizing growth-stage suppliers to strengthen supply chains.
Camron Doss, Director of Finance at the Milken Institute, lays out the "missing middle" capital gap — businesses needing more than $100,000 but less than approximately $5 million in financing, too large for microloans and too undercapitalized for traditional bank lending. This is the layer that underpins large procurement contracts in manufacturing, infrastructure, logistics, and professional services.
Doss surfaces two deployment vehicles already working the gap: Founders First Capital Partners, which has secured more than $200 million in committed capital for B2B and contract-revenue businesses in underserved communities, and Mission Driven Finance, which deploys responsible capital to growth-stage businesses with proven revenues and clear scale paths. The federal procurement context underneath this: $833 billion in FY25 federal contracts awarded, with $194 billion going to small businesses. → Read the full piece
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Gregory Ugwi, Founder, WeFranch
The former Goldman Sachs strategist on why franchising is America's most proven and most overlooked wealth creation engine.
Gregory Ugwi built analytical tools inside Goldman's strats group, founded and sold the data intelligence startup ThinkNum, and then went looking for the next structural gap. He found it in franchising: over 800,000 franchises operate across the US, representing one of the primary pathways Americans have used to build wealth — yet access remains concentrated among those who already have capital or celebrity status.
WeFranch is his answer, a platform connecting prospective franchisees with 4,000 franchise concepts, financial modeling tools built on the same discipline he applied at Goldman, and a framework for evaluating what actually makes a franchise durable: pricing power, proven unit economics, and operators with the competence to execute. In this conversation, Ugwi walks through the economics of ownership, the most common mistakes first-time franchisees make, and why the local operator holds an edge that institutional capital cannot buy.
"Blackstone can't compete with someone embedded in their neighborhood who knows how to hire, manage hourly workers, and serve their community."
Gregory Ugwi, Founder, WeFranch
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,
