The CFO who scaled. And is doing it again

With Raj Shah, CFO & Operating Partner, Claret Capital Partners 

What does it actually take to scale a private markets firm, and what does that experience teach you about building the next one? 

Raj Shah joined 17Capital when it was a ten-person team managing an £88m debut fund. By the time he left, the firm was managing more than £20bn and had established NAV finance as a mainstream asset class. Earlier this year, Raj joined Claret Capital Partners as CFO and Operating Partner, deliberately choosing to start that journey again. 

In this conversation, Alice and Raj dig into what that scaling experience really looks like from the inside: the culture and communication decisions that made it possible, the point at which technology stops being optional, and why Raj thinks the question facing almost every CFO right now isn't which system to buy, it's whether to buy one at all. 

They also get into the data foundations that underpin serious growth, the build-versus-buy tension that AI has made genuinely complicated, and why Raj has taken on something unusual for a CFO at Claret: going out and pitching to investors directly. 

In this episode: 

• The career path from internet engineering to private markets, and why falling into finance turned out to be the right call 
• What the 17Capital scaling journey looked like from inside the finance function, fund by fund 
• Why culture and communication are the real infrastructure of a growing firm, before any tech conversation starts 
• The tech landscape in private markets: from almost no choice a decade ago to almost too much, and how to navigate it 
• The build-versus-buy question that AI has made genuinely hard to answer 
• Data as the foundation: why the single source of truth is the first building block, not a nice-to-have 
• LP reporting and the speed problem and whether private markets can realistically close the gap with public markets 
• Why Raj thinks AI's biggest value isn't efficiency, it's the time it gives you to actually think 
• The CFO's expanding role: from back-office anchor to front-office presence 
• Coaching, peer groups and the softer skills that don't get talked about enough.