Ontra

The Ontra ice cream truck is back. 🍨 On Wednesday, July 22, we're making two stops in Midtown Manhattan. Complimentary Van Leeuwen ice cream, the team on-site, and a Shark ChillPill raffle entry for every registered attendee who checks in. In an industry full of AI tools that almost get it right, we figured someone should show up and actually deliver. Join us for the real scoop: https://lnkd.in/gYPFJbdh

Dr. Whitmore asked the group how everyone has been sleeping. Hunter was up at 3:30am. His firm's generic AI tool gave him lender obligations across all their credit agreements. He still had to build the compliance log, reporting calendar, alerts, and sign-offs himself. The tool didn’t do the work for him. He keeps going back to it. His CTO really likes it. So nobody's sleeping. Except in Dr. Whitmore's office. Private Markets Therapy. Watch the sessions: https://lnkd.in/gsdT8jw7

Bain Capital Credit completes 4x more NDAs annually with Ontra. That means 220+ legal hours back every month, and a team focused on work that actually needs their judgment. The firm considered hiring outside counsel to handle the volume. Instead, they offloaded 73% of NDA management to Ontra, roughly 1,300 agreements per year, through a global Legal Network that works in their playbook. "Before Ontra, teams in one geography would have to wait for my team in Boston to get to work before we could start processing their NDAs. With our dedicated Ontra teams in Asia, Australia, and the US, we've been able to process nearly 2,000 NDAs a year," said Adriana Rojas Garzón, VP and Associate General Counsel for Capital Markets. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gG4SccxF

The AI governance gap in PE is real and widening. Derek Shanahan of Juniper Square put numbers to it during our recent webinar: about 80% of firms use AI tools, but only about 25% have a governance framework in place. For PE specifically, about 1 in 10 leaders are confident they could pass an AI governance audit in 90 days, according to Grant Thornton's 2026 AI Impact Survey. The important question isn't whether you have an AI policy. It's whether the policy reflects how your teams are really using AI day to day. As Chris Vilhelmsen of Holland Mountain further emphasized, an AI governance framework requires mapping data sources across the firm and understanding what AI is actually doing, where it's pulling data from, and how it's being used. Generic AI tools are not built for the high-stakes work of private markets, and can introduce the very risk firms are trying to eliminate. That's why industry leaders are embracing purpose-built AI solutions. Watch the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/g9i2g8zb

We brought leaders in legal, compliance, and operations together at Women in Private Markets: Off the Record, our afternoon at Le Jardin, the Baccarat Hotel's private terrace in New York. There were no panels and no agenda. Just a few hours of real conversation among women who navigate the same complexity every day. Afternoon tea, a rosé and Champagne program, and a menu from Michelin-starred culinary director Gabriel Kreuther set the tone. The conversation did the rest. Here's to the women who keep private markets running.

Uploading a DDQ into an LLM feels like a win. Then the next one lands, and you're starting over. We've started calling this the "upload and prompt illusion." Someone drops a questionnaire into an LLM, writes a prompt, gets a clean-looking answer, and calls it a success. But none of that work carries forward, or builds into something the firm can reuse. That's the problem with generic AI for investor diligence. Purpose-built DDQ automation works differently. It digitizes every request, whatever the format, into a structured list. It builds a single answer bank from completed questionnaires, policy docs, and ILPA templates, scored by recency, source, and approval status. It takes the first pass at a draft and cites the source behind every answer, so your team can verify fast. DDQ volume isn't going down, and LPs keep layering on supplemental questions. The firms pulling ahead are the ones answering quickly with consistent, approved, audit-ready language. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/geVPf8Bt

Hunter is a Chief Compliance Officer. He's responsible for making sure nothing gets missed. As the firm's first line of defense, he feels like he's having 47 conversations at once. He asked the generic AI tool the same side letter question in February. March. Last week. Different answer every time. No way to know which one is right. His CTO really likes the tool. Hunter, on the inside, is quietly furious. Private Markets Therapy. Watch the sessions: https://lnkd.in/gsdT8jw7

SuperReturn International 2026 wrapped in Berlin earlier this month. A great few days with leaders in the private markets. We hosted Golden Hour Berlin at Café am Neuen See, a lakeside terrace in the Tiergarten, for guests from across the SuperReturn community. As expected, some of the best conversations of the week happened off the conference floor. Thank you to everyone who spent the evening with us. See you next year.

PFAR is gone. The operational pressure that drove it is still on every GP's desk. If anything, the spirit of PFAR has become a de facto market standard. Bespoke terms, more transparent MFN clauses, detailed fee and expense disclosures: the demand for transparency just shifted from regulatory compliance to investor relations. Side letter management matters more than ever. Generic AI tools aren't built for it. They lack training on private markets contract language and can't produce the audit trail compliance teams need. The manual approach doesn't fare better. If your side letter program still relies on spreadsheets, shared drives, and static compendia, the risk is predictable: slower decisions, inconsistent execution, and time spent reconstructing instead of managing what's coming next. The right solution is purpose-built for private markets. Treat obligations as data, centralize them in a single source of truth, and build repeatable workflows for precedent, compliance, and MFN elections. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gsYYjXAG

Candid conversations in private markets need three things: an intimate setting, the right people in the room, and the trust to share what's working (and what isn't). Ontra hosted three of those this quarter at Le Jardinier and Gabriel Kreuther in New York, and The Canvas by Ever in Chicago. These are the kind of evenings that build a real community. Thank you to everyone who joined.