$100T is managed by “human duct tape” | E2308

Summary

The episode features Hanover Park CEO Chris Hladczuk explaining how traditional fund administration relies on 'human duct tape' and outdated tools, and how his AI-native startup is disrupting the $100T market by automating fund operations. A throwback segment with Dylan Field revisits Figma's early bottom-up sales strategy, SaaS pricing debates, and wildly inaccurate COVID lockdown predictions, highlighting the evolution from the SaaS era to the AI age.

• Hanover Park is building an AI-native ERP and services platform for investment funds, targeting the $100T assets managed on legacy systems and manual processes.
• The startup went from $1B to $20B in assets under administration in 15 months, signaling strong product-market fit and adoption.
• AI agents handle data ingestion, ontology mapping, and financial reporting, compressing migration timelines from months to days.
• Figma's early go-to-market relied on bottom-up adoption and credit card purchases, a strategy now widely used by AI tools.
• The discussion on active user vs. per-seat pricing reflects the pricing model evolution that eventually led to usage-based and outcome-based pricing in AI.
• Jason Calacanis shared a personal story of Mahalo being wiped out by a Google algorithm change, raising concerns about platform monopolies and AI content scraping.
• Pandemic predictions from March 2020 serve as a reminder of how drastically events can diverge from consensus expectations, relevant to current macro and tech forecasts.