The Investor With Joel Palathinkal

In this episode of the Investor Podcast, we sit down with Shanna Due, founder of Due Financial and a certified college financial consultant, to break down the complexities of strategic higher education planning. Drawing from her experience as an accidental financial planner who shifted from sports medicine to personal finance, Shauna shares how families can navigate the shifting financial aid landscape without sacrificing their long-term retirement goals or taking on overwhelming student debt.
The conversation focuses on practical workflows for high-earning business owners, detailing the pros and cons of vehicles like 529 plans, Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage accounts. Shauna exposes major misconceptions around full-ride athletic scholarships, discusses the vanishing landscape of prepaid state tuition plans, and highlights powerful structural workarounds like state-specific "two-and-two" community college transfer programs. Additionally, we explore critical macro updates, including the tightening of federal loan limits and how modern innovations—from Mark Zuckerberg's trade schools to physical AI infrastructure—are challenging the traditional pricing model of higher education. Shauna concludes with an essential timeline for parents, outlining why the eighth-grade year is the ultimate sweet spot to begin long-term planning, and leaves the audience with a powerful reminder to anchor every life and financial decision in a clear, defined statement of purpose.
#CollegePlanning #FinancialAdvisor #529Plan #StudentDebt #WealthManagement #TuitionHacks #FinancialLiteracy #HigherEducation

In this episode of the Investor Podcast, we sit down with Ian J.H. Reynolds and Connor from Thesis Capital to uncover how they are redefining private equity in the U.S. lower middle market. Ian, who has advised on over $10 billion in M&A transactions, details the firm's proprietary "Thor framework" for sourcing and executing control buyouts across industrial, manufacturing, and B2B services. Together, they explain why talent acquisition is their ultimate competitive advantage—likening a winning management team to the '90s Chicago Bulls—and break down their unique Executive-in-Residence and Searcher-in-Residence programs designed to groom the next generation of operators and CEOs. Listeners will also gain actionable insights into how Thesis Capital leverages proprietary software and AI to systematically augment underwriting, streamline CRM data enrichment, and reduce error rates without replacing the human element of investing. Whether you are an aspiring allocator looking to break into private equity, an operator wanting to partner with a fund, or an investor seeking insights on capital formation from Connor's experience raising over $4 billion, this conversation offers a masterclass in building a culture-first firm, managing opportunity cost, and surrounding yourself with complementary talent to scale an enduring investment platform.

#PrivateEquity #LowerMiddleMarket #MergersAndAcquisitions #SearchFund #AIInvesting #CapitalAllocation #BusinessAcquisition #WealthManagement

In this episode, we sit down with Andrew Horowitz, President and Founder of Horowitz and Company, to discuss his 30-year journey as a South Florida-based registered investment advisor and author of The Disciplined Investor. Andrew provides a masterclass on how to scale a wealth management practice by balancing personalization with a heavy focus on technology infrastructure. He candidly shares his experience migrating to modern cloud-based automated tools, detailing how the transition helped streamline back-office operations and improve the high-net-worth client portal experience.
The conversation dives deep into:
The Business of Education: How hosting over 980 episodes of The Disciplined Investor podcast since 2007 has served as a powerful dual-education engine and trust-building tool for his firm.
Onboarding & Client Autonomy: Andrew’s deliberate approach to working with high-net-worth clients, managing private market complexity, and his strict rule against automated capital calls to ensure absolute transparency for investors.
AI Productivity Tools in 2026: Tips on naturally integrating AI prompt workflows to dramatically shorten administrative cycles and sharpen client communications.
Andrew wraps up the interview with a vital piece of personal and professional advice: "Stop trying to be right all the time, and instead focus on being authentic and doing the right thing."
#WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisor #TechInfrastructure #AssetManagement #TheDisciplinedInvestor #AIProductivity #PortfolioManagement #ClientOnboarding

In this episode, we sit down with Julia Wilkinson, a leading investment strategist at Lebec Capital Partners, to explore her two-decade journey across global financial markets, private portfolio design, and cross-border impact frameworks. From her unique upbringing as a U.S. diplomat’s child debating environmental policy in Brazil and Mexico City to navigating private wealth management at Goldman Sachs during the global financial crisis, Julia provides a masterclass on balancing financial modeling with sustainable solutions.
The conversation dives deep into:
The Evolution of Impact Infrastructure: Moving past the marketing bubbles of ESG toward true additionality, localized relationship building, and real-world physical hardware.
Innovative Finance & Blended Stacks: How Lebec addresses the $5 trillion annual capital gap by combining philanthropy, guarantees, and market-rate private equity to bridge the "valley of death" for water, health, and energy transition assets.
Bespoke Portfolio Construction: The strategic advantages of Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs) over traditional mutual funds for institutional and family office allocators looking to manage climate, geopolitical, and inflationary risks.
The Next-Gen Shift: Navigating the massive transfer of wealth to Millennials and Gen Z who demand alignment between financial returns and societal impact.
Julia wraps up with a profound look at institutional diligence, why Lebec avoids generalist mega-funds in favor of deep technical experts on the ground, and why investing in genuine human relationships matters more than an AI-generated investment memo.
#ImpactInvesting #PrivateEquity #VentureCapital #SustainableEnergy #AssetManagement #FamilyOffice #BlendedFinance #TechInfrastructure

In this episode of the Investor Podcast, we sit down with Garrett Marcillo, a partner at Delta V Capital, a private equity firm managing over $1.6 billion in assets. Garrett shares his journey from a humble background in Cleveland, Ohio—where his entrepreneurial roots began with a paper route, a local lemonade stand, and a high school web development business—to graduating summa cum laude from the Wharton School of Business.
The conversation delivers a comprehensive look at the modernization of growth-stage private equity and the operational frameworks that drive success in the technology landscape:
The Evolution of Sourcing via Agentic AI: Garrett details how Delta V Capital sources roughly 50% of its investments through custom, agentic outreach algorithms. By scoring signals like LinkedIn employee growth and historical investor backing, their workflow optimizes outreach and message delivery tenfold.
Augmenting the Investment Committee: A deep dive into how modern investors utilize platforms like Claude to construct rigorous bull and bear cases, shifting the analyst role away from monotonous labor like spreading comps to high-level thesis development and portfolio strategy.
Preserving Mentorship Through Knowledge Capture: Insights into how institutional memory can be codified by training specialized LLMs on historical memos and the decision-making frameworks of retiring firm partners.
The "Bar-Raising" DNA of Elite Talent: What it takes to break into the industry today. Garrett explains why firms look for individuals with a "chip on their shoulder" and exceptional upside potential, rather than traditional "work team" associates.
Garrett concludes with two intertwined pieces of timeless advice for builders and next-generation allocators: "Never underestimate the power of serendipity, and simply, you can't give up."

#PrivateEquity #GrowthEquity #AgenticAI #DeltaVCapital #SourcingStrategy #TechInvesting #WhartonAlumni #ArtificialIntelligence