Hey! Thanks for being here for Edition #15. You're one of 260+ subscribers, and I genuinely appreciate every single one of you.
I came into capital markets sideways. I was a Domino's delivery driver, then a market intelligence consultant, then a cybersecurity salesman, then an agency owner. No formal finance training. No banking pedigree.
Everything I know about deals, lenders, investors, and how capital actually moves came from doing it - from sourcing deals, sitting in on conversations, learning to match the right people together, and saying yes to real estate, PE, secondaries, all of it.
The work is difficult. The hours are long. But this week I hit 19,000 followers, and more than that, I can genuinely say I love what I do. I love meeting people in this industry. I love the conversations with investors and lenders. I love reading about what's actually moving through the market. I love watching how deals play out from sourcing all the way through close. And I love having real access to information that matters.
It's taken a very long time to get here. But it's worth it.
Let's get into it.
Michael Dell just bought an insurance broker outright.
His family office, DFO Management, teamed up with Sequence Holdings to acquire The Baldwin Group - a Tampa-based commercial insurance brokerage doing $1.5B in revenue with $341.5M EBITDA. All cash, $32.50 per share, no plans to sell.
Dell's thesis: Baldwin has built a genuine data and platform advantage compounded over 15 years. Sequence CEO Michael J. Lee framed the play as bringing engineering talent and patient capital to rebuild the business around what technology now makes possible.
This lands in a window where insurance brokerage is consolidating fast - Aon is buying USI Insurance Services for around $17 billion in the same timeframe. The question isn't whether Baldwin gets rolled up later. It's whether Dell and Sequence are betting they can outmaneuver the bigger consolidators by building something too valuable to fold into a generic PE playbook.
Also this week:
The secondaries market is booming while PE payouts collapse. Private equity has stopped paying investors out - exits are slow, and LP distributions hit a four-year low. So LPs started selling their fund stakes directly instead of waiting. Secondaries fundraising is up every year since 2023, even as overall PE fundraising fell. With about one year of dry powder left and 60–70% of deals closing in the second half, forecasters are calling $250B+ in 2026. There are roughly 30,000 PE-backed companies waiting to exit. A great IPO year clears about 100. The rest need a buyer.
Family offices are abandoning venture funds and buying direct stakes instead. Bezos Expeditions put $72M into Toloka. Yamauchi No. 10 targeted Decart's $300M Series B. 1902 Capital placed a $145M secondary into Vi Labs. Hillspire made 15 direct AI investments in 2025. The appeal is obvious: traditional VC locks capital for 10 years with zero say. Secondaries let you pick a single name - Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe, Revolut, Databricks - and buy into a company with revenue, customers, and operating history. You pay a premium for it (primary-stage prices for secondary-stage risk), but the traction is proven.
What's crossing my desk and my conversations this week:
$1B+ family office, just opened their capital doors. I met the CFO of a US-based family office with $1B+ of dry powder to deploy. They're actively building out their internal investment committee and finalizing allocation strategies. No active positions yet - they're open to receiving deal flow. The wealth came from a company merger. They're looking at $1–5M ticket sizes to start relationships, real estate, private equity, secondaries, and private-only deals (actively trying to sell their listed positions). They want long-term capital relationships - 5 to 10 years - and are currently underwriting US real estate plays. Refreshingly direct take on AI: fatigued by the theme, tired of hearing it at every conference. Not sceptical of the tech, sceptical of the hype cycle. More interested in sectors where cash flow is durable - biotech, longevity, conservation. But ultimately open to good deals that land in their lap.
Building a lender network from scratch. I have 260+ private lenders on speed dial, but last month I needed one who wasn't on it. A sponsor brought me a $20M land bank - rezoning 40 hectares from agricultural to residential. No income yet, no approval yet. Banks wouldn't touch it. I went through all 260+. Nobody did this exact deal type. So I started from scratch. LinkedIn Sales Nav gave me 38 people at 14 firms who specialise in land banking. Prospeo.io found verified emails for 33 of the 38. I sent 33 emails in one afternoon. Zero bounced. Seven replied within 12 hours. One reply was two lines long: "This is exactly what we do. Can you send the planning docs?" We're now in due diligence. A big network is a good start. But the right lender is often one you haven't met yet.
Chemical Tankers: Riding Asia's Built-in Demand
A Singapore-based chemical tanker operator is offering a USD $7.5M entry into intra-Asia shipping. The asset is a 2007-built, 8,895 dwt stainless steel tanker with 18 compartments and CDI/SIRE approvals. Year 1 revenue projection sits at USD $6–7M, translating to TCE earnings of USD $11,500–12,500 per day. The operator's management team brings 18+ years of maritime operations experience across commercial management, technical operations, and chartering.
Why it works. Asia is home to 36% of global chemical refining capacity. The demand story is structural: the market is forecast to reach USD $55B by 2032, growing 8–10% annually. Customer engagement runs through established shippers with multi-voyage relationships, not one-off spot charters. The route set spans Japan–Korea–China–Thailand–Indonesia–Singapore–India — proven lanes with year-round cargo flow and built-in backhaul economics.
Downside protection. Stainless steel tanks command a premium for chemical cargo and hold utilisation during market downturns. Scrap value sits at roughly USD $2.6M across a 3–5 year hold. A-class customer relationships provide ballast against spot-market volatility.
Exit. The operator's thesis is disciplined: acquire at 10–20 years old, trade for 3–5 years, then sell or scrap when capital appreciation surfaces. Cumulative net profit to equity is projected to USD $2.86M+ by the end of the hold period, with quarterly distributions along the way.
My verdict: Strong fit for single-family offices. The dividend profile (12–18% p.a.) and 60–90%+ projected IRR appeal to SFOs seeking decorrelated, cash-generative assets outside traditional equities and real estate. Customer stickiness and stable intra-Asia lanes reduce execution risk. The entry point is clean - USD $7.5M is scalable for most SFOs, and the 3–5 year lifecycle fits medium-term capital deployment. Execution depends on sustained A-class charterer demand and the operator's ability to hold utilisation, both of which have proven out in the materials.
How I built a network of 250+ investors without a finance degree.
Sales taught me what most finance people never had to learn. My background wasn't banking or wealth management - it was selling cybersecurity solutions to finance companies. Bankers, asset managers, wealth managers. My job was to get meetings with total strangers and ask great questions before I pitched.
That taught me:
How to book meetings with people who don't know you
How to ask great questions before you pitch
How to follow up without being annoying
How to earn referrals from people you just met
How to stay in touch when there's nothing to sell
When I moved into private capital markets, I didn't start from zero. The people were the same. The skills were the same. Only the product changed.
Today that network is 250+ family offices, private lenders, and institutional investors. It didn't come from a finance degree or a bank job. It came from sales discipline applied to relationship-building over time.
The thing is, if you can book a meeting with a stranger, ask them real questions, follow up without being annoying, and stay top-of-mind when there's nothing immediate to sell, you can build a network in any market. In any industry.
The only variable is how long you're willing to keep showing up.
Most people in finance assume the network is something you inherit - a family connection, a top-tier MBA cohort, a Goldman Sachs analyst program.
It's not. It's built.
And if you're willing to do the work when nobody's watching, you'll have better conviction and deeper relationships than anyone who just inherited their rolodex.
The people I talk to now remember me because I asked good questions when I had nothing to offer. That's the compounding advantage.
A snapshot of what's currently moving through Capital Arbitrage:
Real Estate:
Hong Kong - Land Purchase & Rezone - $70M Debt/Equity
Netherlands - Office Portfolio Conversion - $150M Debt/Equity
Dubai - Luxury Villa Flip - $16M Debt/Equity
UK - Brownfield Data Centre - £65M Debt
USA - New York Multifamily - $2M Equity
Canada - GPU Financing - $89M Debt
Australia - Debt Purchase / Refinance - $350M
Secondaries:
Direct GP access to Blue Origin, Databricks, Stripe and Firehawk Aerospace.
This isn't the full pipeline - just a flavour of what's active. If you're an investor or lender active in any of these asset classes or geographies, reply to this email.
That's all for this week. See you next Friday.
— Jordon
P.S. I get 500,000+ monthly impressions on LinkedIn and a growing list of private capital readers right here. If you'd like to get your company, fund, or raise in front of this audience, just reply to this email.