Fix the Data First: Why AI Strategy Starts With Your Data Foundation, with Taylor Lowe of Metal

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, host Gui Costin is joined by Taylor Lowe, CEO and co-founder of Metal, a New York-based AI company building the context layer for private capital. The show usually features heads of distribution, but this conversation takes on a question every distribution leader is facing: what to do about AI, LLMs, internal data, and external data sources while compliance, data integrity, and other stakeholders weigh in on every decision.Taylor traces his path from Washington, DC, to San Francisco, where he started as an SDR at Copper (then ProsperWorks) before moving into account executive and product manager roles. He then joined Kustomer in New York, a CRM that was later sold to Meta, and met his co-founders there. After the acquisition, they launched Metal out of Y Combinator in early 2023, first as horizontal infrastructure for large language models and soon after focused on private markets. He credits YC with teaching the team to ask the right questions and stay committed to what is true in the market rather than chasing hype.The conversation then turns to the core problem. A firm’s most valuable asset is its internal data, including its judgment, expertise, and hard-won lessons, but that data sits in unstructured documents across CRMs, file repositories, email, and chat, with no single system of record. Taylor explains that LLMs finally make it possible to connect and normalize this information, but only when paired with software that classifies document types, extracts the right data, and ranks sources by provenance. Metal is also model-agnostic, so customers can reach the same contextualized data through Claude, GPT, or Gemini over MCP, in whatever tools they already use.A major theme is starting with the data foundation instead of the workflow. Firms that rush to automate a single use case, such as analyzing expert calls, often hit a wall as soon as they add a second source like the CRM or file repository. Gui compares this to outlining a presentation on a yellow pad before ever opening PowerPoint, since design is only as good as the data underneath it.Gui and Taylor also dig into why data decays. Gui argues that acquiring data is not the hard part. Enriching, organizing, and continually updating it is, and bragging about how much data you have is really admitting an updating problem. Taylor likens bad data to salt in cooking, easy to add and hard to remove, and shares how Metal’s own agents keep its CRM so clean that he no longer logs into it directly. With a trusted core, the platform compounds in value over time, which Gui compares to a golf course thoughtfully taking down trees to improve the health of the whole course.Once internal data is clean and maintained, external sources and benchmarks become far more useful. Firms can compare their own performance to third-party data, spot patterns in the deals and LPs they have worked well with, and keep everything traceable and auditable. Taylor closes by naming education as a key challenge: as the models evolve, he works to help firms keep pace and understand why the data foundation matters. He adds that his main competition is firms building in-house on the foundation labs, where the hard part isn’t the first workflow but maintaining the data layer underneath it. Gui wraps up by congratulating Taylor on solving a very large problem in a trustworthy way.

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin sits down with Jonathan Kingery, Chief Distribution Officer at DoubleLine, for a wide-ranging conversation on building and leading high-performing distribution teams. Jonathan joined DoubleLine in 2025 and oversees the firm’s U.S. relationship management team across institutional, wealth management, sub-advisory, and retirement. Before that, he held senior roles at Franklin Templeton and Lord Abbett.Jonathan traces his path from Dover, Delaware, where his father was his school principal through fourth grade, to a history degree at the University of Delaware and then to American Express Financial Advisors at age 22. Spending roughly seven years as a financial advisor gave him a lasting belief that everything starts with the client. At 30 he moved into asset management at Lord Abbett, where he later built the RIA team from a desk of one. He then went to Franklin Templeton, rising to head of U.S. wealth management with a team of about 270, before choosing a smaller, “SEAL Team 6” style team at DoubleLine.The conversation turns to the fundamentals of sales leadership. Jonathan explains that a defined sales process turns habits into freedom, taking the thinking out of the day-to-day so salespeople can be creative in front of clients. He shares his “mission, team, individual” filter for decisions. He and Gui discuss the CRM as the “central nervous system” of a client business and how tools like voice notes and Claude make capturing call notes easier than ever. They agree that AI is only as good as the data beneath it, and that keeping data fresh, with advisor turnover of 20% to 25% a year, takes a dedicated team.On leadership, Jonathan describes his approach: get the right talent in place first, then set the environment and the standards. He explains that the root of the word culture is care, and that “the lowest standard you’re willing to accept will define your culture.” A leader who ignores low effort pulls top performers down. Gui adds that kindness and high performance reinforce each other, and that the goal is to keep your best people forever.Jonathan also shares practical advice for young professionals entering investment sales: write down your goals and your principles by hand, share the goals with someone, and revisit the principles each year as a living document and a North Star. He still keeps the list he wrote at age 29, and Gui ties this to Dakota’s own mantras.Finally, Jonathan names prioritization as his biggest challenge, with his current focus on hiring for a new Tampa internal desk and open major-market territories. He doubled the distribution team in his first year, and both guests stress hiring deliberately. They close on self-awareness, scheduling time for thought leadership, and Stephen Covey’s advice to plan the week, not just the day. Gui calls the conversation “pure gold,” a to-do list for anyone who wants to run and lead a team.

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin sits down with his longtime friend Lori McEvoy, a recently retired financial services executive who spent nearly a decade at Jennison Associates, retiring as managing director and global head of distribution. With more than 30 years in distribution, including leadership roles at Pilgrim Baxter, Fred Alger Management, WisdomTree Investments, and ClearBridge Investments, Lori shares the lessons she learned building and leading sales organizations and what she is doing next as she relaunches Investment Management Solutions.Lori opens with her origin story. The fourth of five children in a big Irish Catholic family in Malvern, Pennsylvania, she grew up the daughter of a tile setter and a stay-at-home mom, in a family where no one had gone to college. After a year of working to save money, she enrolled at West Chester University, played Division I softball, and took a job at small-cap growth firm Pilgrim Baxter as its 13th employee. She stayed 16 years, rising from administrative assistant to equity partner and learning the business from the bottom up.Turning to tactics, Lori and Gui discuss the importance of alignment with the boss. Lori recalls her boss telling her he did not like the question of an asset goal, because if you execute the tactics of the plan every day, AUM will follow. She describes servant leadership as her style and shares the four traits she hires for: passion for the craft, a team-first mindset, low ego with high EQ, and a commitment to continuous improvement. When she arrived at Jennison, the firm had no true distribution organization, so she built one focused on retaining institutional clients, cross-selling, and growing outside the US.A major theme is the CRM. Lori calls it the backbone of the company and believes that if it is not in the CRM, it never happened. She explains how Jennison made Salesforce a firm-wide initiative, how she used its data to send a monthly Business Highlights report, and how Dakota Marketplace keeps information current compared with the outdated “green book” directories of years past. Gui encourages salespeople to think of themselves as “Inc.,” keep their CRM simple but organized, and use AI to dictate call notes straight into Salesforce.Lori also offers advice for young salespeople: love what you do, become a student of the business, network through organizations like AIMSE, and emulate your leaders. She explains her philosophy of giving back in three buckets: mentorship, philanthropy, including her new seat on the AmeriCares board, and financial education. Through IMS, she hopes to help asset managers with distribution, talent assessment, and succession planning, much like a GM putting the right players on the field.Gui closes by sharing his own 2011 realization that his mission for Dakota is to help other people get what they want out of life. The conversation ends on a theme of kindness, high standards, and a career that, as Lori says, “is not over.”

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin sits down with Chip Saltz, head of US Wealth Alternatives Distribution at Wellington Management. Chip leads the firm’s advisor sales efforts for its hedge fund and private investment capabilities across wirehouses, independent and regional broker-dealers, and RIAs. Before Wellington, he held distribution roles at Harrison Street Private Wealth, Versus Capital Advisors, Starwood Capital Group, and John Hancock.Chip starts with his origin story. He grew up in New Orleans, bartended through college at a fine dining restaurant, and was drawn to wholesaling by the Morgan Keegan professionals who came in for dinner. He got his start at Wood Logan, the distributor for Manulife and John Hancock, where a mentor taught him a formula for success: the quality of your presentation times the quality of your product times the frequency you see people. The key, he says, is that the product is you. He later moved to WP Carey to sell non-traded REITs, then to Starwood, and now Wellington, where he is building a dedicated wealth business.Gui and Chip agree that the core of a great fundraiser is hard work and likability, which can’t be taught, along with the ability to consistently book meetings with qualified buyers. Chip explains that alternatives sales depend on helping advisors understand structure, liquidity, and operational constraints, because those details are part of the product.The conversation then turns to how Chip runs his team. Wellington has 7 external wholesalers, with plans to grow to 12 to 14, plus internal wholesalers and sales specialists. Chip describes the internals as living in both the past and the future, prospecting ahead and following up on what already happened. Because advisors may allocate only around 5% of a portfolio to these products, he says it takes 8 to 12 touches, not the 3 to 6 often cited, so the team has to stay ever-present. His communication rhythm includes a collaborative Monday sales call, Wednesday product office hours, regular one-on-ones, and a monthly sales momentum call that ends with deliverables, decisions, and ownership.They also discuss the role of the CRM and AI. Chip calls the CRM table stakes and says personal notes help build relationships. Wellington has reduced meeting logging from 90 minutes to 90 seconds, and Chip expects AI dictation to bring it down further. Gui shares how he dictated call notes into Claude and sent them into Salesforce.On leadership, Chip says he leads from the front, holds people accountable, gives direct feedback, praises publicly, and corrects privately. He adds that simplicity isn’t dumbing down, it’s discipline, so that a team’s best use of time is in front of advisors.His advice for young salespeople is to understand your product deeply instead of memorizing a pitch, read widely, become the person you’d want to work with, ask for the order, and bracket your time. Chip names Influence by Cialdini as a go-to, and Gui recommends The Challenger Sale.Asked about his biggest challenge, Chip points to prioritizing finite time. He picks 2 to 5 items that move the business forward and says no to the rest, calling the business the art of subtraction.

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, host Gui Costin sits down with Christina Adamson, Partner and Co-Global Chief Operating Officer of Ares Wealth Management Solutions, to unpack how a disciplined, people-first approach helped Ares grow its wealth business roughly 50x in five years across eight evergreen funds. Christina previously held roles at Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and Black Creek Capital Markets before joining Ares in 2021.The conversation opens with communication, the foundation of any fundraising role. Christina explains that early alignment with the people you serve on their three-to-five-year goals, followed by a steady cadence of short touchpoints, keeps everyone on the same page. Updates should not be weather reports; they should share intelligence that helps the recipient do their job better. Gui adds that every interaction with a prospect is an audition for what working with you will feel like after they invest. Christina's unsolicited advice for salespeople is to outwork everyone, stay curious about what the prospect is trying to solve, and cut out the noise to focus on building trust. If you can't say a prospect trusts you, she says, you're in the wrong business.From there, the pair dig into culture as a competitive advantage. Christina credits CEO Mike Arougheti for setting the tone, with an emphasis on collaboration, transparency, trust, and no egos, alongside real autonomy for leadership teams. Gui adds that clear standards free people up to execute. Both acknowledge that protecting culture as a firm scales sometimes requires actively managing out people who aren't the right fit.The discussion turns tactical when Gui and Christina explore how technology supports a team of 200 people across 15 offices. Christina describes Ares' use of Teams channels to share intelligence in real time, and both stress a simple rule: if a meeting isn't logged in the CRM, it didn't happen. Gui calls missed call notes "gold bars" left on the table, and they discuss dictating a call report in the lobby, letting AI polish it, and routing it automatically to the right colleagues. Christina explains how Ares layers distribution intelligence and AI into its CRM so reps start each day knowing where to focus, while the relationship manager remains irreplaceable. Gui cautions that collecting data is only half the job; keeping it updated takes a process.Hiring gets significant airtime. Christina meets every candidate, from summer interns to managing directors, and looks first for drive, then a blend of EQ and IQ, and a desire to be part of a team. They discuss why former competitive athletes tend to thrive in sales, conditioned to handle rejection without self-pity, and why setting clear expectations in interviews lets candidates opt out early.Gui shares Dakota's monthly "W Days," where teams explain what is and isn't working, and Christina recalls her father's advice to "make it ugly." They close on leadership focus: doing only what only you can do, and investing in the "not urgent but important" work that drives transformative growth.

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin sits down with Michael O'Shea, Director and Head of Private Wealth Solutions at Origin Investments, for a wide-ranging conversation about systems, discipline, and what it actually takes to build a durable capital-raising career. Michael's path into the business started almost by accident nearly two decades ago, when curiosity about what a REIT and a Series 7 actually were pulled him into calling on advisors and raising capital for niche, tax-advantaged real estate deals. That early curiosity turned into a genuine passion for investing, which he later formalized by going back to school for an MBA in real estate finance and earning his CFA charter, a credential he says fundamentally sharpened how he talks about markets and builds trust with advisors.Michael shares the origin story behind Origin Investments itself: a Chicago-based real estate manager founded by two former Mercantile Exchange traders, Michael Episcope and David Scherer, who built significant personal wealth trading before computers pushed traders out of the pits. Rather than keep taking on trading risk, they built Origin to invest more transparently and with better alignment than what they'd experienced themselves as investors. Nineteen years later, the firm manages $5 billion in assets, supports more than 5,000 investment partners, and now partners with 165 RIAs, all distributed through a lean, fully RIA-and-family-office-focused team of five reps plus Michael and a sales enablement associate.A major thread of the conversation is Michael's belief that systems, not goals, drive consistent fundraising results. He leans on an Olympics analogy: the goal is gold, but it's the underlying training system that actually gets an athlete there. Applied to sales, that means knowing exactly who you're calling on, mastering your product, and building weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadences with real process improvement baked in. That same discipline extends to pipeline management. Michael reviews his team's pipeline every week specifically to catch staleness or inflated deal sizes, a philosophy Gui strongly echoes: the best salespeople who raise the most money are the ones who keep the tightest, most accurate pipelines, especially when no one else is watching.The two also dig into how technology has changed the day-to-day of fundraising. Michael describes Salesforce as his daily "cockpit," now supercharged by AI tools that transcribe calls and voice memos directly into call notes and tasks, removing much of the friction and dread that used to come with logging activity. Gui ties this back to his own hard rule at Dakota: if it's not in Salesforce, it didn't happen, because that documentation is exactly what a sales rep's salary is paying for.On leadership, Michael describes himself as a coach who removes roadblocks and filters out noise for his team, while holding a firm, non-negotiable line on entering call notes. His advice to young fundraisers centers on continuous self-investment, learning AI tools, coding, and new skills, so they're preparing not just to be a great analyst, but eventually a great CEO. He closes by naming his current challenge: a capital markets backdrop where the 10-year Treasury and cap rates aren't behaving as expected, making long-term, illiquid asset classes like real estate a harder sell in the near term.Disclaimer: All Origin Investments statistics referenced herein — including assets under management, investor count, RIA partner relationships, and any projections, targets, or track-record figures — are as of September 1, 2026, are derived from Origin's internal records, and are unaudited. These figures are subject to change and are not indicative of future results.

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin sits down with Angela Kay, President of BasePoint Advisors and Global Head of Capital Markets, to trace her path from an accidental start in finance to leading distribution at a $7 billion private credit platform. A political science and public policy major at the University of Pennsylvania who spent a college year working in the Clinton White House, Angela graduated in 2002 into a post-9/11 hiring freeze and landed, almost by chance, as a research assistant at a global macro hedge fund in New York. From there she earned a master's in public policy from UCLA while working as a sovereign debt analyst at TCW, then helped launch Ice Canyon, a joint venture with Canyon Partners, where she raised the firm's AUM from zero to $4.25 billion before eventually joining BasePoint in 2020 to help institutionalize the business and build its SEC-registered advisory arm.The conversation's core theme is Angela's belief that effective fundraising starts with investment fluency: she describes herself as an investor first and a fundraiser second, and argues that the best fundraisers bridge portfolio knowledge with genuine curiosity about what an LP is actually trying to solve, not just what they're asking on the surface. Gui builds on this, framing fundraising not as a "salesperson" function but as a professional, consultative discipline built on long-term relationships that can span decades and evolve into genuine friendships.The discussion moves through several practical themes: the value of cold outreach (Gui's line, "you're one email away from a 20-year relationship," anchors this segment), the importance of prioritization over busyness, and structured but human communication both within a distribution team and up to a firm's executive committee. Angela describes BasePoint's team structure, organized by investor type and geography, built around a "team sport" mentality rather than siloed coverage, and her rule that every meeting should end with clarity on where things stand, not vague reassurances like "great meeting."A significant portion of the episode focuses on the CRM as institutional memory: Angela stresses entering notes in real time rather than deferring them, drawing on her own experience migrating a firm onto Salesforce years ago. Both she and Gui highlight how AI has changed this workflow, removing the friction and dread salespeople associate with writing call notes and making it dramatically faster to capture and later mine years of accumulated information.The episode closes with two reflective questions. Asked to describe her leadership style, Angela offers "autonomy with high expectations,” hiring for curiosity, organization, and drive, then giving her team room to operate against clearly stated annual goals. Asked for advice to young salespeople, she emphasizes humility: enter meetings to learn rather than to prove expertise, admit what you don't know, and protect your reputation, since it compounds over a career just like capital does.Disclaimer: Angela Kay is President of BasePoint Advisors LLC ("BPA"), an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and also serves as Global Head of Capital Markets at BasePoint Capital LLC, an affiliate of BPA that is a commercial service provider to separately organized lending subsidiaries. See Items 10 and 11 of BPA's Form ADV Part 2A. This content reflects Ms. Kay's personal views and is provided for general informational purposes only. It is not investment, legal, or tax advice, or an offer or solicitation to invest in any fund.

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin talks with Ava Mallin, Managing Director in Private Wealth at Ardian, about her non-traditional path from an English degree into fundraising, and what she's learned leading private wealth relationships across the US. Ava shares how emotional transparency informs her leadership style, why daily feedback is more effective than annual reviews, and how a strong CRM — with Dakota as an overlay — has become essential infrastructure for her team. She also discusses hiring for culture fit over individual qualification, and why allocator relationships should be built with a long-term mindset rather than around a single fundraise.

In this episode of The Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin talks with Mark Allen, President and Chief Development Officer of Royal Oak Realty Trust, about building a fundraising operation from the ground up in an industrial REIT. Mark covers how Royal Oak grew its distribution team from three to eight by hiring geographically rather than by channel, why shared account ownership beats ring-fencing relationships, and how disciplined communication, CRM tools, and AI-powered call notes are reshaping the sales motion amid heavy RIA consolidation. He and Gui also unpack his player-coach leadership style and the fundraising formula he's taken from The Tao of Fundraising — why simplicity beats complexity every time.

In this episode of The Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin sits down with Dan Amir, Managing Director of Investor Coverage at Crow Holdings, for a wide-ranging conversation on building a wealth distribution team, applying institutional rigor to the wealth channel, and leading a sales organization through a difficult fundraising environment.Dan grew up in New Jersey, spent the first 13 years of his career in New York at BNY Mellon and Morgan Stanley in relationship and distribution roles, and made the pilgrimage to Dallas in 2017 — pre-COVID, before it was cool to go south. He joined Crow Holdings, the Dallas-based real estate investment and development firm founded by Trammell Crow, which today operates a development platform across multifamily and industrial sectors in 20 offices nationwide and an investment management business spanning industrial, multifamily, manufactured housing, self-storage, retail, and student housing.Crow Holdings Capital started its partnership journey in the institutional world — foundations and endowments first, then pensions and sovereign wealth. Over the last six years, the trajectory of growth in private real estate has shifted decisively toward the individual wealth community, which is why Dan was hired to lead a dedicated wealth coverage effort. His team of four (going to five) is structured geographically rather than channelized, with deliberate diversity of backgrounds — RIA, wirehouse, and non-linear distribution paths — to create overlap with how RIAs, wirehouses, and private banks actually behave in a market.Dan and Gui dug deep into the discipline of communication: starting every year with a written business plan, measuring weekly against benchmarks, and once a quarter looking back at the original plan. Communication up to leadership is succinct by design — pull data from Salesforce, summarize the position on each strategy, and engage the executive team only on genuinely strategic decisions. Dan emphasized the judgment of knowing when you need executive input.The CRM is the backbone of the operation, and AI sits on top of it. Dan ranked the CRM as indispensable for activity tracking, goal measurement, meeting note memorialization, and populating pre-meeting briefs across the broader client engagement team. Gui shared Dakota's pro tip for using Claude to dictate call notes in the lobby immediately after a meeting — eliminating the typing friction that has historically been the biggest barrier to capturing IP. Both agreed that AI is only as good as the data going in, and that picking one source of truth and training the team on it is now a strategic business decision, not a data decision.The conversation closed on leadership, trust, and culture. Dan's philosophy centers on understanding individual motivations, holding everyone accountable consistently, and trusting the team to do their jobs without micromanaging. In a difficult fundraising environment, maintaining team motivation comes from giving people the room to build durable, non-transactional relationships. Dan credited Crow Holdings' top-down culture as the reason he has never felt more like himself professionally — and the reason the team can apply institutional rigor to the wealth channel without losing the human element.Tired of chasing outdated leads? Book a demo to see how Dakota Marketplace simplifies your fundraising process with accurate, up-to-date investor data.