 More Than a Tool: Why Syntax Direct is a Differentiated Direct Index Platform for Advisors and Wealth Managers | Syntax | 2026-07-28 | | Provides insights into how Syntax’s differentiated direct index platform offers wealth managers a scalable, cost-effective way to build tailored equity portfolios in a matter of minutes using natural language AI and rules-based index construction while also supplying a backtest, factsheet and compliance ready documentation. |
| Energy, Amplified: The Texas Capital Texas Equity Index and the Case for Full Value Chain Energy Exposure | Syntax | 2026-07-24 | | This paper examines how the Texas Capital Texas Equity Index addresses the underweighting of energy in major benchmarks by aligning its sector weights with the Texas economy, providing a nearly 18% allocation across the full energy value chain. It demonstrates how this comprehensive exposure positions investors to benefit from key structural growth trends, including the powering and electrification of expanding artificial intelligence infrastructure. |
 Building Bridges: Understanding & Navigating the Structural Divide Between Private & Public Markets | Advisor Perspectives | 2026-07-14 | Paul Kenney | Kenney examines how private companies now stay private longer, prompting managers to court retail investors as an untapped source of capital. He explains that private markets lack the disclosure and real-time pricing public markets have, leaving investors reliant on GP-reported valuations that lag behind current conditions. Only a few hundred of roughly 300,000 private companies trade with enough secondary volume for reliable pricing. He notes that the most liquid private-market segment is even more concentrated than the S&P 500, both in its largest holdings and its heavy tilt toward technology, with SpaceX's IPO reinforcing that skew. Kenney concludes that better data, secondary pricing, and index construction are gradually closing the gap between private and public markets, giving investors more confidence as access to this space widens. |
| Transparency in Action: How Syntax Data Provided Investors Insights Into SpaceX | Syntax | 2026-06-29 | Paul Kenney | Kenney argues that SpaceX's IPO filing revealed a fundamental misclassification: despite being widely seen as an aerospace and defense company, its actual revenue profile is that of a telecommunications business. He points to the Form S-1 disclosure showing Starlink generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025, 61% of the company's total and far ahead of the $4.1 billion launch segment, while also being by far the most profitable division, posting over $4.4 billion in operating income against losses in the core space and newly integrated xAI/compute segments. Kenney frames this as evidence that SpaceX has effectively become a high-margin, subscription-driven connectivity company, with its historic rocket business now functioning as a supporting piece of that broader network. He also covers SpaceX's pending $60 billion acquisition of Anysphere (Cursor), structured to close after the IPO, which adds roughly $4 billion in annualized software revenue and pushes the company further into direct competition with AI labs like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. He concludes that SpaceX is becoming a multi-sector conglomerate that resists simple classification, and positions Syntax's data and analysis as well-suited to track and codify the company's evolving business mix once post-merger financials are available. |
 The Multi-Faceted Nature of Client Service for Investment Advisors and Managers | Advisorpedia | 2026-06-19 | Paul Kenney | Kenney argues that client service is far more layered than a simple satisfaction rating, shaped by both visible factors (like whether a client's issue gets resolved) and hidden ones (like a firm's internal systems and staff training). He outlines the broader forces that shape service quality generally, including how scalable person-to-person interactions are, how many products a firm offers, and firm-level factors like turnover and staffing. For investment advisors specifically, he points to the added strain of managing client emotions during market downturns and periods of underperformance. Drawing on his own experience as a plan sponsor, consultant, and investment manager, he identifies the personal traits he sees behind strong client service, describing it as an intuitive sense of when to reach out and a steady rhythm in the relationship. He closes with practical suggestions for advisory firms: survey clients directly, recognize that service expectations shift over time, invest in technology and data capabilities, monitor which relationships are at risk, and stay grounded in the client's own perspective. |
| The Trillion-Dollar Launch: How SpaceX’s Path to Public Markets Redefines the Private Universe | Advisorpedia | 2026-05-07 | Paul Kenney | Kenney examines SpaceX's anticipated IPO, expected to target a valuation near $1.75 trillion and rank as the largest offering in history, well ahead of Saudi Aramco's 2019 debut. He describes how SpaceX has grown beyond its Starship and Falcon rocket business into a broader conglomerate spanning Starlink, its Starshield defense unit, and a new push into computing infrastructure through xAI. Drawing on the Syntax Private Market Universe, he shows SpaceX alone makes up 24% of that $5.5 trillion universe of tracked private companies, roughly half a trillion dollars ahead of OpenAI. He notes that removing SpaceX from the picture sharply reshapes sector composition, with technology's share rising and industrials' share collapsing. Kenney also flags a looming index-methodology question: standard float-adjusted rules would give SpaceX a public listing weight far below its full valuation, prompting index providers like Nasdaq and FTSE Russell to consider faster inclusion rules for mega-cap listings. He closes by suggesting that SpaceX's IPO, along with expected offerings from OpenAI and other large private companies, will test how public indexes adapt to absorb trillion-dollar entrants. |
| An Innovative Approach to Momentum Investing: The DF Risk-Managed Momentum Index | Syntax | 2026-04-27 | | This paper represents a deep dive into the design and backtested performance of the DF Risk-Managed Momentum Index, an equity strategy created by Syntax Data and Donoghue Forlines that combines momentum-based stock selection with quality and diversification filters. It features a tactical overlay that shifts allocation to U.S. Treasuries during prolonged market downturns to help mitigate downside risk and enhance long-term risk-adjusted returns. |
 Tech Has Simplified Direct Indexing, and That's Not the Only Reason Financial Advisers Should Make the Leap | Kiplinger | 2026-04-16 | Paul Kenney | A Kiplinger column arguing that technology has lowered the operational barriers to direct indexing, making the case for advisers to adopt it more broadly for their clients. |
 Bridging The Gap Between Customization And Operational Scale For Financial Advisors | Financial Advisor | 2026-03-25 | | Kenney responds to Scott Winters' Financial Advisor piece "The Hidden Cost of Customizing," agreeing that unchecked personalization traps advisory firms in reactive work that compresses margins and burns out staff, but arguing that customization and operational scale need not be in tension. He faults the industry's reliance on pooled vehicles as the default building block, citing three structural weaknesses: limited transparency into underlying holdings, tax-loss harvesting constrained to the fund level, and undetected overlap — noting the S&P 500's overlap with QQQ has climbed from roughly 20% a decade ago to about 50%. Direct indexing, he contends, replaces the wrapper with direct ownership, enabling screens, position limits, and tax-aware rebalancing while rules-based automation keeps operational effort flat across accounts. Kenney discloses his firm's bias and likens the shift to moving from cable bundles to streaming. |
| Reducing Friction and Improving Performance Through Direct Indexing | Advisorpedia | 2026-03-10 | Paul Kenney | Kenney responds to a Wall Street Journal piece by Jason Zweig, which found that the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index's long-term outperformance over its cap-weighted counterpart largely evaporates once real-world trading costs are factored in, citing the Invesco RSP ETF's underperformance versus its own paper index. Kenney argues direct indexing offers a structural fix to that problem. He points out that separately-managed direct portfolios typically cost roughly half the expense ratio of a fund like RSP, and outlines three ways direct indexing can cut the turnover-driven friction Zweig highlighted: using buffer-based rebalancing instead of rigid quarterly schedules, holding a smaller representative set of securities rather than all 500 names, and trading opportunistically instead of on a fixed calendar. He also highlights tax-loss harvesting as a key advantage unavailable to pooled ETF investors, since direct-indexing investors hold individual tax lots that can be harvested for losses even when the overall index is up, citing academic estimates of 30 to 65 basis points in resulting "tax alpha." Kenney concludes that direct indexing lets advisors capture the theoretical benefits of strategies like equal-weighting while sidestepping the cost drag that limits pooled fund vehicles. |
| A Multi-Dimensional Peer Analysis of Anthropic | Syntax Data | 2026-02-18 | Paul Kenney | A peer-analysis piece examining Anthropic against comparable companies across several dimensions relevant to institutional and advisor audiences tracking the AI sector. |
 Seeking Wisdom or Advice? | Wealth Management | 2025-12-29 | | Kenney examines the governance layer behind institutional portfolios, arguing that investment committees function better when members know whether they are being asked for wisdom or for advice. He separates the two: wisdom is judgment about what actually matters, anchored in experience and a long-horizon view, and can be contributed without technical fluency in a given asset class; advice is a specific recommendation on questions like asset allocation, manager selection, or portfolio construction, and does require domain expertise. Committee composition varies widely across corporate and public pensions, endowments, and family offices, and members bring personal biases that should be measured against organizational objectives rather than preference. Kenney closes with practical fixes — structured onboarding and written documentation of who contributes what at each stage of the investment process — to align roles with responsibilities and support more disciplined, mission-aligned decision-making. |
 Benchmarks Must Be Chosen Carefully To Avoid Structural Risks | Wealth Solutions Report | 2025-12-10 | Paul Kenney | Kenney challenges the assumption that benchmark selection is a neutral, default decision, opening with an example showing that "sector-neutral" is defined relative to a benchmark like the S&P 500, not by literal equal weighting. He shows how benchmarks quietly evolve over time, noting that the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index's duration has swung meaningfully over the past 20 years and that its Treasury weighting has nearly doubled as government debt issuance has grown, both of which reshape the risk embedded in the index. He also explores how benchmarks like the S&P 500 shape investor psychology, contrasting the disillusionment of the 2000s' flat decade with the FOMO-driven passive investing boom that followed the 2010s recovery. Citing the CFA Institute's SAMURAI framework, Kenney outlines seven criteria a benchmark should meet, including being specified in advance, appropriate to the manager's style, and genuinely investable, and distinguishes this from a simple return objective, which fails several of those tests despite feeling benchmark-like. He concludes that benchmarks can obscure structural risks, from tech concentration in the S&P 500 to rising Treasury dominance in the Aggregate Bond Index, and urges investors to select them deliberately rather than by default. |
| The Russell 1000 Index: Seen From a New Lens | Syntax | 2025-11-25 | | The analysis demonstrates how combining granular company product line data with traditional sector classification frameworks reveals the true business complexity within the Russell 1000 Index. |
| The Best Story Wins: The Power of Presenting Data in New Ways | Advisor Perspectives | 2025-11-19 | Paul Kenney | Kenney, SVP of Client Solutions at Syntax Data, makes the case that investment managers should reclaim ownership of their narrative rather than letting third-party evaluators like Morningstar flatten their strategies into ratings and style boxes. Opening with examples from Morgan Housel's Same as Ever on how compelling storytelling — not just novel ideas — drives influence, he argues managers can use data science and alternative data to tell a richer, more accurate story about their portfolios. He shows how structured, sentence-like tagging of company activities and resources can reveal a company's true business model (e.g., recasting Lyft as a software firm serving transportation rather than an industrial company), and uses Snap-On as an example of how single-product perception often hides a far more diversified revenue base. He also demonstrates how drilling into subsector-level detail — illustrated through a sample midcap portfolio's financials exposure — can overturn assumptions drawn from headline sector weights, and how custom thematic lenses (e.g., defensive equity, cloud computing) can highlight strategic traits that standard classifications miss. Kenney concludes that in a crowded market, managers who use these more granular data tools to shape their own narrative — rather than ceding it to generic classification systems — are better positioned to stand out. |
| Pure Momentum with Downside Risk Management | Syntax | 2025-10-23 | | Kenney profiles two indices built by Syntax Data with Donoghue Forlines that pair a concentrated momentum strategy with downside protection. The DF Tactical Top 30 Index selects the 30 highest price-momentum names from a 100-stock US mega cap universe using an exponential moving average score, rebalancing quarterly so sector exposure rotates with market leadership rather than being constrained to a benchmark. The DF Risk-Managed version adds a rules-based tactical overlay that shifts the index entirely to treasuries when intermediate-term return trends fall below longer-term trends. Kenney grounds the design in academic research showing momentum earns a premium over time but breaks down in prolonged bear markets, and reviews back tested results across three distinct market cycles from 2001 to 2025. All performance discussed is hypothetical and back tested, gross of fees, prior to the indices' 2025 inception. |
| Where Do We Go From Here: Direct Indexing and ETFs | Syntax Data | 2025-10-13 | Paul Kenney | A look at how direct indexing and ETFs coexist in advisor portfolios, weighing the tax-management and customization advantages of direct indexing against the simplicity of ETF wrappers. |
 ETFs Vs. Direct Indexing: How Advisors Are Building The Next Generation Of Portfolios | Benzinga | 2025-09-09 | Paul Kenney | This piece explores how direct indexing is emerging as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, ETFs in advisor portfolios. Kenney, quoted throughout as SVP of Client Solutions at Syntax Data, argues that while ETFs remain valuable for their simplicity, liquidity, and cost efficiency, they can't yet match the customization, precision, and tax optimization that direct indexing offers. He points to inconsistencies among cybersecurity-themed ETFs as an example of how different providers can implement the same investment theme in very different ways, whereas a direct index lets an advisor define exactly what characteristics they want, removing ambiguity about what's actually being held. The article also cites SSGA's Allison Bonds Mazza, who notes that direct indexing has become more accessible thanks to technological advances that reduce its historical cost and complexity. Kenney illustrates a practical "core-satellite" use case: a family with significant real estate exposure using a broad Russell 3000 ETF as a core holding while adding a direct index built around non-residential REITs to avoid doubling up on housing risk. He concludes that the choice isn't ETFs versus direct indexing, but rather how advisors blend the two to fit each client's needs, with ETFs serving as the portfolio's foundation and direct indexing layered on top for personalization. |
| The Future of Energy and the Syntax Power Solutions Index | Syntax Data | 2025-08-06 | Paul Kenney | A discussion of shifting energy-sector dynamics and how the Syntax Power Solutions Index is constructed to give investors targeted exposure to that transition. |
| In Recognition of Financial Advisors – What They Do and Where They Are Going | Syntax Data | 2025-06-12 | Paul Kenney | Kenney reflects on the evolving role of the financial advisor, considering how client relationships, technology, and portfolio construction have shifted the profession's day-to-day responsibilities and its future direction. |
| The Hidden Cost in Investing: Negative Compounding & the Opportunity Cost of Fees | Advisor Perspectives | 2025-05-06 | Paul Kenney | Kenney argues that investors underestimate how much fees really cost them, since the bigger hit isn't the fee itself but the compounded returns lost on that money over time. Using a hypothetical $100,000 invested in the S&P 500, he shows that a 1.25% all-in fee over 30 years costs an investor far more in lost compounding than in fees actually paid, with the combined effect wiping out roughly 30% of the portfolio's potential value. He calculates that trimming the fee by just a quarter point, from 1.25% to 1.00%, would save an investor about 120% of their original investment over three decades. Kenney closes by pointing to Syntax Direct, his firm's direct-indexing platform, as a way advisors can lower these costs for clients without cutting their own margins. |
| Stratified LargeCap Q1 2025 Review | Syntax Data | 2025-05-01 | Paul Kenney | A quarterly performance review of the Syntax Stratified LargeCap Index, covering sector positioning and results relative to conventional cap-weighted benchmarks over the first quarter of 2025. |
| Syntax Direct Case Study: Creating a Defensive Equity Index to Balance Portfolio Risk | Syntax Data | 2025-04-03 | Paul Kenney | A case study walking through the construction of a defensive equity index on the Syntax Direct platform, illustrating how direct indexing can be used to manage downside risk within a broader portfolio. |
| Syntax US Medical Innovations Index | Syntax Data | 2025-04-01 | Paul Kenney | An introduction to the Syntax US Medical Innovations Index, built to capture companies driving advances in medical technology, diagnostics, and treatment innovation. |
| Syntax Direct: A Direct-to-Index Solution Platform | Syntax Data | 2024-11-22 | Paul Kenney | An overview of the Syntax Direct platform, describing how it lets advisors build and manage customized, tax-aware direct indexing portfolios for clients at scale. |
| Quantifying the S&P 500’s Exposure to Artificial Intelligence | Syntax | 2024-09-24 | | To accurately measure exposure to a broad-based theme like AI, investors need to move beyond using sector data to product line revenue data which captures the secondary and tertiary exposures across companies and sectors. This paper utilizes a customized Syntax Data AI lens to quantify the S&P 500’s exposure to artificial intelligence. |
| The Nine Planetary Boundaries: Climate Change & Biodiversity Loss | Syntax Data | 2024-06-04 | Paul Kenney | An ESG-focused primer on the nine planetary boundaries framework, connecting climate change and biodiversity loss to the considerations advisors and asset owners weigh in sustainable index construction. |
| Syntax Stratified LargeCap Q1 2024 Review | Syntax Data | 2024-04-23 | Paul Kenney | The prior year's quarterly review of the Syntax Stratified LargeCap Index, tracking how its diversified sector-weighting methodology performed through the first quarter of 2024. |
| Understanding the Growing Investment Opportunity in Cyber Security | Syntax Data | 2024-03-25 | Paul Kenney | An examination of cybersecurity as an expanding investment theme, exploring the structural demand drivers behind the sector and how targeted index exposure can capture that growth. |
| Know What You Own: Underlying Concentration Risks Embedded in Domestic, International, and Emerging Markets Equity Indices | Syntax | 2023-09-23 | Paul Kenney | Kenney uses Syntax's proprietary classification framework to show that standard geographic benchmarks carry more hidden sector concentration than conventional classification systems reveal. Looking at the S&P 1500, MSCI EAFE, and MSCI Emerging Markets indices, he finds true technology exposure runs well above reported GICS figures, with the S&P 1500's tech weight reaching 40% and MSCI EM's reaching 34% once software- and hardware-driven product lines are captured across sector lines. He also highlights that MSCI EAFE and MSCI EM carry roughly twice the Financials exposure of the U.S. market, with MSCI EM particularly concentrated in banking, and that all three indices carry meaningful exposure to Industrials and commodity-linked businesses, with MSCI EM showing the strongest tilt toward metals and chemicals. On single-stock risk, he notes that the S&P 1500 and MSCI EM both have notable top-10 concentration, driven largely by mega-cap tech names like Apple, Microsoft, and Taiwan Semiconductor, while MSCI EAFE is comparatively diversified. Kenney concludes that investors relying on geographic diversification alone may be underestimating the sector and single-stock risks embedded in their portfolios, and argues that more granular classification data can better inform asset allocation and manager selection. |
| Do You Know What You Own? How Much Technology is Really in the S&P 500? | Syntax | 2021-10-06 | Paul Kenney | Prompted by a broad tech-driven sell-off that hit companies across multiple GICS sectors, Kenney argues that standard sector classification badly understates how much of the S&P 500 is actually exposed to technology. While the Information Technology sector officially accounted for 27.6% of the index at the time, he shows that a more accurate figure, capturing technology exposure embedded across other sectors, is 42%. He explains that GICS falls short because it assigns companies to a single sector based on their primary business (missing secondary tech-driven revenue, as with Amazon's cloud business), applies a one-size-fits-all sector structure that can't isolate cross-sector themes, and updates its category definitions too slowly to reflect real shifts in how companies operate, such as the 2018 creation of the Communication Services sector. Using Syntax's Affinity data, which tags companies by underlying product line rather than primary business, Kenney recalculates the index's true technology exposure and breaks down its composition across software, hardware, fintech, and infrastructure businesses spanning six different GICS sectors. He also shows that this more accurate tech exposure has climbed above levels last seen during the 2000 tech bubble, accelerating through the pandemic, and argues that even without predicting what comes next, quantifying true thematic exposure is an essential first step for investors managing concentration risk. |
 Direct Investments | NEPC, LLC | 2019-10-11 | Paul Kenney | An NEPC insights piece on direct investment strategies for institutional portfolios, part of a broader series exploring direct investing approaches published c. 2019–2021. |
 Direct Investing: Tips for Setting A Program Up for Success | Wealth Management | 2019-09-03 | Paul Kenney | Kenney lays out practical guidance for family offices building a direct-investment program, building on the mixed performance findings from his earlier piece. He frames several key strategic choices: pairing direct deals with GP-led fund investments rather than treating them as either/or, weighing active board-level involvement against more passive participation, and favoring buyout-style deals over venture capital, where information asymmetries and high failure rates make direct investing especially hard. He also addresses co-investing versus solo deals, sector-focused versus generalist approaches, whether to build capabilities in-house or lean on outside experts, and the tradeoffs of investing alongside partners. He closes with three core recommendations: rigorous due diligence focused on the family office's real competitive edge rather than just fee savings, strong governance around capital-deployment decisions and follow-on financing rounds, and self-awareness about organizational blind spots so investment size and complexity stay within the office's actual capabilities. |
| Direct Investment: What Do The Numbers Say? | Wealth Management | 2019-08-23 | Paul Kenney | Kenney examines the limited data available on the performance of direct private investments and finds the results mixed at best for family offices. While direct investing appeals to wealthy individuals because it avoids the management and performance fees charged by private equity funds, he notes there's little proof it beats fund benchmarks — individual investors struggle to match the experience, networks, and deal access of professional PE firms. Drawing on a 2014 academic study of seven large institutional investors (average AUM of $94 billion, 390 transactions from 1991–2011), he reports that co-investments tended to underperform the funds they rode alongside — largely due to adverse deal selection in hot markets — while solo direct deals outperformed funds overall, though both approaches lost ground over time. The piece concludes that proximity and hands-on involvement improved outcomes, and that direct investing is toughest to pull off in areas like venture capital, where general partners hold a strong information edge. |
| Direct Investments Explained | Wealth Managament | 2019-08-19 | Paul Kenney | A WealthManagement.com piece breaking down direct investment approaches for institutional and high-net-worth audiences, continuing the direct-investing themes NEPC published across a multi-part series Kenney contributed to. |
| Direct Investments (Part I): Trends and Motivations | NEPC | 2019-04-06 | | This first paper in a series outlines why direct investing is gaining ground with family offices and institutions alike, chiefly to avoid fund fees, but also for greater control, values alignment, and access to high-conviction deals. Family offices and corporations (driving nearly half of venture capital deal value) are ramping up direct investment activity for these reasons. |
| Direct Investing (Part III): Tips for Setting a Program Up for Success | NEPC | 2019-03-30 | | The closing installment offers practical guidance for family offices building a direct-investment program, emphasizing rigorous due diligence, sound governance, and self-awareness about organizational blind spots. |
| Direct Investing (Part II): What Do the Numbers Say? | NEPC | 2019-03-04 | | Drawing on a 2014 academic study of institutional direct investments, the performance case is mixed: solo direct deals have generally outperformed public markets but still fall short of private equity fund returns, while co-investments have actually underperformed due to adverse deal selection. The paper concludes that competing with general partners' information advantage is hardest in areas like venture capital where specialized expertise matters most. |
| Becker's Healthcare: Will strategic investments in healthcare be a short-lived trend or the new normal? | NEPC, LLC | 2018-08-23 | Paul Kenney | Kenney, writing as a Partner at NEPC, examines the rise of hospitals and health systems investing directly in healthcare companies or through healthcare-focused private equity funds as a way to drive clinical innovation and financial returns. Drawing on an NEPC survey of 21 healthcare providers, he reports that 71% were either already making strategic investments or considering them, though most held five or fewer at the time — and that the trend was concentrated among larger organizations, with the majority of respondents holding over $1 billion in operating assets. He walks through the key decisions providers face: whether to invest directly or through funds (nearly half do both, though most found evaluating direct deals far more daunting than fund investments), whether to pursue a broad or targeted sector approach, how to measure clinical and financial success given the longer timelines involved, and how to coordinate between treasury/finance and innovation teams, which he found was often a weak link. Kenney concludes that despite being an early-stage trend, strategic investing is likely to become as routine for well-resourced health systems as alternatives or liability-driven investing have become, provided organizations approach it with patience and sound governance. |
 Will strategic investments in healthcare be a short-lived trend or he new normal? | Becker's Hospital Review | 2018-08-22 | Paul Kenney | Kenney, writing as a Partner at NEPC, examines the rise of hospitals and health systems investing directly in healthcare companies or through healthcare-focused private equity funds as a way to drive clinical innovation and financial returns. Drawing on an NEPC survey of 21 healthcare providers, he reports that 71% were either already making strategic investments or considering them, though most held five or fewer at the time — and that the trend was concentrated among larger organizations, with the majority of respondents holding over $1 billion in operating assets. He walks through the key decisions providers face: whether to invest directly or through funds (nearly half do both, though most found evaluating direct deals far more daunting than fund investments), whether to pursue a broad or targeted sector approach, how to measure clinical and financial success given the longer timelines involved, and how to coordinate between treasury/finance and innovation teams, which he found was often a weak link. Kenney concludes that despite being an early-stage trend, strategic investing is likely to become as routine for well-resourced health systems as alternatives or liability-driven investing have become, provided organizations approach it with patience and sound governance. |
| The State of Strategic Investing in Healthcare | NEPC | 2018-05-03 | | Based on a survey of roughly 20 healthcare organizations, this paper finds that direct investments are viewed as far harder to execute and measure than private equity fund investments — 85% of respondents said gauging success on direct deals was daunting, versus under 20% for PE funds. It builds on NEPC's earlier healthcare papers and stresses that setting clear goals and milestones upfront is critical to tracking both the clinical and financial progress of a direct investment. |
| Anduril: The Software-First Prime Defense Contractor Defining the Modern Frontline | Syntax | | | This paper examines how Anduril Industries has disrupted traditional defense contracting by leveraging a software-first model and private venture capital to reach a $100+ billion valuation. It analyzes Anduril's competitive positioning relative to private peers, specialized drone makers, and legacy defense giants, highlighting how its AI-powered operating system and Silicon Valley integration set it apart as a unique pure-play autonomous defense entity. |
