E199: How Rahul Moodgal Raised $99 Billion by Playing the Long Game

Aug 13, 2025

Rahul Moodgal, a financial veteran with over 25 years at Parvus Asset Management, has raised a staggering $99 billion by prioritizing relationships over performance. He shares how flipping traditional pitches on their head transformed his fundraising strategy, emphasizing transparency and long-term alignment. Moodgal highlights the importance of mission-driven capital, which re-energizes teams, and discusses the power of personal connections in investment partnerships. His approach challenges the norms, advocating for trust and authenticity as the backbone of successful capital raising.

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ANECDOTE

Pitching The Negatives Worked

At a 2006 Bear Stearns cap intro Rahul changed tack mid-event and opened with reasons people don't invest. Eight of twelve attendees from that second session ultimately invested with him.

INSIGHT

Honesty Reveals Fit Faster

Starting with negatives forces investors to decide quickly whether the fit exists and reveals genuine alignment. It exposes human traits investors care about: how managers handle stress and bad times.

ADVICE

Target Asset Owners, Not Just Allocators

Focus fundraising on asset owners (final decision-makers) rather than intermediaries. Ask who the underlying investors are to avoid surprises and misaligned behavior later.

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Most people pitch performance. Rahul Moodgal built a career on pitching relationships. In this episode, I go deep with Rahul Moodgal—Head of Investor Relations at Parvus Asset Management and one of the most trusted capital raisers in the hedge fund world. Over his career, Rahul has raised $99 billion across platforms like TCI and Parvus, building decades-long relationships with LPs, endowments, and mission-driven institutions around the globe. We explore how Rahul flips traditional fundraising on its head: opening with the negatives, focusing on long-term alignment, and avoiding the sales-y traps that doom many GPs. If you're a manager trying to understand how world-class LPs think—or an allocator looking to work with truly values-aligned capital—this is the playbook.

-- Highlights:

The Bear Stearns moment that changed everything: Rahul's unconventional pitch that led to 8 out of 12 investors committing capital.
Why most GPs focus on transactions instead of relationships—and why that's a mistake.
The difference between asset allocators and asset owners, and why Rahul focuses on the latter.
How mission-driven capital re-energizes his team and provides a deeper sense of purpose.
Why duration—long-term relationship building—is the ultimate differentiator in raising capital.
The secret behind his famous email list and why it's so hard to get on it.
Parvus’s contrarian investment style: buying when everyone else is selling and holding through the noise.
Building a 30+ member group of female CIOs to foster collaboration and support.
Why Rahul goes "analog" in a digital world and still flies thousands of miles for one meeting.
A clear-eyed framework for distinguishing between “jigsaw” vs. “treasure hunt” LPs.

-- Guest Bio: Rahul Moodgal is Partner, Director of Investor Relations & Business Development at Parvus Asset Management, a London‑based firm specializing in European public equities with approximately $10 billion under management.

With over 25 years of financial services experience, Rahul transitioned into asset management after a period in academia. He studied and taught across four countries—UK, USA, Russia, and Japan—and earned degrees from Keele University, the London School of Economics, and Cambridge University.

Rahul was previously Partner leading Investor Relations & Business Development at The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI), where he became known for setting industry records—including initiating the largest-ever country and sector fund launches within a record timeframe. Following TCI, he advised and partnered with managers across Europe, contributing to firms such as Parvus, TCI New Horizon, KDA Capital, and Algebris Investments.

Beyond finance, Rahul serves as a trustee, board chair, and patron for multiple non-profit organizations in both the UK and U.S., including British Exploring Society, the Sumerian Foundation, Whizz-Kidz, and Scientific Adventures for Girls in Oakland, California

Our Podcast now receives more than 300,000 downloads a month. Are you interested in sponsoring an episode? Please email David Weisburd at david@weisburdcapital.com.

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LinkedIn: David Weisburd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dweisburd/ Rahul Moodgal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahul-moodgal/

-- Questions or topics you want us to discuss on How I Invest? Email us at david@weisburdcapital.com.

(0:00) Episode preview (0:06) Raising $99 billion and Bear Stearns event story (1:46) Changing the pitch strategy and starting with negatives (5:01) Relationship building and quality of capital (10:14) Asset allocator challenges and choosing mission-driven clients (14:32) Role and feedback of LPs in influencing GPs (19:58) David Swensen, Yale model, and LPs pitching value (23:57) Organizational alignment and understanding LPs (27:12) Jigsaw vs. treasure hunt strategies and relationship duration (32:20) Reconciling relationship duration with check size (34:36) Mission-driven investing and non-performance alignment (41:15) Transparency and partnership in investment management (47:02) Long-term relationships versus transactional interactions (50:19) Building personal relationships in the investment world (57:01) Overview of Parvis Asset Management and contrarian strategy (1:02:16) Shorting stocks: Criteria and approach (1:03:48) Rahul Moodgal’s email list and meeting strategies (1:08:02) The value of in-person meetings and flying for deals (1:09:24) Closing remarks