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This Week in Startups · Monday, July 6, 2026

Fund Operations Lagging Despite Trillions in Assets

Despite managing trillions of dollars in assets, the fund management industry relies on outdated technology, often described as 'human duct tape.' This includes using basic software like QuickBooks, Bill.com, and Excel, leading to inefficiencies and data being held hostage by human intermediaries.

companyQuickBookscompanyBill.com

The tape

3 quotes
How did we end up in a world with a hundred trillion dollars in assets and a terrible fund management stack?
It's human duct tape. Legacy services businesses that are running the entire backbone of these hundred trillion of global assets. They're buying QuickBooks, they're buying bill.com, they're buying Excel.
And so you end up in this like crazy situation where you're stuck with a bunch of human middle men that that are holding your data hostage.
Heard on This Week in Startups — “$100T is managed by “human duct tape” | E2308, published Monday, July 6, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
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