Michael Carmen
The Convener
The room, the network and the deal, brings the right people together.
Michael Carmen embodies The Convener by recognizing early that companies staying private longer was a secular structural shift, not a cyclical blip, and then building around that insight rather than merely trading on it. As Co-Head of Private Markets at Wellington, he constructed institutional capability at the boundary between private and public markets, positioning the firm as a strategic bridge. He converts macro foresight into coalition-building, gathering people and platforms around a shared directional thesis.
“I wrote a memo saying I think this might be a really long term secular trend of companies staying private longer. We should consider doing a dedicated fund to take advantage of this trend for our clients.”
“Our value added is that we can help them on that last mile from the private market to the public market — IPO timing, governance, gross margin dynamics, what they need to do to remain attractive to public investors.”
“We've been able to bring our public market expertise to the private markets. Amazon's last private round was at a sixty million dollar post money valuation. Today you have companies like Stripe doing fifty-five billion dollar rounds.”
Masters in Business: “Michael Carmen on Late-Stage Venture Capital and IPOs”
LISTEN AT THE SOURCE ↗THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE