$100T is managed by “human duct tape” | E2308

**Alex Wilhelm** (0:00)
How did we end up in a world with $100 trillion in assets and a terrible fund management stack?

**Chris Hladczuk** (0:06)
It's human duct tape, legacy services businesses that are running the entire backbone of these hundred trillion of global assets. They're buying QuickBooks, they're buying build.com, they're buying Excel. And so you end up in this like crazy situation where you're stuck with a bunch of human middlemen that are holding your own data hostage. B2B SaaS was dead, but everyone was like, you're insane. You want to go build financial info from the most complex investment firms in the entire world? And you've never done this before?

**Alex Wilhelm** (0:30)
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Hello and welcome back to Twist. My name is Alex. Now, on a recent episode, one of our Venture Capital roundtables we do every Wednesday, Turner Novak of Banana Capital gushed over one of his portcodes. Now, that's not a very rare occurrence. PCs do love to come on the show and talk about their investments. But in this case, we actually looked into the company in question, got them on the phone to learn more. And it turns out it's a very interesting startup showing where AI meets traditional software and services. So to tell us about bringing AI to the world of fund ops, please join me in welcoming to the program. It's Chris Hladczuk, the CEO and co-founder of Hanover Park. Chris, how you doing?

**Chris Hladczuk** (1:46)
Let's go. I'm pumped for this.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:48)
I'm pumped for this too. Okay, so here's my thing. When I think about lots of money which funds have, I think about the ability to pay for strong services and to really have a good operational backbone. But what you told me is that in the world of fund ops, the technology is outdated, there's too many people involved, and you call it a kind of duct tape operation. So how did we end up in a world with a $100 trillion in assets and a terrible fund management stack?

**Chris Hladczuk** (2:13)
Well, it's human duct tape where you basically think about legacy services businesses that are running the entire backbone of these $100 trillion of global assets are sitting there with a bunch of humans in Kentucky. They're buying QuickBooks, they're buying bill.com, they're buying Excel, and that CFO has to ask them, hey, can you send me some data and get access to my own data? And they're literally like, that's insane in 2026 And so we looked at this and we're like massive untapped legacy services market with very low tech penetration and run by a bunch of fund accountants in a room where they're delivering financial reporting every quarter.

**Alex Wilhelm** (2:46)
So tell me more about the data question, because one thing I've heard a lot about from companies in kind of the AI moment is people want to have access to their data. It's my data. At the same time, a lot of SaaS companies want to hold on to that because it's kind of their secret sauce. But in this case, it sounds like funds often have their data stored in Kentucky, as you said, and don't have regular and easy access to it.

**Chris Hladczuk** (3:05)
That's the crazy part about this. So fund administration, traditionally, you pay this fund admin. They have the service provider with a bunch of accountants that are doing your financial reporting. And they basically go and say, okay, we're gonna buy access to QuickBooks, and we're not gonna give you access to it, actually. You're not gonna be able to have your own data. And so then you have to email them and say, hey guys, can I have my own data for this random report I need to repull when I need to go fundraise for my new fund? And so you end up in this like crazy situation where you're stuck with a bunch of human middlemen that are holding your own data hostage. And so, you know.

**Alex Wilhelm** (3:34)
Why? Like why is that a service people would pay for? To me, that sounds like giving someone money to slam the door on your face. So why wouldn't these funds, which have quite a lot of, just build their own internal stack? Why outsource it to someone who hates you, I guess?