“The question at Fund IV is, ‘Okay, you’ve proved that you’re a great firm builder. Congratulations, you’re raising Fund IV. Are you still a great investor?’” — Zach Ruchman
Zach Ruchman joined HB Wealth in 2025 as a Shareholder after working with WMS Partners since 2023. In his role as Managing Director, Private Markets, Zach leads the team responsible for research and due diligence of private market investment opportunities across a variety of asset classes, including private equity, growth equity, venture capital, private credit, infrastructure, and real assets.
Before joining HB Wealth, Zach was a Senior Vice President at RockCreek and a Vice President at BlackRock, where he led direct co-investment transactions as well as manager research for both primary and secondary commitments in the Americas, Europe, and Asia on behalf of both institutional and family office clients. He began his career as a consultant with Alvarez & Marsal. In this episode, we also talk about how he worked out of the National Democratic Institute’s DC office writing grants and tracking political regimes in the Middle East, including the Arab Spring.
In the community, Zach serves as a member of the finance committee for the Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation.
You can find Zach on his socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zruchman/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/zmrphoto
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
I’m also including my reactions to Zach’s comments here.
OUTLINE:
(00:00) Intro
(03:04) When 9/11 entered Zach’s life
(12:20) Interest in the Middle East
(15:00) Returning to the US
(17:49) What’s in the foreign service exam?
(22:29) From pursuing the state department to consulting
(25:39) Consulting to allocating
(32:20) Business school and mentors
(36:34) The ask
(37:07) How Zach makes re-up decisions?
(40:15) The difference between a Fund I and Fund IV
(43:26) Alignment between senior and mid-level investors
(45:33) Deal attribution at big VCs
(46:40) Questions to ask to references to find deal attribution
(49:12) Avoiding a reference’s scripted answer
(52:14) Top 1% performers leaving organizations
(53:45) The hardest Fund I to underwrite
(1:00:57) Does radical transparency work?
(1:06:15) “Private assets work best when they’re inefficient.”
(1:09:20) Does AI change VC investing?
(1:11:33) Sourcing that AI cannot do
(1:14:26) Can AI write good memos?
(1:19:11) Pattern vs exception recognition
(1:25:03) An example of how a GP proved he worked hard
(1:28:00) Best advice for action photography
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- HB Wealth
- Rebecca Goldman
- World Trade Center
- Seeds of Peace
- National Democratic Institute
- Foreign service exam
- Advanced Placement exam (AP)
- Alvarez & Marsal
- Elena Loutskina
- The University of Virginia
- UVA Darden School of Business
- Mary Margaret Frank
- UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
- Keith Rabois
- Midas List
- Ray Dalio
- Bridgewater Associates
- Anthropic Claude
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“Consulting is almost like the liberal arts degree for the beginning of your career. You get to see a tremendous number of different business problems in a tremendous of different geographies. It’s like you have distribution requirements for your career.” — Zach Ruchman
“There are plenty of great investors that are not great firm builders.” — Zach Ruchman
“The question at Fund IV is, ‘Okay, you’ve proved that you’re a great firm builder. Congratulations, you’re raising Fund IV. Are you still a great investor?’” — Zach Ruchman
“If it was as easy as, ‘Hey GP, send your attribution spreadsheet,’ and I say, ‘Ok, great, that’s the attribution,’ my job would be so easy.” — Zach Ruchman
“If that person is an on-sheet reference for a spinout firm, the question then is, ‘Ok, you have a great relationship with this person, did you really do the deal with the person because you liked the person so much and you thought they were bringing something of value to you and that their money was a little greener than everyone else’s because there was a value-add or was it you really liked the name on the back side of the business card—the name of the firm?” — Zach Ruchman
“The hardest Fund I to underwrite is a brand new team. The easiest thing to underwrite is a team that lifts up together.” — Zach Ruchman
“Private assets work best when they’re inefficient.” — Zach Ruchman
“The more money you have going at a limited opportunity set, the more the perfectly priced that opportunity set will be.” — Zach Ruchman
“AI is only going to write what you tell it to write. So an AI memo is only going to be as thoughtful as the reasoning that you put into it, at least here in 2026.” — Zach Ruchman