Matthew Kebble on the Mechanics of Capital, Confidence and Building Beyond Yourself
In technology, scale is often attributed to better products, faster execution or smarter systems. In private capital, however, the infrastructure behind growth is less visible and far more human. For Matthew Kebble, building a successful fund is not simply about finding better deals. It is about earning the confidence to deploy other people’s capital, then building the systems, governance and institutional discipline required to retain that confidence over time.
Having launched multiple funds throughout his career, Kebble has seen first-hand that investor confidence is engineered by transparency, disciplined execution and a manager’s conduct when circumstances become difficult.
In this interview, he explores the mechanics of capital formation, the momentum and trust that underpin a successful raise, and why the strongest investment businesses are designed much like resilient technology platforms: to scale sustainably, withstand pressure and ultimately thrive beyond the individuals who created them.
Matthew, what have you learned about what truly earns investor confidence?
That would be transparency, genuine transparency, not the marketing version. Sophisticated investors don’t expect perfection; they expect to never be surprised. That means telling them about a problem before they find it, being as open about what went sideways as what outperformed, and answering the question they asked rather than the one you wish they’d asked.
Every allocator has been burned by a manager who went quiet when things got difficult, so the one who volunteers bad news early stands out instantly, and paradoxically, admitting what you don’t know builds more confidence than projecting certainty.
The commercial consequence is direct: trust built on verifiable openness compounds into re-ups, referrals and referenceability, which are the cheapest capital a manager will ever raise. The first close is won by the strategy. Every close after that is won by how you behaved in between.
What do people who’ve never built a fund business fundamentally misunderstand about it?
They think it’s an investing business. It’s a trust business, and trust can’t be manufactured, marketed or fast-tracked, it has to be earned, commitment by commitment, report by report, year after year.
Returns get you into the conversation, what an investor is actually buying is earned certainty: that you’ll do what you said, report honestly, govern properly, and still be standing in year eight. That’s true whether the underlying assets are loans, companies or anything else: the asset class determines what you buy, the trust you’ve earned determines whether anyone lets you buy it with their money.
What book has most influenced your thinking about business or investing?
That would be Howard Marks’ book called The Most Important Thing. I recommend it to everyone I meet in the business.
Looking back across the whole journey: fund finance, first hire, platform and departure – what can you tell us?
Well, each phase of that journey for me looked unrelated at the time and turned out to be a preparation for what came next: fund finance taught me the anatomy of private capital, the underdog years taught me differentiation through openness, the brand capital earned me the next opportunity and a blank canvas, my COO’s guidance turned that understanding into craft, and the craft, combined with a mission and the right people and partners, built a platform that grew into a highly valuable institution.
What advice would you give to others starting out where you did?
The honest summary? go where you’ll learn, work in a way that earns the next opportunity before you can see it, attach yourself to a mission worth building, and then build the thing so well that it doesn’t need you. Then go find the next blank canvas!
In an age defined by rapidly advancing technology, faster information and increasingly sophisticated investment tools, Kebble’s experience points to a distinctly human truth: trust remains the most valuable form of capital.
Technology may improve how opportunities are identified, assessed and scaled, but it cannot substitute for transparency, sound judgement and consistent behaviour.
The strongest fund businesses and arguably the strongest technology companies, will therefore be those engineered not only to perform, but to endure: institutions capable of earning confidence over time, surviving their founders and building well beyond themselves.