Valuing the Unvaluable: Michael Moscarelli on Level Three Assets, SPACs, and Digital Tokens

Anthony Codispoti (00:01)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Michael Moscarelli, vice president within the valuation and financial advisory practice at Houlihan Capital. They are an employee owned valuation

financial advisory and investment banking firm whose mission is simply value added. The team delivers independent valuations, fairness and solvency opinions and strategic transaction advice for clients in fast moving industries. The firm is a FINRA and SIPC member and recently served as the exclusive self-side advisor for North American warehousing company.

while also sponsoring the 2025 CoinAltz Symposium. Michael leads projects that cover biotechnology, crypto assets, SaaS, and consumer packaged goods, helping boards and investors understand what their businesses are truly worth. Before joining Hulahan Capital, he was an analyst at Century Business Consulting. He earned an MS in finance from Villanova University.

along with dual bachelor’s degrees in finance and media from Temple University. Now, before we get into all that good stuff,

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All right, back to our guest today, the VP of Hulahan Capital, Michael Moscarelli. Thanks for making your time. I appreciate it.

Michael Moscarelli (02:28)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (02:30)
So Michael, why did you feel drawn to this kind of work in the first place?

Michael Moscarelli (02:35)
You know, it’s a little niche, but it is just the kind of the ultimate curiosity driving intellectual challenge, I have to say. ⁓ The important backstory is my whole family is engineers. So my dad’s mechanical, my sister’s aerospace, my brother’s electric mechanical. ⁓ So just my whole life has been, you know, if you see something and you don’t understand it, dig a little deeper, right? Find out more, understand it better. ⁓ And this career path is just the

best way to do that. You really never know what’s going to walk in the door. You see different companies, different business models, different industries every single day. know, nothing is ever done the same way twice. And you never see the same thing on any given week. And so I think honestly, for me, the ability to be curious and explore things deeply and not be too stuck in a specific thing for a long period of time has just been excellent and really is what drew me to this path.

Anthony Codispoti (03:35)
So you come from a family with a lot of brain power, a lot of engineers. Were you ever thinking about going that direction? What pulled you into the kind of money and finance?

Michael Moscarelli (03:44)
I guess a little bit. ⁓ I think that just such a fascination with markets, ⁓ it’s both kind of a human behavior, psychology question mixed with analysis and hard numbers. ⁓ And I’ve always been a huge ⁓ news, current events kind of person. And it’s amazing to have this quantitative mechanism that just reflects everything going on in the world.

in a quantitative sense, right? So I think that’s what really drew me towards it. I’m not quite as handy as many of my family members are. I’m ⁓ okay doing a bit of a desk job sitting at a computer, but having kind of that similar experience, I would say.

Anthony Codispoti (04:29)
Talk to me a little bit about the quantitative tools that you mentioned. You you’re big on sort of current events, what’s going on in the world, and how does that kind of overlap with these quantitative tools to help you explain all the crazy stuff that’s going on?

Michael Moscarelli (04:43)
For sure, yeah. I mean, you can’t be in this field unless you read a lot. Every business student from freshman year onward is handed a copy of the Wall Street Journal and told to read it, right?

So it’s impossible to not follow those things. I think it’d still be effective in this field. And then on top of that, kind of the beauty of working for any professional services firm is you have access to these data platforms that are nearly all encompassing, right? mean, Bloomberg, &P Capital IQ, if you have a company or a space and you just want to dig into it, all that information is freely available to you. It’s sitting there. Just dig in. And it’s really impressive.

scope of what some of these platforms cover and what you can have access to at the click of a button, ⁓ especially in such a structured way, is really, really amazing. So it is just nice to have that available.

Anthony Codispoti (05:39)
Can you give a specific example of something that you might see about 3PL’s warehousing, just to pick an industry that I might not see as the lay person sort of sitting outside of one of these platforms?

Michael Moscarelli (05:52)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, I think transactions for sure, right, for any of these spaces, having an understanding both on generalized platforms and then specialized as well, where you can go in and see, OK, this is a private transaction. Someone purchased very small. There’s no public filing attached to it. But there are various data providers that go out into the marketplace and try to find stats on these deals that the average person won’t really have access to. You see that a lot with ⁓ PE and VC deals.

as well. ⁓ There’s not an obligation to publicly file what you paid for a business. It’s all kind of insider information. And there are many platforms out there that ⁓ do the legwork to go and just aggregate that data. the access there ⁓ is certainly a big difference from, say, even the average business owner, right? So you own something in a particular industry, ⁓ having that access to information is a big differentiator.

Anthony Codispoti (06:50)
This is getting a little bit off track, but it’s curious to me how these data aggregators would have access to financial information on a private transaction.

Michael Moscarelli (07:01)
Yeah, it’s a little bit ⁓ of a trade, right? So some providers, like I’m thinking specifically of… ⁓

like capitalization and sort of accounting internal like shareholder management platforms, they have access to all of these cap tables for all of these companies. Now, obviously, that data has to be anonymized, right? Like you can’t necessarily pull that, but the aggregate ⁓ data just by providing a service, providing a platform ⁓ can tell you so much about the marketplace that otherwise you would have really no access to, right?

Anthony Codispoti (07:36)
Got it. So it’s anonymized. It’s aggregated. It’s not like an individual transaction. Here’s what Bob paid Joe for his business. Yeah.

Michael Moscarelli (07:44)
Right, and some of it is

individual in that it’s reported in the sense of a data provider might ask, you might have some small indication, but maybe not the whole picture, especially when there’s no filing obligation. You don’t have to disclose what you paid for most transactions.

Anthony Codispoti (08:00)
Okay. All right. Fun little tangent there. Let’s come back to, yeah, let’s come back to Hula Hand. How did the opportunity for you to join Hula Hand come about?

Michael Moscarelli (08:03)
Yeah, just down the rabbit hole a bit.

⁓ Kind of two things. One was just good timing. ⁓ I was making the switch in a time where everybody was hiring all over the place and it was a good time to make a pivot.

But also I think, you I was at a small firm that was really rapidly becoming a medium sized firm and soon to be maybe even a larger sized firm, very much like national. And there’s growing pains that come along with that, right? So you kind of see the ability to make an impact, especially as someone earlier in their career starts to kind of narrow as an organization gets bigger. And what I was looking for was just something where I could get my hands dirty, have an impact.

really see the results of my efforts on the business, even at a relatively early stage in my career. So it was actually, ⁓ oddly enough, a connection of a connection, knew the name of the firm. I don’t know if they’d even like use them or knew any of their work, but.

sort of put me in touch and, ⁓ you know, Hooligan’s great in that we’re, you know, we’re employee owned, we’re small, so it’s still very high touch and personal when we bring somebody on board. ⁓ You know, my final interview was like with the CFO in person, very old school. ⁓ And that’s sort of how that went down.

Anthony Codispoti (09:28)
⁓ Talk to us about the employee-owned component. That sounds interesting and as an outsider, it sounds unusual in your line of work. Am I right or wrong in that?

Michael Moscarelli (09:39)
Absolutely, yeah. It’s a very different structure from a lot of professional services firms. Typically you have a partnership and everyone is like dead set. They wanna make their way to partner. They wanna have an ownership stake in the firm. ⁓ Our founders, a few years back, we’re looking to obviously transition and make the next step. And they decided that the best fit for the type of firm that we are and the way that we operate was to go for an employee ownership model. And it really, ⁓ I can’t speak highly of it

enough to others looking at an ESOP transaction, it not only ⁓ is just ⁓ a great way to align incentives, but it does sort of take away kind of the us versus them ⁓ sense that you have in some partnership structures where.

everybody’s on the same team, everybody’s working towards the same goal, and everyone has a stake, right? And a fairly equal stake with the way that ESOP rules sort of shake out. So ⁓ yeah, it ends up being honestly a really key differentiator, keeps ⁓ turnover down. We have very, very low turnover, which is not something you see a lot in professional services. So it’s been really great for us as a differentiator.

Anthony Codispoti (10:53)
Nice. So tell us about the services that you provide at Hula Hand Capital.

Michael Moscarelli (10:58)
Yeah, absolutely. There’s kind of two sides of the house, ⁓ two related but somewhat different lines of business. The first, what I do is just business valuations. We are… ⁓

running the gamut all the way up and down the cap structure, we can value pretty much anything that comes in the door. But we’re kind of concentrated on three key things, which is portfolio evaluations. So that’s private equity, VC, hedge, level three hard to value assets. We value them for typically audit purposes, though sometimes just to have a sense of investment performance. So we do a lot of that work. That’s kind of our bread and butter. ⁓

We do tax and estate work as well. It’s kind of the second tranche there. Obviously tax and estate planning, valuing business interests for tax purposes. That’s a good bit of our business. ⁓ And then transaction opinions, fairness and solvency. We’ve carved out a bit of a niche doing fairness opinions in the SPAC space actually, which has been really, really fascinating. And the nice thing with that side of the business, we’re very much industry agnostic. We’ve been around a long time. We’ve seen a lot of industries. ⁓

have some expertise in nearly anything that walks in the door. But we have a lot of ⁓ very specific experience in a few key verticals, know, digital assets. I mentioned the SPAC furnace opinions. We have a strong bit of ⁓ cannabis experience on our banking side. ⁓ So that’s business valuation. And then on the investment banking side, we’re primarily, you know, lower middle market ⁓ &A, typically on the sell side.

And most of the work they do there is helping founder-owned businesses figure out kind of their next steps, figure out their exit, ⁓ be it through a full sell-side process or even ⁓ more trimmed offerings that just help you get ready for that next step to understand how to sell your business and how to speak to ⁓ market participants and present yourself.

Anthony Codispoti (12:55)
Fun stuff, I’ve got a few follow-up questions for you. So level three is something that’s new to me. Can you explain that?

Michael Moscarelli (13:03)
For sure, there’s a fair value standard in the accounting, you know, sort of, ⁓

sort of rule set called ASC 820. There’s three different types of inputs. There’s level one, level two, and level three. Level one is your typical market quoted, heavily traded asset, right? So publicly listed equity, level one, very easy to just point to an exchange and you say, that’s the price of the asset. Level two is when you have like some observable input, something like a broker quote, where it doesn’t trade freely, but you could go to somebody and say, hey,

what would you pay for this on a committed basis? ⁓ And you can cite that. Level three is sort of what they call mark to model, where there’s not an observable price. You have to put together more of an argument, ⁓ whether it be ⁓ a full DCF model, valuation comps, prior transactions, market adjustments, where you take ⁓ much more of an unobservable, they would say, approach to how you value the asset. So when something hits level three, that’s

typically where a fund might consider an outside valuation advisor because of the complexity and the additional scrutiny as well on top of that.

Anthony Codispoti (14:19)
Can you give me an example of a level three valuation project that maybe you worked on?

Michael Moscarelli (14:25)
For sure, yeah, mean the most common one I would say we see is…

privately held equity interests, ⁓ whether that be for a PE fund or VC fund, ⁓ could be anything from a very, very early stage company investing in a seed round or a safe all the way up to bridge level PE prior to exit. ⁓ those are typically what we do for portfolio valuations. That’s really bread and butter. ⁓ And we value, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of those positions in any

given year. ⁓ it becomes something where, and I think it has become more often over the last couple of years, something with a lot of scrutiny on it, various sort of SEC pronouncements ⁓ focused on that, and as well as just, I think, the accounting scrutiny at the audit level has become much more complex and really digs more deeply into fair value marks. So that’s definitely grown the practice there.

Anthony Codispoti (15:24)
And so the reason the SEC is so involved is that maybe there’s been some unscrupulous activity in the past in this area.

Michael Moscarelli (15:33)
To some degree, and honestly, it’s just very, very difficult to value. ⁓ And the more sort of standardization and framework you can build around it, ⁓ it makes marks comparable across the marketplace, as opposed to, you have someone using one approach and someone using another, and they disagree on this. ⁓ You know, kind of a key, it’s not SEC driven, like a key differentiator for fair value has been sort of the elimination of blockage discounts over the last, I think it’s probably the last 10 years.

where you are valuing an interest ⁓ without giving consideration to that position. You have to value it as though it were ⁓ sort of its own thing in the marketplace, right? The same as you would value any other version of that same instrument. There’s a variety of sort of things like that that differentiate.

Anthony Codispoti (16:22)
Can you give an example

of a blockage discount? I’m not following that.

Michael Moscarelli (16:26)
Sure, right. say you hold a very, very large slug of publicly traded equity. So say you own maybe 10 % of the outstanding equity. Trading out of that position would obviously be somewhat difficult. If you were to try to trade out of that position in one go, ⁓ it would have price impacts. It would take a substantial amount of time.

And theoretically, the value you could exit that position at is not the same as what’s quoted on a public exchange. ⁓ But because you want comparability across the marketplace, that level one input, ⁓ that quote on the exchange, should be the value that’s applied regardless of the size of the position. So that’s one of those standardization things where you ⁓

it helps with comparability, it helps keep everyone on a sort of level playing field, if that makes sense.

Anthony Codispoti (17:20)
So a blockage discount just refers to the fact that if you like in this particular example, if you own 10 % of a particular entity, it’s going to be more difficult for you to exit that position quickly. And so that discount is that is associated with that blockage, that difficulty and being able to unload your position, unload your shares. Got it. Okay.

Michael Moscarelli (17:39)
Right, exactly. Yes, yep. And

there’d be price impacts. And so that’s been sort of done away with in fair value accounting in the industry because it creates potentially very large differences in how two different funds would mark what is the exact same instrument, right?

Anthony Codispoti (17:56)
⁓ Talk to me about the tax and estate work that you guys do. And again, it probably would be helpful for both myself as well as the listeners to hear like a specific example. Obviously, you know, leave names out.

Michael Moscarelli (18:08)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, the typical scenario, the way in which we would kind of approach this, it’s typically someone ⁓ gifting their existing interest in a company. ⁓ Typically, they’ll pass it down to the next generation, right? Founder-owned business. There are tax implications, of course. know, basis needs to be established. So we would value ⁓ the founder’s specific interest in the company for tax purposes. So then when they go through any audit processes or deal with the IRS, they have a

They have a citation for what their basis is, what the value is of the shares that were transferred down to the next generation. And that’s all sort of squared away. And the reason you need a third party valuation provider for that.

is that the equity of small publicly or privately held businesses just, doesn’t trade, right? There’s nothing you can point to to say, I’m granting half of the business, this is what it’s worth. You do really need to have a strong enforceable viewpoint on what that basis should be.

Anthony Codispoti (19:10)
So let’s say that I’ve got a business that’s worth $10 million I want to hand off to my kids. I’m not going to charge them for it, just sort of gifting it. So what you’re saying is we still need to establish what the valuation of that company is so that there’s a determination of what basis is. Can you, in layman’s terms, explain for folks what basis means?

Michael Moscarelli (19:32)
Right.

You need to have an established value for what you’re transferring. I mean, that’s really what it comes down to. Like with any gift, if I hand someone a million dollars in cash, I kind of know what that’s worth. If I hand someone 100,000 shares of a private company, that’s much more difficult to establish. So that’s really what the majority of our tax and estate reports are doing, is establishing that value so that when you make that transfer, you have a number around it.

Anthony Codispoti (20:03)
And so when I make that transfer of this $10 million company to my kids, are they paying taxes on the value of that? Or are they only paying taxes on the difference between the initially established value of that basis and what they may eventually sell it to somebody else?

Michael Moscarelli (20:20)
Right. mean, that’s definitely a question for some of the tax accountants out there. Yeah, I mean, if they had existing equity, right, there’s that change from the basis and obviously capital gains, right? So there’s that component. Typically, it’s trying to not run afoul of gifting maximums for state taxes. But realistically, it is just one of those things where you need a number and it’s very, very difficult to come up with one without a little bit of outside help.

Anthony Codispoti (20:25)
Okay.

And we talked about transaction opinions and you guys have developed a particular niche and fairness opinions in the SPAC space. Can you talk about what a SPAC is and why your work is particularly important in that space?

Michael Moscarelli (21:05)
For sure, yeah. So SPAC is colloquially, it’s a blank check company. So a company goes public, forms a pool of capital, and then they go out and they look for a smaller company, typically, to take private, right? Or sorry, take public. So ⁓ they form this big pool, and then they go and they do a merger. And then after that, the people who bought into the pool get shares in the new company that’s now public. So it’s a sort of abbreviated way for a lot of private companies

to go public without the full IPO underwriting process. ⁓ Sort of a faster way to do that. ⁓ SPACs are really interesting because, and the reason fairness opinions are so prevalent is because there’s an inherent conflict of interest. So when the sponsor of the SPAC builds that initial pool of capital, they are compensated through the issuance of sponsor shares, right? So these are ⁓ usually, you know, a reasonable portion of the outstanding shares of the company

that really only have value if a transaction is completed. And so the conflict arises where, if those only have value when a transaction is completed, then your incentive might be to complete a transaction regardless of the valuation of the transaction, because it’s a binary outcome. You either make money or you make zero. And so that kind of gave rise and it’s become pretty much a standard in the industry where you hire a third party investment bank, they go through the deal, they run their own

valuation analysis, they calculate the dilution and the pro forma on the transaction, and they give you an understanding of, know, is the price you’re paying for the business given the structure of the transaction of the SPAC deal? Is it fair? Is it reasonable? ⁓ And then that gives you a basis if there’s ever shareholder litigation or if anyone comes back after the deal and says, hey, how closely did you look at this before you went forward? You have a full report, full valuation, say, hey, not only did we vet it, but a third party provider came in and also

vetted the transaction. So it’s become pretty much, it’s not a requirement by any legal means, but it’s become nearly one in the SPAC space because of that inherent conflict of interest.

Anthony Codispoti (23:17)
I feel like I heard about specs a lot a handful of years ago, and I feel like I’m hearing about them less. This isn’t my sandbox though. Do I just have my head in the ground or have these fallen out of favor?

Michael Moscarelli (23:29)
There’s been some cyclicality for sure. There was a very large SPAC boom in 21 and 22. ⁓ Everybody was launching one. ⁓ The difficulty is there are only so many viable targets that can and frankly should be a public company. So when you have 600 SPACs all looking to do transactions, not every target is gonna be a winner. And there was some, a little bit of a tarnishing of the SPAC vehicle, think publicly because of that, there was a few kind of very public

deals that didn’t go super well. And so we’ve seen, you know, in the last, probably the last 12 to 15 months, something of a resurgence where SPACs are being launched again. You know, just this year alone, there’s been at least 26, 27 SPAC IPOs year to date.

They’re back launching, but what we’ve noticed is that the market is a lot of serial sponsors, people who have done SPACs before and been successful. ⁓ It’s a little bit more constrained and intentional. And you’re starting to see ⁓ sort of this group forum of folks who do SPACs and repeatedly do SPACs and have had success with them. And you see a lot less of kind of, I don’t want to call them random outside entrance, but there was a time where like everybody had a SPAC. Yeah, exactly. And so you’re seeing a little less of that.

Anthony Codispoti (24:43)
Cowboys.

Michael Moscarelli (24:48)
⁓ where people are very serious about the vehicle. They believe in its utility in the marketplace and they’re being very intentional about how they do these transactions and the outcomes on the other end. they’re very much back in the last 12 to 15 months, but there’s sort of a lag between when they IPO and then when they actually do the transaction. So we haven’t seen yet how this wave of deals is going to fare because most of them haven’t really closed. So we’ll have to see in the next 12 months.

Anthony Codispoti (25:16)
Not sure.

Michael, you said that you guys do a fair bit in the cannabis space, and I’m curious to hear what kinds of special challenges exist there, right? You’ve got legalized at some level for a number of states, federal level, still illegal, recent announcement that they’re going to transition it from a schedule one to a schedule three. Kind of paint us a picture. Like, how does this make this space different for you guys to play?

Michael Moscarelli (25:46)
Yeah, the rescheduling is a huge, huge deal in that space. When we first met, I did discuss a little bit of section 280E, which is the big tax issue with a lot of these cannabis businesses. You’re effectively taxed on gross earnings rather than operating earnings. And so it really does put a huge weight on the valuations of lot of these businesses.

Anthony Codispoti (26:11)
It’s sorry. Sorry

to interrupt here, Michael, this is such a big point that I want to make sure that maybe, you know, people who you know, this isn’t what they do on a regular basis, understand this. So for most businesses, say you make a million dollars, but you had $500,000 in expenses, you’re, let’s make it 600, you had $600,000 in expenses, you’re only going to pay income tax on that $400,000 profit. Right now in the cannabis industry, up until now, there’s been this

rule that existed that says, nope, you’ve got to pay income tax on that full million dollars, which you’re paying income tax on more than what you act a lot more than what you had income on. So it’s a huge strain for companies. Okay, so go ahead.

Michael Moscarelli (26:54)
Right, exactly. And that’s really been the thing. It is a huge strain. Even many operators who have had strong growth and have done very well in their respective state marketplaces, it’s very much put a downside pressure on them. And many of the investments were made with the expectation that cannabis would be reclassified, 280E would be rolled back. So the announcement that reclassification is on the table and potentially in progress is massive. Obviously, there’s more

than just saying it to make it happen, there are quite a few sort of regulatory steps that would need to happen. But I think it would likely help to reignite the sector, both from a valuation standpoint and from a deal standpoint. mean, the &A in this space has been, I mean, fairly stagnant for the last couple of years, just because this legalization effort hasn’t had ⁓ nearly the tailwinds that it was expected to have.

Anthony Codispoti (27:52)
So rescheduling it from a schedule one drug to a schedule three, does that change that taxation law or are there more things that

Michael Moscarelli (28:00)
That is the thinking,

yes, it would roll, it would get rid of this 280A restriction. It would be a big deal. It would help, I think as well with banking access. I don’t know the exact regulatory component there, but like with many sort of high risk sectors, there’s a hesitation to provide banking services for obvious reasons. So it would do a lot to just take a lot of burden off of these businesses.

Anthony Codispoti (28:27)
That’s the other thing you just touched on there is, you know, not only having cannabis schedule, schedule one affect, you know, how people have to pay their taxes. It also affects, you know, can they get a bank to work with? Can they get a merchant account to run credit cards? Can they get insurance like, you know, there’s a lot of ⁓ service providers that don’t want to touch it when it’s in this sort of gray zone.

Michael Moscarelli (28:50)
Absolutely, even in our space, we’ve worked very closely with a of cannabis funds, but early on, there was very, very big hesitation from a lot of the larger firms because of the potential KYC AML legal ⁓ arguments, as well as just potential reputational risk. Any high risk industry like that does raise those concerns, but we’ve seen those, I think, taper off to some degree in the last couple of years, and this would do a lot to leave those as well.

Anthony Codispoti (29:20)
So we’re recording this in early February, 2026. ⁓ Do you know where this stands? Making this change that’s been announced. Is there any movement towards it happening? Okay.

Michael Moscarelli (29:27)
My understanding is it’s been quiet. Yeah.

I know the announcement that was back in December of 25, would have been, late December. we haven’t really, as far as I’ve heard, haven’t heard any huge movement there quite yet. A couple of my colleagues might be a little closer to it. But yes, I’m sure if and when it happens, it will be a huge mover for the space.

Anthony Codispoti (29:53)
Yeah, we’ll see the headlines right away. so Michael, the work that you do, are you more in the business valuation side? Are you in the investment banking side? Do you kind of straddle both sides?

Michael Moscarelli (30:03)
Yeah, I’m much more involved on the business valuation side as well as with our fairness opinion practice. So it’s a little transaction exposure there. yeah, our &A business ⁓ very much focused on the lower middle market. They’re kind of, ⁓ there’s a little bit of overlap. There’s something where we might have some clients in common or some referrals we can make between sides of the house. But for the most part, we’re fairly separate.

Anthony Codispoti (30:31)
interesting. I guess I had assumed that a number of folks that are using you for one would just naturally use you for the other.

Michael Moscarelli (30:38)
It’s interesting that it’s a very different market scale. So like many of our valuation clients are tens of billion dollar ⁓ private equity and venture capital funds. So it’s sort of different from a lot of lower middle market ⁓ businesses, 10 to $50 million transaction sizes on the investment banking side. You’re not necessarily in the same size scale that a lot of our ⁓

our valuation clients would kind of be looking for. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, particularly in things like services roll ups and stuff like that, where we have found our own businesses, where one of our private equity clients might be interested in enrolling some of them up. That can definitely happen, but it is ⁓ interestingly sort of a different niche. Even on the valuation side, like we have a lot of digital assets practice. We’re very, very heavily involved in that space. And then on the &A side, I don’t know that we’ve done really much in that space from a transaction.

standpoint. So yeah, it is interesting. We’re ⁓ sort of separate in that sense.

Anthony Codispoti (31:40)
Hmm. And so who are the folks that you typically have direct contact with your customers? Are these the owners of the companies? Are you with ⁓ GPs or LPs at different private equity firms?

Michael Moscarelli (31:57)
It’s typically CFOs on both sides, CFOs or ⁓ higher level accounting executives. So, you know, our typical client, if it’s a private business, I take typically CFO with some help from the CEO. If we are working ⁓ with a fund, is typically their, whoever heads up their accounting to help us. Again, we’re helping with their fair value practice. So getting them through an audit will frequently be in contact with them. Sometimes we’ll be in contact with their auditors. And then on the deal,

side. Typically, you know, for a SPAC transaction, there’s usually a sort of a special committee. So it’s a couple of board members who are designated to sort of carry out the process. So we’ll be directly in touch with the company’s board of directors and their executives as well.

Anthony Codispoti (32:41)
Hmm. Interesting. ⁓ So Houlahan Capital’s mission is we stated in the intro, two words, two very short sentences value added. Can you share an example of how Houlahan really went the extra mile to deliver value to a client?

Michael Moscarelli (33:01)
Yeah, absolutely. I will say, you

There’s a variety of examples. It’s one of those things where it’s so ingrained in how we work with clients. We’ve always been high touch, white glove. ⁓ The fact that we’re kind of a boutique firm and we’ve been around a while, but we’ve stayed relatively small means we, I don’t know how to phrase it, we sort of approach every engagement as though we have something to prove. Like we have a chip on our shoulder a little bit because we’re a small firm, right? Like we do have this sense of, we’re playing in a field

with much larger professional services firms that are competitors. ⁓ And we really have to go the extra mile to show that we are available and communicative. It helps that we have this ESOP structure with very limited turnover. A lot ⁓ of folks in the space, you’ll work with one team one year and you come back the next year and the entire team’s brand new. And you’re like, okay, I gotta start from scratch.

And one of the things we’ve done really well is keeping client teams consistent. You can always pick up and call your person managing your deal. You’re never that far removed from the person who’s directly doing the work that you’re paying for. ⁓ And that really is just kind of how we’ve gone the extra mile and differentiated ourselves.

Anthony Codispoti (34:20)
Let’s talk about crypto a little bit. Because you do a lot of crypto valuations. And this is an interesting one, ⁓ because you can see what the valuation of a particular coin is just by looking at the exchanges. as we record this, ⁓ Bitcoin has been in a bit of a slump. know, another crypto winner, as they call it. So what is it specifically that you need to do to value these assets since

Michael Moscarelli (34:40)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (34:49)
you can just see kind of on the open exchange, like where, you know, the prices are.

Michael Moscarelli (34:54)
Gotcha. Yeah, there’s two very key differences. that’s in both the equity side and the token side in digital assets have ⁓ complexities that you don’t necessarily see in traditional venture. So on the token side, typically what we’re seeing and the guidance around this has been changing, but we do like what’s called discount for lack of marketability analysis. So little different from the blockage we talked about earlier. ⁓ Many early token investors will

before a token launches, be entitled to a tranche of the token, right? They’ll typically invest in equity and as sort of a kicker on that, they’ll get a certain number of tokens when the token launches. The thing is that those are then restricted, right? They have typically an algorithmically based unlock where over a certain amount of time, those tokens get distributed. And because of that, there is an impact to the value of those tokens because you have to wait to receive them, right? There’s a time value component there.

And so we provide a lot of work on the token side saying, look, have, you know,

whatever size position of tokens, but they don’t unlock until, you know, four or five years from now and how to properly fair value that, ⁓ could be somewhat unique. And then on the equity side, because, ⁓ sort of tokens and tokenomics create this entire new paradigm of what the value of a company is, right? Cause traditionally in venture space, you might have, you know, equity, you’re going to have maybe a little bit of debt. It’s usually some sort of convertible to participate in the equity upside. And then you’ve got the token.

And it becomes a very, very involved discussion and understanding to place value on a token when the equity of the business is sort of ⁓

sort of diametrically opposed, right? Like the whole point of the company is to establish a token protocol. So once the value of the token protocol sort of adjusts for the value of it, ⁓ sorry, the value of the token sort of captures the value of the protocol, then what’s the equity worth, right? Because you’ve kind of had this transfer of value ⁓ once the token is launched. And so that kind of creates this very difficult argument, not argument, it’s very difficult discussion and… ⁓

to understand that you may have invested in the equity of a business and in the tokens. But once the token protocol launches and the business itself, which is like the protocol they’ve created, is giving value to the tokens, it may or may not still be giving value to the equity. And frequently, it’s not. The equity is just sort of a shell. The company has done what it’s supposed to do, and it just sort of sits there. So it can be very difficult to understand. I’m probably not describing it very well.

Anthony Codispoti (37:38)
So right. So there’s the value of the token, right? I want to I’ve got a token, it’s worth a dollar in USD. And so I want to, you know, trade that to somebody and, you know, take the money and put it in my pocket. So that’s the value of the token, the equity of the company. I think what I’m hearing you say, tell me if this is correct, Michael, that the value of the equity of a coin, a crypto coin, it’s harder to kind of wrap your hands around because it’s not like

You’re not providing a service, right? It’s not a service based business where you’ve got billable receipts. It’s not a physical good that you’re selling where it’s like, okay, I’ve got cost of goods and here are my sales. It’s like, how do you establish what the ownership value is in the company itself? it, hey, if I own, and don’t know, Bitcoin, I don’t think really runs this way, but if I owned 100 shares of Bitcoin,

and Bitcoin is worth $60,000 today instead of $100,000 yesterday, how does that affect the value of my ownership in Bitcoin over here?

Michael Moscarelli (38:46)
Right.

Exactly. It’s not always an operational business anymore. And the key wrinkle too, is many of these protocols are decentralized, right? So they run as long as there’s computers to run them. It doesn’t matter if the company is really doing any work on them. They can just exist out there in the ether and give value to the token. So, you know, one of the things you see commonly is that the equity part of the business will hold what they call like a token treasury. So they will, you know, put the tokens out and maybe 10 % of those tokens will kind of just be held on

to for the equity. And that will help kind of provide a sort of low value, minimal value for the equity component of the business. But that’s not to say that there’s really any operational component there, as you point out, right? Like you’re not going to necessarily increase the value unless the value of those tokens change. it is a very, you know, it’s hard to explain. It’s a little in the weeds. ⁓ But it really does create a…

Anthony Codispoti (39:43)
because it’s hard to understand

too.

Michael Moscarelli (39:45)
Right, it’s very hard

to understand. But it does, it creates a completely unique challenge. And it’s something where, you know, even if you invest in this space, it’s really difficult to parse out. And that’s why we’ve seen, I think, quite a bit of growth in that digital assets business, just helping our clients really understand that and how to put that into a framework that ⁓ more traditional auditors can understand.

Anthony Codispoti (40:10)
So for an old fuddy duddy like me, can you help me understand why folks are coming out with new coins? Is it they want to get into the, ⁓ I don’t know, just sort of the hype that the valuation of this coin will go up and then they can sell it for actual cash? Do they see it being able to provide some, you know, real world non-digital value? Or am I thinking about it in all the wrong ways?

Michael Moscarelli (40:39)
That’s you’ve kind of identified. I think the two key conceptual approaches when someone launches one of these protocols, you know, the first one is that what’s colloquially called like a meme coin where you’re just like, look, there’s momentum in the market. People want to gamble a little bit. I’m going to launch coin. I’m going to, you know, promote it in some way. might make it silly or I might attach my name to it or I might, and people will buy it to have something to, to kind of speculate on. Right. And those are purely, ⁓ you know, they’re very much acknowledged.

to be just speculative. And then on the other side, you do have true utility tokens where you say, look, I’m creating this protocol. does, it provides a service or it does something that has utility and will be useful. And the more people that use it, they need to own the token in order to interact with this protocol, the more demand that will drive to the token and then the token will increase in value. So I think a lot of the true, ⁓ you know, the really ⁓ utility-based

⁓ crypto investors are very much still out there. There are still protocols that are launching that are saying, look, this cryptographic technology has serious real world implications and we’ve built a tool that can help you use those implications. You see this a little bit with what they call real world assets or RWA where they’re trying to take ⁓ other assets out in the world and bring them on chain, make them more accessible to ⁓ invest in. You see a lot of that kind of thing. So there’s kind of two, very much two different philosophies.

⁓ and projects are typically one or the other and it’s pretty clear up front, which that is.

Anthony Codispoti (42:16)
So we’ll climb back out of this particular rabbit hole in a second, but I’ve got another follow up question. ⁓ So give me an example of a coin that’s coming out that says we have some sort of, it’s more than just a speculative tool. It has some kind of inherent functional value to it as well.

Michael Moscarelli (42:20)
Sure. Yeah.

Right, mean, some of the original ones, guess, probably might be the original one was ETH, right? So when that came out, and still somewhat to this day, the intention is that people would build applications on top of the ETH protocol. And that would… ⁓

It was pretty much the first to really push this utility narrative. Yeah, Ethereum. And that, I think, has kept the value or the prices a little less. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (42:56)
Ethereum, right.

Michael Moscarelli (43:05)
volatile than maybe some other tokens is that there are still many applications built on the Ethereum blockchain that have utility and are useful. And there’s a reason to buy Ethereum and use it rather than just hold onto it from a speculative viewpoint. And there’s many of them launching kind of all the time that are a little more niche, but that’s just the one that comes to mind as what kind of ⁓ not launched the concept, but did really help to popularize it.

Anthony Codispoti (43:33)
Yeah. And so what would be an example of an application that runs on the Ethereum blockchain?

Michael Moscarelli (43:38)
there are quite a few of them. mean, you I mean, kind of the straightforward answer, you see a lot of decentralized exchanges that run on various blockchains that allow you to trade other tokens ⁓ using that underlying chain. There’s a variety of ⁓ sort of scaling technologies, ways to ⁓ use an underlying chain, but then have a chain stacked above it that can work faster and do more things, but then still consolidate down to the original chain to keep that

that of that enforceability, that safety and having so many folks using it and verifying the chain. Pretty much the way that these are structured is usually all about trust, right? The bigger a protocol is and the more people who are using it, theoretically the sounder the structure is and the more you can rely on it for your project. there are many, too many out there to dig into too deeply, but ⁓ yeah, there’s a lot of utility there.

Anthony Codispoti (44:35)
Yeah, fair enough. Okay, let’s come back out of

that crypto rabbit hole there. Yeah. So you were recently ⁓ promoted from a senior associate to the VP of the financial advisory, ⁓ valuation and financial advisory practice. What was that transition like for you? Any bumps in the road as you’re kind of stepping into that new role?

Michael Moscarelli (44:38)
Yeah, out of the deep dive.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You know, it’s it’s a transition for me moving from, you know, being an individual contributor to managing teams, managing projects being sort of the end of the line from a client facing perspective, ⁓ which I think for anyone, you know, relatively early in their career, that’s that’s the big step, right? That’s the big transition. You can be really, really good at what you do. You can be an excellent analyst. ⁓ But at a certain point, there becomes a point where you have to take more

responsibility. And I think the biggest difficulty for me has been ⁓ managing teams and understanding that you’re now having to delegate. You can’t do a deep dive into every single thing that you work on. You cannot be ⁓ the person running point on the analysis for a 20 person portfolio, right? Or a 20 position portfolio. So you get to a point where, you know, learning to delegate and learning how to delegate and still guide ⁓ folks newer in their careers.

is probably the biggest hurdle. And I will say that’s also the most rewarding part, I think, is having ⁓ newer analysts, newer associates come to you and ask questions and try to understand and seeing them grow and develop and start to honestly to question what your viewpoint is and your opinion and come to you with like a fully formed argument that you’re like, wow, I actually don’t have anything against this. can’t talk you out of this. This is correct. That’s really the amazing part. And that’s been the most

difficult but also the most rewarding thing making that transition.

Anthony Codispoti (46:33)
Were you provided with any kind of management training? Because I see this a lot where folks are, really good at their job, right? And that’s what sort of leads them to get promoted. But they weren’t given the foundation or the skillsets to say, okay, here’s how to apply your ⁓ domain expertise to managing a team of people that are also working towards the same goal.

Michael Moscarelli (46:58)
Yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been really lucky in that our more senior vice presidents and our directors and managing directors on the team are just extraordinarily knowledgeable. They’ve been around the block. They know what they’re doing. They’ve dealt with every variety of client under the sun. And so they’ve really, for me, just been like an open line of comms of you have any questions. If you run into something, you just don’t know what to do. ⁓ You can always escalate. You can always go to them. ⁓ It’s kind of the perks of a ⁓ small, pretty tightly knit firm is whenever

something like that happens, it’s never a, don’t have time for this or I can’t deal with that. It’s just, okay, what do you need? Walk me through it. How can we figure this out? So I’ve gotten really lucky in that haven’t been just thrown into the deep end as they say, very much, you know, it’s still slightly trial by fire, but with a lot of support for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (47:48)
So we’ve talked about how you guys are a smaller firm. There’s a lot of other really big competitors out there. But you guys are offering the same quality, the same level of services. When you’re kind of going up, you know, when you’re courting a customer and somebody chooses you over one of the big ones, why do you think they’re doing that? What are they getting with you that they aren’t getting with your bigger competitors?

Michael Moscarelli (48:16)
For sure, I think three key things, sector expertise is primary, right? Particularly on the digital asset side, we’re a known player in that space. think we, by size actually, by number of positions, we’re one of the largest players in that space. And so for many things like that, on the SPAC opinion side, variety of things where we have expertise, we have a niche carved out, that is definitely a differentiator as far as winning work. It does help, I mentioned that we’re white glove and low turnover, frequently,

Clients may be coming to us from another service provider and they’ve had a variety of just sort of turnover related and larger firm interactions that they’ve just rubbed them the wrong way and they want someone that they can just pick up the phone and call and ask questions. They don’t want

seven people in a chain before they talk to the person who’s working on their project. So that is a key differentiator. And the other thing too is the way that we price our work, both ⁓ compared to larger competitors with higher overhead, but also that we’re typically fixed rate, ⁓ which is a big deal in this space. ⁓ Many audit and professional service firms are hourly. We typically bill flat by position and we provide ⁓ audit support on the backend. So we not only do our work and help you get to this phase where you can then

send that to your auditors. But when your auditors have questions, you technical questions on valuation that you’re like, man, I’m working 60 hours a week already. I need to invest the funds in my fund. I don’t have time to answer these questions from auditors. We provide support on that as well. And it’s built into our pricing as part of our engagement. It’s not a secondary. It’s not, we’re not going to bill you hourly for going back and forth. We’re just going to handle it. We’re just going to take care of it. So there’s a, you know, both an expertise component and the sort of outsourcing, taking it off your plate.

component that’s a key value driver for us.

Anthony Codispoti (50:03)
And that pricing component is huge to be able to have that ⁓ that cost certainty going into something really helps from a planning standpoint.

Michael Moscarelli (50:13)
For sure. And it means we can service clients that have trouble working on an hourly rate, right? I mean, we can work with a VC firm that…

you know, they have 30 or 40,000 and that’s it to do all their work for the end of the year, right? Like they can’t go to a bigger firm. It’s not gonna ever be in budget, but at the same time, their auditors are saying, hey, we need you to think about a third party valuation advisor. So it gives us flexibility and it gives our clients certainty that, you know, we’re not gonna surprise you. We’re not gonna come back and say, hey, you you called me on a weekend. How dare you? Here’s another bill. Like it’s…

It’s just a different way of doing it. It’s very high touch, very weight glove.

Anthony Codispoti (50:52)
Michael, let’s talk about the future of Houlihan Capital. What are some growth initiatives or some internal projects that you’re excited about?

Michael Moscarelli (51:01)
Yeah, I think the biggest push for us, this has been one of the sort of changes in the way we’ve done business the last couple of years, is really increasing how we team sell. ⁓ Most professional services firms, as I’m sure you’re aware, have this partnership structure.

Partners are out selling work. They have business development expectations. ⁓ For our firm, we’ve actually sort of always had a team doing a lot of our sales, doing a lot of our business development. And our specialists can really focus on exactly that, being specialists, being execution people. ⁓ But what we found is when you’re out selling work, it is so, so important to have someone there who has been doing it, who has the ⁓ technical knowledge and the background to really speak to the client on a

deeper level about how they view what the project might look like, know, the sector that they’re working in, they can throw around the acronyms and the KPIs and really understand. And so we’ve really made a push to do that where, you know, you’re not… ⁓

you’re never really interfacing with us without somebody from our execution team ensuring that ⁓ we can understand what you’re talking about and give you a better sense and really demonstrate our expertise. And that’s been great for us. ⁓ It’s really been ⁓ good both for us execution people who need to learn how to sell, obviously, as you move up in professional services, and for our salespeople. have support. They have backup. They don’t have to click Google on the side or anything if a really technical question comes up.

Anthony Codispoti (52:28)
I want to shift gears for a moment, Michael, and would love to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, whether it’s something work related or personal and how you got through that.

Michael Moscarelli (52:39)
Sure, yeah. It’s definitely a tough one. It’s a tough question. I will say, think, very, very early in my career, I did completely change course, completely changed my path in my life, what I wanted to do. You saw my media degree hidden on my CV there. I had every intention of being a radio reporter, actually. I went to school for it. I…

I had done internships at my local NPR affiliate. I had been doing some freelancing. Really was completely sad. I’m like, this is going to be my life. This is what I’m going to do. This is the path that I am interested in. And I did a couple of projects, did a summer internship, got to the end of it and just thought like, this is not where my skills lie. Like this is the thing that I love the most, the thing I want to do the most in the world. And I’m just not very good at it, which is just, it’s a brutal place to be because

again, you’ve done the training, you’ve done the things you’re supposed to do, you feel like you should be reasonably competent at that thing. ⁓

Yeah, completely, I mean, within the span of I think a month or two went from like, I’m going to take a job doing this to I’m going to completely pivot. I’m going to go get a master’s degree in finance. I’m going to, you know, take some of the skills I’ve learned, but do something that I think I can succeed in and do well. And that was definitely, I mean, that was a hard, that was a hard thing to do both from the sunk cost, right? I had actually not only double majored in undergrad, but started a master’s program in media while I was an undergrad.

So I was like working like a dog. I think I took 21 credits like two or three semesters like really really cranking on this idea and just had to completely kind of Have the talk with myself like this is not what you’re gonna do

Anthony Codispoti (54:32)
Did somebody else tell you, hey, Michael, you’re not very good at this, you might want to consider something else, or was this you just being critical of yourself?

Michael Moscarelli (54:43)
It was one of those things where you see people who are successful. I remember I was sitting in a, it was a pitch meeting. So this team I was working on is actually a science show and they would, they’d sit down, I think once a week, was like Monday morning meeting and everyone would pitch stories, right? Cause you have to come out with a new show every week. You have to know what you’re going to cover. You have to have a list. And I remember looking around and these are just amazing people. mean, they have 75 ideas and they’re so curious and they want to go dig in.

there and I just I got a blank list right I’ve got nothing and I was like I don’t think I can produce what needs to be what you need to every single week to make this a career right like you can never you can never really set it down and like not be thinking about it so yeah it was it was I think that was the moment I remember most as like that’s you’ve got a pivot like this is just not gonna be for you

Anthony Codispoti (55:39)
Anybody try to talk you out of that transition?

Michael Moscarelli (55:42)
⁓ I not particularly I had one mentor in the space who you know, I had really talked closely with her about, know, pursuing the career. So I think for her that was like, it was a bit surprising. ⁓ I just like went dark for a couple months. I was like, by the way, I’m taking a job and go to grad school and take a job in finance. So I think that was that was probably the only person no one really pushed back too much. But I think a lot of people were very much surprised because I kind of built my whole career and my whole identity around this is what I’m going to pursue.

Anthony Codispoti (56:12)
Any regrets?

Michael Moscarelli (56:14)
⁓ not too many. have to say, kind of one of the perks and kind of talk about this at beginning of this field is that, that curiosity, that ability to just dig into things when they’re presented to you never really goes away. Like I worked on a, it was a satellite networking deal a couple years ago. And I find there’s so many times where, like this deal, you just spend two days, you just read about the topic, right? You have to be as close to an expert

as you can be in the time frame because you’re going to be speaking to a board that does satellite networking for a career, right? They’ve done it for 30 years and they know all the ins and outs and you have to be as prepared as humanly possible in the short time frame you have. And I think that’s what I’ve really loved is keeping that same sort of concept of being like a mile wide and an inch deep and being able to dig into these things when necessary has kept sort of the curiosity alive in my career for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (57:12)
So what would you say is your superpower,

Michael Moscarelli (57:16)
I mean, honestly, it’s that curiosity. I’m just, I am stubbornly, I do not like being in a scenario where I don’t fully understand something. You know, I can BS with the best of them, but I really feel uncomfortable speaking to something that I haven’t at least read a primer on or understood to a deeper level than would be expected. You know, obviously you can’t be an expert in everything. can’t, ⁓ you know, you can’t become one overnight, but you can certainly try. And so throughout my career, whenever I’ve been faced

that challenge, I’ve just done everything I could do to just know as much as humanly possible and just give it an honest try to learn the topic and understand.

Anthony Codispoti (57:56)
⁓ How are you leveraging AI in your own workflow? You’re super curious. You got to get up to near expert level in an industry. How do you use that as a shortcut or other ways that you employ it?

Michael Moscarelli (58:09)
for sure.

Yeah, I mean, it’s really become a key tool, I think, in the industry, honestly. It’s going to be unavoidable, right? It is getting better and better by the day. We, typically myself, I like to use it as a ⁓ of a challenge or like a thought partner, right? I like to have my own approach. I like to have a concept of what I want to do on a particular thing. ⁓ And I want to have it try to punch holes in my argument. And it’s relatively good at that.

gotten

better, particularly in things like choosing ⁓ market comps for companies. It’s gotten really, really good at that in the span of 12 months. It previously didn’t do too well. So it really, think for us, it’s kind of what we encourage our team to use it as. It cannot really, at this point, do your job for you. ⁓ And even if you let it try, you have to very closely audit it. You need to really understand the output in order to let it take over more of that work.

honestly using it as a way to punch holes in your arguments and fight against your idea, right, is really great. I mean, it can pull from so many things that might suggest otherwise. And it’s, yeah, I mean, that’s how we’ve been using it primarily, I would say.

Anthony Codispoti (59:26)
So for you, you’re doing most of your research on these fancy data platforms that we were talking about at the beginning of the interview. And so from reading those, you sort of formulate your ideas, and then you feed those into a large language model. And you’re like, hey, hit me back. What am I missing here? And sometimes it comes up with some ideas where you’re like, ⁓ that’s legit. I need to look into that. And other times it does what LLMs do, and it

hallucinates and you’re like, well, that’s a terrible piece of feedback.

Michael Moscarelli (59:57)
Yeah,

exactly. And I think that’s really for, especially for people early in their career in financial services right now, that’s going to be the differentiator is you need to not only be able to use this tool, but you need to be able to know when the tool is wrong, right?

⁓ and so much of what we do is really this person to person making an argument, understanding something qualitatively. ⁓ and that’s just going to continue to be what, what, where people can bring value, right? As LLMs improve, I do think so much of the quantitative side of the business is really just going to become not black box isn’t quite the right word, but it’s going to be so heavily assisted that things like modeling skills are going to start, excuse me, start to be,

⁓ less of a differentiator, less important. ⁓ and that’s, think where the, where the field is going and there’s already platforms now who, you know, they’ll give you a, a valuation of your business. can throw in your financials, throw in your cap table, and it spits out a number. But I think that’s a differentiator, right? Is does that number make sense? Can I understand how that number was reached? Can I support that? And that’s where people can add value. And that’s where the LLMs so far haven’t quite caught up. It’s not to say they won’t, but for now, that’s where I think.

where the human edge still exists.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:14)
What are some other exciting changes that you see coming to your field?

Michael Moscarelli (1:01:19)
There’s, mean, honestly, the beauty of it is that people come up with new things to value every day. Financial markets never sleep on creating instruments that are challenging and difficult. And we always see something new walking in the door. ⁓ think continuing to see new strategies, we’ve seen that with, not to go too much of a tangent, but digital asset treasury companies like MicroStrategy. ⁓

They effectively took a pool of digital assets in a holding company and listed it. And for some reason, it traded at a huge premium to the underlying digital assets. These little quirks of markets, I think, are just going to continue to amplify, particularly as we’ve seen retail investment involvement really pick up, I think, the last three or four years.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:03)
Do you think that’s what’s driving

these, I don’t know if you call them arbitrage examples or?

Michael Moscarelli (1:02:09)
I think to some degree, yes, ⁓ it’s a lot of retail participation. That’s definitely going to continue to be a trend as long as there’s risk appetite out there. ⁓ I think that’s driving a lot of it. At the same time, a lot of the traditional investment structures have kind of become old hat. And if you’re a fund manager or an allocator, you need to be able to show, this is the new thing. This is the thing that’s going to drive alpha and new returns. And we need to look into this.

think

that’s partially some of it as well. You’ve seen private equity and such be sort of in a holding period of exits, things like continuation vehicles, to, know, ⁓ seen a bit of stagnation in that strategy. So I do think you’re gonna just continue to see people come up with stuff all the time. And that’s what excites me is you just never know what’s gonna walk in the door.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:01)
Hmm. Michael, I’ve just got one more question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to do three quick things. First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Michael Mascarelli, their website is hula hand capital.com. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes hula hand capital.com and his email address is ⁓ Mascarelli at hula hand capital.com and Mascarelli at hula hand capital.com. There’ll be links to both of those in the show notes. And if you’re enjoying the show today, please take a moment to follow us on your favorite podcast app.

it sends a signal that helps others to find our show. So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, if you want to be the hero advisor that shows your clients how to get their employees access to therapists, doctors, and prescription meds that, as paradoxical as it seems, actually increases the company’s net profits, reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com. All right, so Michael Moscarelli, last question for you.

What is one specific thing that you hope to be celebrating a year from today?

Michael Moscarelli (1:04:03)
This is the easy one, right? Just another year of growth with Hulahan, right? That’s really the hope. But I guess on more personal note, we’re only a couple of days from my anniversary. So I’ll be celebrating four years of my wife who’s been incredibly gracious putting up with my career the last couple of years. As you can tell, I tend to talk a lot. I tend to ramble a little bit. So if you think you got a little bit of that on the podcast, she puts up with it all the time. So we’ll throw that in there.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:31)
And what is her name?

Michael Moscarelli (1:04:33)
Emily. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:34)
Emily. Tip of the hat to Emily for putting up with Michael. All right, Michael Moscarelli from Houlehain Capital. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Michael Moscarelli (1:04:37)
See you for the hat, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, thanks Anthony, appreciate it.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:51)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.