TBPN Sep 21, 2026
With Ron Biscardi, co-founder and CEO of iConnections
iConnections runs around 30,000 one-on-one meetings a year between institutional investors and the private-fund managers who want their money. Ron Biscardi's estimate of what moves through that funnel is $10 billion to $20 billion a year.
Software companies usually win by removing the meeting. Biscardi built one that exists to schedule it, on the grounds that nobody writes a nine-figure check to someone they have not sat across from.
"You don't cut a $10 million or $100 million check without meeting someone in person."
Biscardi started iConnections in 2020, when every way the alternatives industry had ever raised money — the lunch, the breakfast, the conference — had just been shut down, and the first event he ran was a charity fundraiser held to get institutional investors to show up at all.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 5 lessons that matter.
Key Takeaways
The platform runs roughly 30,000 one-on-one meetings a year, and Biscardi says "they'll move about 10 to 20 billion dollars in a given year" through it
The investors never pay — the general partners buy the software-plus-event package, because the limited partners are the money in the room
Alternatives resisted software until COVID removed the alternative, which is how a slow-adopting industry got onboarded in one event
The first event was run as a charity, with 100% of proceeds to food banks, purely to get 400 institutional investors to agree to take meetings
Tomorrow X is a deliberate attempt to open a bank-style conference to retail, on the argument that anonymous analysts now have larger audiences than the sell side
They rented a stadium rather than a hotel ballroom, and priced it to be reachable
1. What the Platform Does
Asked to explain the business, Biscardi described iConnections as the world's largest capital-introduction platform, and then said what that means in practice.
It connects the people with the money to the people raising it
And what that means is we connect the world's largest institutional investors with all of the fund managers who appear on your show, private equity, venture, private credit, real estate, everyone who lives in those more unique strategies, they come to our events and they use our software to meet the institutional investors who deploy capital into them.
Ron Biscardi
The volume is about 30,000 one-on-one meetings over a year, between all of those parties.
And the money that follows the meetings
And they'll move about 10 to 20 billion dollars in a given year through that whole ecosystem. So it's really become a machine.
Ron Biscardi
2. Software Plus a Room
Pressed on the shape of the business — events are visible, but there is clearly more — Biscardi split it in two and was clear about which half is the product.
The software is the asset; the meeting is the deliverable
So the business is we really combine the software. The software is the special sauce that makes this whole thing go. But because alternatives is very much a face-to-face business, you don't cut a $10 million or $100 million check without meeting someone in person.
Ron Biscardi
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The software's job is identifying who is actually worth your time. The event is where those meetings happen.
3. Who Pays and Who Doesn't
The pricing follows directly from who is scarce.
Limited partners come free, and general partners buy the package
So all the investors, of course, come for free. We roll out the red carpet for all of our institutional investors. We take great care of them and they never have to pay because they're the money in the room. And the GPs are the ones who pay for that package of software plus event.
Ron Biscardi
4. The Charity Event Start
Asked how he solved the chicken-and-egg problem, Biscardi said the answer was 2020 and a charity.
The company launched into a market where none of the industry's usual mechanics existed. The pitch he took to the institutional investors was not commercial at all.
Nobody said no
We said, we want to do a global event to benefit food banks all over the world. We'll give 100% of the money we make to the food banks, and we're going to charge the GPs to come to this thing. Will you just agree to take meetings?
Ron Biscardi
The first event's numbers
We had about 400 institutional LPs in that event. We ran 3,000 meetings.
Ron Biscardi
The moment he says proved the product was in that first batch.
A Hong Kong fund met a Kansas endowment
And I'll never forget, that the first meeting was a fund in Hong Kong meeting the Kansas State University Endowment. And I remember thinking there is no way these two people would have ever met if it hadn't been for the software making it possible.
Ron Biscardi
His read on why it worked is that the constraint was never the technology.
This industry does not adopt software voluntarily
Because like I will say the industry doesn't generally adopt technology quickly. They're very old school.
Ron Biscardi
They wanted to be in a room together, he said, and the pandemic made software the only way to get there. Once they were in it, they stayed.
5. Tomorrow X Opens the Door
The last stretch was about Tomorrow X, a separate event from the flagship and, Biscardi said, a different idea altogether. He conceived it with Gavin Baker and Antonio Gracias after asking them how to bring more technology chief executives into the fund world. Their advice was to move it out of Miami and into Austin, and then to run it with them.
The premise Biscardi credits to Baker is access.
The people who move markets on X are not on any conference list
When you think about it, there are so many analysts on Substack and Reddit and X, of course, who are never going to get invited to a Wall Street event.
Ron Biscardi
The event is a bank conference with the door open
So TomorrowX is our attempt to really bring that world-class banking experience to the masses.
Ron Biscardi
Who is on the stage
So if you're a retail investor or you're an analyst that has a substack and you're really active in the space, you can now come to this event and hear Jensen Huang, Michael Dell, John Gray, David Solomon
Ron Biscardi
A host's point was that several of those speakers run private companies and move markets when they talk. Biscardi's addition was about the audience rather than the stage.
Some of the anonymous accounts have bigger audiences than the sell side
But they are deeper in this stuff and have bigger audiences than many people at the bank.
Ron Biscardi
The format follows the premise. A first-time conference normally books a hotel ballroom and targets a thousand people.
They did the opposite
We rented a stadium.
Ron Biscardi
It's priced super inexpensively so that it's really accessible by anyone.
Ron Biscardi
Bonus Insights
His son had the hat first
Biscardi joined wearing a fedora that arrived two minutes before the segment, borrowed from his 28-year-old son, who he said got into them well before anyone on the show did.
TBPN is the event's podcast media partner
Biscardi said the choice of technology podcast partner came down to one option, and both hosts confirmed they will be there in November.
Biscardi's bottom line is that alternatives is still a business done in person, and the software that wins in it is the software that decides who you meet rather than the software that replaces the meeting.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
iConnections (Biscardi's company. Capital-introduction platform pairing software with events; roughly 30,000 one-on-one meetings a year and $10–20 billion of allocations moving through it)
Tomorrow X (The Austin event he built with Gavin Baker and Antonio Gracias, held in a stadium and priced for retail investors and independent analysts)
Substack, Reddit and X (Where he says the analysts with the real audiences now publish, and who the event is aimed at)
Listen to the full episode
🔴 YouTube | 🔗 Episode page
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