Inside Venture Debt: Trends, Risks & Opportunities in 2026

0:00When you really need care, you need 24-7 access to a care team, not a maze of paperwork from a third party. Every day, America's hospitals and health systems show up for you. Navigating healthcare can fuel overwhelming, but you can count on real doctors, real nurses, real people, providing quality around the clock care when you need it most. They're in your corner. In communities across America, your neighbors, your lifelines, write beside you holding your hand and helping find answers. That's what putting patients first actually means. Learn more at strengthinhealthcare.org Brought to you by the Coalition to Strength in America's Health Care. Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you'd like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters.com and click on be our guest to apply. All right, so today is a very special episode. We are kicking off the venture debt conference series with one of our return guests, who's also a premier sponsor of the conference, the Venture Debt Conference hosted by Deal Flow Events.

1:01Troy Zander, he's a partner over at Manette. Troy, welcome back to the show. Man, I can't believe it's been a year. For the year, thanks Adam. Great to be here. Great to join you again and thanks for having me. Man, these are some of my favorite episodes. I'm like, we're getting the band back together. Man, we get to catch up, see what's going on and also get into the deal flow, or the Deal Flow Venture Debt Conference and what they're up to as well. So I guess just to get us kicked off here, Troy, we'll start this episode, the way that we start them all, is what we like to call our Mission Matters Minute. So Mission Matters, our aim in our goal is to amplify stories. We do this for entrepreneurs, for executives, for experts. So that's what we do. Troy, what mission matters to you? Well, thanks for asking Adam and I, and I appreciate that you start off that way every time because I think it's really valuable and really important. You know, what matters to us, is Cornies, it sounds as client service. I have a team around the country and primarily what we do. We represent lenders that are lending to tech and life

2:01science and middle market companies. And we're in service of others, bottom line. Sometimes we're helping to improve an extend life and lending to healthcare companies, sometimes just improving the quality of life with tech companies. But it's all about being responsive to our clients as they're responsive to their clients and on and on and on. So what matters most? Wonderful. Let's for those that didn't catch maybe some of our previous work. Maybe go into Manate a bit and tell us a little bit more about the firm and really, really how you got started. Sure. Thanks. So Manate is a professional services firm where a combination of lawyers and consultants in a single organization serving a handful of industries primarily from financial services to entertainment and beyond, including professionals who are have made their livelihoods in healthcare and in financial services like my team in B, and corporate, M&A, et cetera, et cetera. And we serve clients on sort of all levels, companies on all levels of the spectrum

3:02from just starting out a company through major transformative events on the healthcare side, on the consulting side, principally, healthcare companies, providers, payors, et cetera. So it's a very different organization than most just typical law firms. I started out as a chapter 11 restructuring where a long, long time ago, I transitioned into doing what I'm doing now about 25 years ago. And as I say, my team and I principally represent lenders as they led to tech and life science companies. Sometimes the more interesting or sexy word is private credit. These days, if you've read the headlines, private credit seems to be taking a little bit of a beating in the headlines. But I think that's a little overblown. We can talk about that. But we bring to bear both the expertise and representing our clients as they're lending to borrowers. And also that restructuring expertise deals those sideways. And we try to bring everybody back to the table and find a business. Yeah. I want to circle back to the headlines thing

4:04because when I heard you were coming on in private credit, I was, I was, I was just having this conversation yesterday. But before we do that, what we'll get back to that. But I will, I'm going to circle that wagon back for a bit. But before we do venture.com, it's April 16th, New York City. I believe you're the premier sponsor for that, right? Why do you enjoy it? You participate in multiple times in the conference. Why? Why is this conference so important? Yeah, great question. Because this is the only conference of its type, which is dedicated to the private credit and really the venture debt landscape. This is now the fourth year of the conference. I think it's the second year that we have been the premier sponsor. And we're really leaning into that. We're leaning into that experience and really attempting to continue to professionalize the input and the output of the conference. And what do I mean by that? For the first time, I think. Certainly my team and I are hosting a couple of panels, but we're bringing different participants and we've had in the past.

5:04I have the first steps into the panel of the day, which is about the venture debt raising experience. And that'll include a couple of venture capital firms, marquee firms, one from Andreessen Horowitz and one from NEA. We'll also have a CEO of a company who's raised venture debt and a banker from Western Alliance, Mike Letterman, who's their global head of innovation banking. And the idea is really to try to bring a very real experience to that audience so that they understand what the venture debt raising experience is like. Will host another panel later in the day that is similar and it's about raising venture debt for Israeli companies. Which is not new, but something of great interest and Israeli companies play a meaningful role in the tech and life science ecosystem. And so hopefully those will be very valuable, also populated with a couple of CFOs or CEOs of companies to try to give a real life experience of what the venture debt raising experience is like. Yeah, so you're definitely doubling down and also,

6:07maybe that's the wrong word. This isn't the Atlantic City event. But that being said, what's it like putting together these panels, putting together like the content, like inviting the, like how's that process? What's it like to work through that? I think I find it a lot of fun. I'm curious in here, I'm like, what do you, what do you feel? I love it, I love it. And you know, I've been, I've been doing this now for over 30 years and I can honestly say and I'm not embarrassed to admit that I still geek out about what I do. Most importantly, it's the people with whom I work, not just my team, but the clients that we serve, who appreciate the value that we bring, that 30 years of experience in this arena brings to the experience with them and representing them. And I could, I could talk unscripted about this stuff for hours and hours and hours. Of course, you don't have hours and hours. We have 40 minutes of a panel, but likewise, the panelists, and these are all really seasoned members of their respective professions and organizations who likewise could speak off the top of their heads.

7:10And I have told them in the prep sessions and we prepare. So not to say in fact that we could have that conversation just on top of our heads. We will have multiple prep sessions, I think it's really important to prepare. But as I say, they too could just speak at length about this topic, about what the venture debt and raising experience is like. And I'm looking forward to having that conversation both having prepared and unscripted as well. And I hope that the audience will be engaged. They have been in the past. We'll see whether there's anything controversial that comes up during the course of these handles that causes the audience to get engaged. But that's the idea is to be informative and engaging, interesting, have some fun and hopefully even disseminate some knowledge. Yeah, what do you feel and or do you feel? So when you come to conferences like this, especially this, this is niche, this is specialty. And even sometimes when you, some of the people you may have known, I always feel like new ideas come from this. Like I don't know if it's the energy in the room, the energy in the conference, you have all these season people and just different ideas, different things come out

8:12that just normally don't. Do you feel like that at all? I don't know how to explain it, but 30 years you've been doing this. When you get everybody together, I'm like, why does it work when we get everybody together? But then we're all separate. What are your thoughts? I'm just going through that on your lap, Troy. Yeah. Yeah, for me, it's all home week, right? So much of this conference and this one in particular, but conferences like this that have this focus, if you're right, it is a bit of a niche, are really about reconnecting with people with whom we've crossed paths over all of the years. And so it's a great opportunity to connect and reconnect. Look, it's also a great opportunity to recruit, both as a lawyer, some of the financial institutions that are there can meet people with whom they've worked, or that they should know, and different geographies. And so it's an opportunity to expand our networks. And to your point, including in expanding the networks, we get an opportunity to talk about new things. What are you seeing that's different? And how are you approaching this, the landscape differently? And what's happening in the news today that's causing us to think about how we need to be getting ahead of the latest news?

9:16And is that news overblown or is it real? And so it's a great opportunity, both old and new. See old friends and also talk about new ideas and new opportunities. All right, I think you let you teed up that transition to what's going on and knew the headlines overblown, not overblown, where do you want to start with this one? Private credit markets to where to start every day. It seems there's a headline. Let me actually let me let me just just for both of us, I'm just going to timestamp and let everybody know that we're recording this on March 16th, 2026. So now we can continue. I just wanted to timestamp. No, it's really important. It's really important. Especially as we prepare for the panels, because what is today's news might not be the news or really the most important news one month from today, the conference is one month today, so that the timing is really good for this podcast. But yeah, of late, and that's the last several months, but including up to today, there was a Wall Street Journal article

10:17that came out today about a gentleman at Apollo who's talking about private credit. There have been private credit's been in the news lately, too, around what are called redemptions, where retail investors are trying to pull money out of private credit funds. These are the funds that are making investments in these growth stage companies, etc. There was earlier news a couple of months ago now about a organization called Blue Out and Undertake It Out. And folks like Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan, who are sort of market makers commenting on the state of private credit and the quality or lack thereof of the diligence that's engaged in private credit funds. And by the way, you know, observationally, and as somebody who makes his living in this arena, unless he's going to say something positive, I cringe when someone like Jamie Dimon makes comments about the industry because he is a market mover and a market maker. But there's been lots and lots of news lately about private credit. The truth of the matter is private credit

11:18has been and continues to be a very high-quality asset class, very low-loss kinds of numbers and percentages. And I do think that a lot of the news of late is overblown. There's concern as there is across every industry about how AI is going to take over or plant or really challenge software companies in particular what's called SaaS or software as a service. And that's a matter of debate. We don't know where that will end up. But I do think that that subject matter, much like the headlines that talk about AI, you know, replacing all humans and that humans are not going to have jobs. It's not quite the headlines which give the idea that our overblown, we're still going to need people actually to take charge of AI and to ensure that it works effectively and actually is supposed to. Here industry, my industry, the financial sector, et cetera, and so it's been in the headlines.

12:19I like to think that most news is good news and so we'll try to trade on it a little bit. But to your point about the recording date, as I say, we'll see what happens come a month from now in conference dimensions of what is the news. And I'll remind your listeners that four years ago when we were headed into the first venture debt conference, March 10th was a day that will live on an infamy when SBB collapsed and the most the conference had been in the works for many months preceding that and the topics that were going to be discussed had to dramatically shift and change. Now, I'm hoping we don't see anything at all of that sort of magnitude, but it is important to note that we're recording this a month out and we'll see what happens between now and then and maybe even the news about private credit will write size. Amazing to see. Yeah, I think the interesting thing and I guess the newsworthy headline is people in the redemption side of things. Whenever you start getting the consumer or they should say the investor involved in that way, you start getting that whole

13:21it's a wonderful life vibe. And also, you know what I mean? That's the thing that goes viral. Yeah, and that's exactly right. There is this sort of a shared or crowd mentality that content to take over. And all these people are seeking early reductions against their fund. And this fund is sticking to its 5% cap this fund is blowing their cap and allowing greater redemptions. And there's psychology that's involved in that as well, both sides. There's the psychology of the herd mentality. That's the, you know, that's the run on the banks that forbid kind of mentality. But there's also this psychology at the fund level and whether the fund demonstrates to the investor class seeking redemption then look, we have great faith in the asset class and in the investment strategy and in our fund. Such that even if our fund has a 5% cap on redemptions, we're going to throw in our own money in order to commit redemptions of greater percentage.

14:22And I think that psychology is really important to express to the broader market as well to let the market know this is still a good asset class. You know, please don't be betrayed as if we're by this sort of order mentality. So we're, again, we're recording this March 16th. Well, we're going to blink and it'll be Q2, right? What kind of conversations are being had in within the walls of Manhattan? What's on your mind as we go into Q2? Well, it's a great question. I mean, you know, look, we're feeling bullish. You know, maybe against all odds, including, you know, what's important to about March 16th or this time of the year and this year is there's a war raging on. It some would say with no apparent end in sight, maybe even no strategy at the outset, but we'll leave politics to the side. And, you know, in some respects, though, the macro economy, the US macro economy for the most part, seems to continue to be humming along.

15:23Sure, the market of late this last 10 days has taken a beating and, you know, the leadership, I think, is concerned about that. But that's not a reason to, you know, direct an operation of a war. I'm hopeful, of course, as everybody is, that that war ends as quickly as humanly possible with little additional loss of life, etc., etc. But in the meantime, I mean, look, deals are getting done. Whether they're the venture debt or private credit financings that we're talking about, that we'll talk about at the venture debt conference or more broadly in the M&A market. I think everybody was hoping yet again that the public markets would be open. The window would be open again, the IPO window. I think that's been hammered a little bit too by these latest news of the war. Hopefully, hopefully, we see a quick and we see the market sort of rebound and take off. I think, you know, save for this war in these recent events. And, you know, look, last year we had tariffs and we had executive orders and all kinds of,

16:26you know, unprecedented historical events. You get the market really took off. Hopefully, hopefully, we can see that again and maybe at a multiple for 26. Amazing. Troy, last thing here, how do people learn more about M&A? How do they follow up? How do they connect with you and your team? Thanks for asking. I appreciate it. Easy, right? M&A is M&A.com. So come visit us at M&A.com. www.M&A.com. You can email me at TZander, first initial and last name at M&A.com or you can look me up on LinkedIn. And please do, please reach out. As I say, I geek out about this stuff. Happy to talk about it. And welcome to questions. Fantastic. I was happy to have you on today. When I saw this, I'm like, oh, I'm finally going to get some answers. Everything that I'm reading is this true? Not what? How should I be weathering this or thinking about it? I should say, I'm like, got Troy coming on the line today. It was awesome. For everybody listening, by the way, we're definitely going to put the contact information, all that good stuff into the show notes so that you can just click on the links head right on over and connect.

17:28And if you also want to connect with Troy in person, the Venture Deck conference is taking place in New York City. It's going to be April 16th at April 16th again in New York City. You can grab tickets at dealflowevents.com. You'll see it pretty straight for a Venture Deck conference. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven't done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. You heard me write each and every day we're bringing you new content, new ideas and hopefully new inspiration to help you long the way in your journey as well. So hit that subscribe or follow button. And Troy Mana, the reunion episode. I'm liking this man. Appreciate you. Let's do it more often. Great to see Adam and I appreciate the opportunity to be on the show.