Since its debut in 2023, The Distribution by Juniper Square has become the leading podcast for private markets professionals—offering unfiltered insights from more than 100 industry leaders.
To mark this milestone, host Brandon Sedloff reflects on the lessons he’s learned from the first 100 episodes, highlighting how today’s most successful GPs are navigating change, building businesses designed to last, and leading with purpose.
A message from Brandon
After 100 episodes of hosting The Distribution podcast, I have learned a few things about private markets and the people behind them. As I reflect on my journey as an accidental podcast host, I’m sharing some of my learnings so far. I will stay away from the market related themes (you can listen/watch for those) and instead focus on the story behind 100 stories.
Much like the personal and professional origin stories of my podcast guests, the origin story of The Distribution makes so much sense with the benefit of hindsight, but was a lot less obvious in the moment. One of Juniper Square’s values is ‘Better Together,” which means “We learn and grow as individuals—and as a team.” Born from this value was a desire by Junies (what we call ourselves) to learn from our customers. As Juniper Square continued to grow, new colleagues would join the company and ask how they could best understand what’s on the mind of our customers. Typically the request would go something like this: “I’d like to understand our customers better. I know you are in the market speaking to them everyday but I want to hear directly from them.”
To build a business you must first understand your customer and so I made it my mission to help educate my colleagues. The Distribution started not as a podcast but rather as a way to educate Junies—and later, anyone who is curious about private markets—to better understand the individuals and businesses that shape private markets.
Eventually these recordings served as the basis for what is now The Distribution podcast. Rather than keep these conversations private, I decided to share them. After all, “Better Together” is not just about how we show up at Juniper Square but how we see our role in the broader private markets ecosystem.
As I reflect on the last 2+ years and 100 episodes, I am pausing to share some of my key learnings as an accidental podcast host:
- To understand a company, you must first seek to understand the people behind the company and the lived experiences that guide their approach to business.
- In general, people are happy speaking about themselves. I start every conversation by discussing the career journey of my guest. This helps to both understand them and to get them more comfortable in the conversation.
- Every podcast and host has a style. The Distribution is a safe space where I patiently let my guests develop their thoughts without interruption or judgement.
- As a host, I follow my guest’s direction. I do not have a set agenda or desired outcome for any conversation, but rather a framework. This enables maximum flexibility for each discussion. I find people are most authentic when they are driving the conversation versus being driven.
- I believe my job as a host is to listen, not talk. These conversations are about my guests. My job is to provide them a foundation to share their stories with you.
- I don’t treat these conversations as an interview but rather a way to document and codify a bit of personal and professional history. Private markets are at an inflection point and I hope these vignettes serve to educate and inspire those that are driving the industry forward now and in the future.
- I always try to hone in on actionable and/or “investable” ideas. The best conversations are those that inspire and/or provide actionable insights to listeners.
- I don’t optimize for virality or vanity metrics around reach. The only metrics that matter to me are the anecdotes that I get from people who have benefited from at least one episode.
- It’s critical to continue iterating. I am committed to exploring new and innovative ways to share my learnings with you.
Whether this is your first episode or 100th, thank you for being a part of our story. I am having a ton of fun and will keep experimenting with new ideas. If you have suggestions, feedback or just want to get in touch, please reach out to me on brandon_thedistribution@junipersquare.com.
If you enjoy The Distribution please be sure to “follow” so you don’t miss out on any episodes. The first “special series” of 2026 will be a four episode series on Private Wealth where I go deep into the intersection of private wealth and alts to help understand what GP’s need to know if they are targeting the wealth channel for distribution.