From One $3M Loan to a $25B Firm - How Madison Realty Capital Was Built with Josh Zegen (# 417)
About this episode
Josh Zegen discusses the journey of building Madison Realty Capital from a small loan to a $25 billion firm.
In this episode, Chris sits down with Josh Zegen, Co-Founder & Managing Principal of Madison Realty Capital, a $25 billion real estate private credit firm he started with his college roommate in 2004. They dig into how he built one of the largest private lenders in the country starting from a desk in his dad's law office - and why he still thinks of himself as a businessman first and a real estate guy second. Josh got into lending almost by accident. Laid off from a VC firm at 26 when the dot-com bubble burst, he took one mortgage deal nobody else would do, saw how fragmented and non-institutional the market was, and built a fund around it before "private credit" meant anything. Chris and Josh go deep on surviving '08, reinventing the business when capital dried up, and how Madison grew into a platform that now lends to other lenders. They discuss: How Josh went from a laid-off VC associate living back home to founding a $25B firm Surviving '09 - including giving up 50% of the company for a $50M anchor that collapsed at the last minute Why he built servicing, asset management, and capital raising in-house instead of outsourcing The $10B back-leverage book that makes Madison the…
People in this episode
Host: Chris Powers
Guest: Josh Zegen
Topics covered
- real estate
- private credit
- business growth
- lending
- financial crisis
- entrepreneurship
Keywords
- real estate
- private credit
- lending
- business growth
- financial crisis
- entrepreneurship
- capital raising
- asset management
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Madison Realty Capital, VC firm
Places: NYC
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