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<title><![CDATA[The Credit Bubble with Derek Brunelle]]></title>
            <description><![CDATA[ <p>Welcome to The Credit Bubble—a podcast about the people and institutions deploying and managing the debt capital that fuels businesses and ecosystems around the world.  In each episode, we bring you conversations with the executives and practitioners shaping the lending industry—sharing insights, lessons learned, and personal stories from across the world of credit.</p> ]]></description>
            <itunes:summary><![CDATA[Welcome to The Credit Bubble—a podcast about the people and institutions deploying and managing the debt capital that fuels businesses and ecosystems around the world.  In each episode, we bring you conversations with the executives and practitioners shaping the lending industry—sharing insights, lessons learned, and personal stories from across the world of credit.]]></itunes:summary>
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            <itunes:author>Derek Brunelle</itunes:author>
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                <itunes:name>Derek Brunelle</itunes:name>
                <itunes:email>derek@synthasecapital.com</itunes:email>
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            <itunes:category text="Business"/>
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                <title>The Credit Bubble with Derek Brunelle</title>
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            <lastBuildDate>Sun, 19 Jul 2026 23:12:39 GMT</lastBuildDate>
            
                <item>
<title><![CDATA[Peter Goldstein: Preparing Founders for a Better Exit]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ In this episode of The Credit Bubble, I sit down with Peter Goldstein, CEO of a Nasdaq-listed acquisition corporation and a four-decade entrepreneur with five exits behind him. Peter traces his arc from starting a perishable food business at 24 — and selling it at 30 with no banker, no transactional lawyer, and millions left on the table — to running his own boutique investment bank and now leading a public company. We get into why he tells founders that not everyone will IPO, but every company will eventually exit, and why building a transferable business that can run without you is the real work. We also dig into the 75% of owners who regret selling within a year, how the market — not a valuation report — actually prices a deal, and his idea of the integrated CEO, where business, financial, and personal readiness all sit on the same balance sheet. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:58:27 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>00:49:24</itunes:duration>
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<title><![CDATA[Ben Johnson: Adapting, Developing, and Leading in Banking  ]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ Today’s episode features Ben Johnson, a longtime colleague and friend from the Silicon Valley Bank ecosystem whose career spans nearly three decades across private banking, commercial lending, venture debt, seed-stage ecosystem building, and now specialty finance at Celtic Bank. Ben walks us through his early life in Minnesota, the path that led him into banking, and how he ultimately found his way to SVB. We explore his evolution into life science and med-tech lending, his seven-year effort building SVB’s national seed-stage life science strategy, and his firsthand experience navigating the events of SVB’s 2023 collapse. Ben then shares what drew him to Celtic Bank, how industrial loan companies operate, and what makes them structurally unique in today’s financial system. It’s an insightful conversation about career pivots, leadership, and specialty finance. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:42:17 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>00:48:16</itunes:duration>
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                <item>
<title><![CDATA[Marshall Hawks: Venture Debt Deals - Funding Growth with Less Dilution]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ In this episode, I sit down with Marshall Hawks, author of Venture Debt Deals: How to Fund Growth with Less Dilution and former senior leader at Silicon Valley Bank, for a wide-ranging conversation on how venture debt actually works in practice. Drawing on more than 16 years inside the venture banking ecosystem, Marshall unpacks why venture debt is ultimately a relationship business—and why the choice of lending partner often matters more than headline pricing or structure. The discussion weaves through real-world case studies from Marshall’s career, including Twitch/Justin.tv, Airbnb, and Clearco, highlighting both successful outcomes and hard-earned lessons when incentives, timing, or expectations fall out of alignment. The conversation also explores how lenders evaluate risk, the often-misunderstood role of warrants and so-called “non-dilutive” capital, and what founders and CFOs should realistically expect from the debt process—from preparation and documentation to credit committee dynamics. Marshall and Derek reflect on the culture and institutional knowledge that shaped venture lending during the SVB era, as well as how today’s more fragmented lending landscape has changed borrower decision-making. This episode is particularly relevant for founders, CFOs, board members, and lenders seeking a candid, experience-driven view of venture debt—not as a theoretical product, but as a long-term relationship that can either support growth or amplify risk depending on how it is used. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Tue, 13 Jan 2026 16:58:10 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>01:14:47</itunes:duration>
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<title><![CDATA[Ryan Edwards: Launching a Private Credit Fund]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ In this episode of The Credit Bubble, I sit down with Ryan Edwards, founder of Prospeq and partner at Lioncrest, to discuss his leap from SVB to launching a credit fund aimed at overlooked markets and founders. We explore Prospeq’s focus on businesses outside the traditional venture mold, the diligence required when institutional backers aren’t present, and why hands-on lending creates value beyond capital. Ryan also shares how his new partnership with Lioncrest brings debt and equity under one roof to deliver the right capital at the right time, and offers his perspective on AI’s evolving role in diligence and investing. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 22:52:47 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>00:55:34</itunes:duration>
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                <item>
<title><![CDATA[Krista Morgan:  Restructuring Venture-Backed Software Companies]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ In this episode of The Credit Bubble, I sit down with Krista Morgan, co-founder of Edited Capital, a lower-middle-market private equity firm that acquires controlling interests in venture-backed software companies. Krista's career runs from digital marketing in London, to building an invoice-financing fintech platform in Colorado that cycled roughly a billion dollars of receivables, to now buying B2B SaaS and tech-enabled services companies that took venture capital but aren't on a venture path. We discuss why she views venture as a contract problem more than a funding problem, what makes today a generational buying opportunity for sponsors who can navigate cap-table cleanups, and how roughly half of Edited's deal flow comes through private credit funds. We also get into M&A as an underused growth tool in early-stage tech, the cost discipline she applies before funding any growth initiative, and how AI is reshaping the pipeline of companies arriving at her door. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:06:40 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>00:51:38</itunes:duration>
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<title><![CDATA[Charles Thor: Crafting a Career in Commercial Banking]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ In this episode of The Credit Bubble, I sit down with Charles Thor to explore his path from commercial banking at Union Bank to global roles with MUFG and HSBC, and ultimately into credit leadership at Silicon Valley Bank.

We discuss how early underwriting experience shapes long-term judgment, what changes when you move from the deal team into the credit seat, and how global banking experience influences risk evaluation.

We also get into how credit decisions actually get made in practice—and close with Charles’s “User Guide,” a framework for aligning teams around communication, consistency, and decision-making. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:21:57 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>01:17:17</itunes:duration>
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<title><![CDATA[Jake Bernstein: Managing Risk in Life Sciences Venture Lending]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ In this episode of The Credit Bubble, I sit down with Jake Bernstein, Vice President at Avenue Capital, to trace his path from Comerica to Oxford and now to Avenue’s growth lending platform. Jake explains how moving from a permanent balance sheet to a GP/LP fund model reshaped his approach to risk, structure, and upside.

We dive into Avenue’s underwriting in life sciences, what makes an attractive med device or biopharma opportunity, and why management experience is often the most critical factor. Jake also reflects on today’s tight equity markets, the role of private credit as “the most popular kid in school,” and how certain AI tools are changing portfolio management. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Tue, 02 Sep 2025 15:51:00 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>00:53:37</itunes:duration>
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<title><![CDATA[Scott Aleali: Inside the Evolution of Private Equity Finance]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ Host Derek Brunelle speaks with Scott Aleali, Head of Private Equity Finance – New York Region at Citizens Private Bank, about how fund finance has expanded from simple capital-call lines to a full suite of solutions for private equity and venture capital firms. They explore the financing life cycle, NAV lending trends, underwriting uncalled capital, and how today’s market impacts fund formation and emerging managers. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2025 16:30:04 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>00:55:47</itunes:duration>
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<title><![CDATA[Aznaur Midov: Credit, Content, and Company Building]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ In this episode of The Credit Bubble, I sit down with Aznaur Midov to explore his career progression from institutional banking to independent entrepreneurship. Aznaur shares how his experience across venture banking, leveraged lending, and private credit shaped his views on underwriting, risk, and market cycles—and how that experience ultimately led him to build Debt Serious and launch Kior Lior, a business providing outsourced underwriting and portfolio management for private credit investors. We also discuss the role of content as distribution, the growing complexity of co-investing, and what it really takes to turn domain expertise into a durable business. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:43:24 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>00:36:24</itunes:duration>
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<title><![CDATA[Ruben Shafir: Underwriting Unit Economics in a Shifting Credit Market]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ In this episode of the Credit Bubble, I sit down with Ruben Shafir, founder of Luna Park Capital. His path runs from Brooklyn to Wharton at 16, Lehman Brothers at 18, and ultimately to founding his own credit platform. We get into how an early sense of capital as a scarce resource wired him as a deep-value investor, and how running workouts at Lone Star in London through the 2008 crisis taught him the difference between cyclical and permanent impairment. We dig into his time building the European venture debt book at Arena, why the market spent years underwriting sponsors rather than businesses, and how rising rates finally exposed the misalignment. Ruben also walks us through the thesis behind Luna Park Capital: credit-oriented investments into capital-constrained late-stage growth companies, where the dispersion between debt and equity pricing is the opportunity. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:33:54 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>01:01:48</itunes:duration>
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<title><![CDATA[Matt Schwartz: A Lawyer's Perspective on the Evolution of Venture and Growth Lending ]]></title>
                    <description><![CDATA[ In this episode of The Credit Bubble Podcast, I sit down with Matt Schwartz, Partner at DLA Piper, to talk about his path into law and how he became a go-to counsel for banks and private credit funds. We dig into the evolution of venture and growth-stage lending, the impact of SVB’s collapse, and the role of AI in credit. Matt also shares the story behind his “Law Dad” posts on LinkedIn and how opening up personally has resonated with thousands across the industry. ]]></description>
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                    <pubDate>Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:57:18 GMT</pubDate>
                    <itunes:duration>00:56:59</itunes:duration>
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