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Erik Hirsch

Co-Chief Executive Officer & Member of the Board, HAMILTON LANE INC

Search every verified Erik Hirsch interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Erik Hirsch, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Member of the Board at Hamilton Lane, appeared on the podcast "Live From the Compound" on August 13, 2025, where he discussed the state of private markets. During the conversation, Hirsch addressed the relationship between private equity and public markets, the rise of private credit, and concerns about defaults and investor redemptions. He stated that it is "too early to tell" whether private credit will see significant performance declines, noting that current data shows default rates around 2% and that many large private credit managers appear healthy. He also commented on public market perceptions, saying that public markets "swings too far in extremes" and that he has been personally buying company stock while Hamilton Lane has been buying back shares. Hirsch also discussed the growing role of individual investors in private markets, the booming secondaries market, and controversy around day-one markups. He mentioned that Hamilton Lane has tokenized some of its funds, offering access with minimums as low as $500, and that investors can access their funds directly through intermediaries or platforms like Swap or Fail. He expressed optimism about long-term growth for well-performing private market firms despite media criticism, comparing current challenges to past real estate issues that were eventually resolved.

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Notable quotes

“I think the public market kind of swings too far in extremes. And this has to piss you off, though. Uh, sure. I mean, look, it pisses me off. And what we're doing is we've been buying back stock. I've been personally buying. So all that's publicly, you know, public available if you took so you chose to look at the incentive fees. You could have looked at anything. You could have looked at margin, management fee, earn”

“I think the honest answer right now is it's too early to tell. There are despite all the headlines, there's not enough data today to say to you that we're going to see huge performance declines across that segment. In fact, the data right now indicates that we're not seeing bankruptcies rising materially. Default rates are basically sitting around 2%. And so that sort of is showing you a pretty healthy book. Also, a ”

“I think the private markets today are about adding much much needed diversity to a largely public equity portfolio for most investors. And so today, we all have seen the headlines. It's too much concentration. It's too much focus on a small number of things. Most investors, if they're just indexed to the public equity market, are missing massive swaths of the economy. And oh by the way, when the privates are deliveri”

“If we sort of step back and think about this at a macro level, you've got a huge population of Americans who are trying to save for retirement, those of them that retired as a teacher, as a worker at a huge corporation, they have the benefit of a pension. And those pensions have benefited enormously from their exposure to the private markets. That's a core part of that portfolio. So, if you're an American worker that”

“I think people are swept up in what has been just an avalanche of headlines, but very little data. And so, we're seeing lots of doom and gloom reports, gates going up, redemptions rising on these private credit evergreen funds, a lot of pain in BDC world. But here's what we're not seeing. We're not seeing rising default rates. We're not seeing loads of bankruptcies. We're not seeing loads of companies that are switch”

“I think the question that I'm much more interested in right now is I suspect this IPO will price well. Talk to me in a year from now as to where the stock is trading because if you look at some of these businesses, it's very clear that we're willing to ignore fundamentals. This is a non-cash flow positive business and this is all about what people believe is going to happen in the future and that might be great and a”

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