A Moment for Private Credit (Jan ‘26)
Note from the Founders 👋
The Girl Math of Alternatives: Private Credit, Explained 👩🏫
Deal Spotlight: Mila 🤰
Investor Resource: Pre-Money vs. Post-Money Valuation ✏️
Media & Press: The Modern Angel Playbook 📖
What’s Coming Up: Member Resources & More 💭
Note from the Founders 👋
GM ☕ from Serena, Porter, and Emma, the co-founders of Girl Math Capital! Happy 2026 to all our readers! We’re so excited to be kicking off a new year with this community. If you want a taste of what we’re manifesting for Year #2, check out our Instagram post sharing our 2026 goals.
This week, we officially kicked off Cohort 3, welcoming 165 incredible women across 25 cities and 7 countries. They now join our broader community of 381 women, who have collectively deployed over $325k of capital so far 🤯
Over the next four months, we’ll be diving into our curriculum across angel investing, real estate, and crypto, building foundational knowledge, asking all the questions, and supporting members as they begin or deepen their alternative investing journeys. We can’t wait to get to know this cohort and grow alongside them.
For those who are new here, welcome! We hope that our newsletter gives you a sneak peak into the amazing insights shared in our community every day and gets you excited to put your money to work. Happy reading!
The Girl Math of Alternatives: Private Credit, Explained 👩🏫
Read time: 4 minutes
“Private credit is having a moment.” When our intern Maureen first suggested this topic for our monthly newsletter, our immediate response was, “you’re so right.” Our second response was, “wait… we actually ourselves want to learn more about this.” So sit down with us as we make private credit a little more public, breaking down what’s happening behind the scenes and why individual investors should care.
Over the past decade, private credit has quietly become one of the fastest-growing parts of the investing landscape, attracting billions of dollars from institutions, pensions, endowments, and wealthy individuals. What was once a relatively niche corner of the private markets has grown into a massive asset class, expanding from $2 trillion in 2020 to a projected $5 trillion by 2029.¹
Let’s cover the basics first. Private credit refers to loans made outside of traditional banks and public bond markets. Instead of borrowing from a bank or issuing publicly traded bonds, companies borrow directly from private lenders, like asset managers, pension funds, or wealthy individuals. These loans are negotiated privately, often held to maturity, and are not traded on public markets, which means they behave very differently from the stock and bond exchanges most investors are familiar with.
This asset class is growing quickly for a few key reasons:
1. The regulatory landscape shifted post-2008 financial crisis, and banks pulled back.
After the 2008 financial crisis, new regulations and stricter capital requirements significantly constrained bank lending capacity. As a result, banks became less willing to lend to mid-sized companies, asset-heavy businesses, and borrowers with more complex capital needs.
2. Private credit is often floating-rate, offering more attractive returns in a higher-rate environment.
As with any type of loan, private credit recipients pay back their loans with interest. Most private credit loans are floating-rate, meaning the interest investors earn adjusts over time based on broader interest rates, plus an additional fixed premium. As interest rates rose, returns on private credit increased as well, making it especially attractive to investors compared to public bonds and traditional fixed-income ETFs, which are typically fixed-rate and saw prices decline as rates moved higher.
3. Borrowing companies want flexibility.
Private credit offers loans to businesses that can be customized around size, structure, and speed in ways traditional bank financing often can’t. Bank lending is more standardized and constrained, while private lenders can tailor terms to a company’s specific needs. For many borrowers, it’s worth paying a higher rate for that flexibility: think about choosing an apartment where you control the location, layout, and move-in timing, versus being locked into a rigid five-year lease after only a virtual tour.
Let’s pivot to what this might mean for you.
Private credit sits at an interesting place in a portfolio, positioned somewhere between public bonds and equities. It typically offers higher yields than traditional fixed income, with mid-to-high single-digit to low double-digit annual returns depending on risk, structure, and the interest-rate environment. Investments are generally made with multi-year time horizons (often 2-5+ years), with returns driven more by contractual cash flows than daily market sentiment. This structure can make private credit especially appealing in volatile or uncertain markets, while also serving as a source of diversification alongside both stocks and bonds.
All that said, private credit carries its own set of risks. Like most alternative investments, it is generally illiquid, often requires a longer time horizon, and, depending on the structure, may be limited to accredited investors. As always when it comes to alts, understanding the tradeoffs is just as important as understanding the potential returns.
If this resonates with you, you may be wondering “okay, but how do I actually get into these opportunities?” You can choose between a few approaches based on your net worth, time horizon, and how involved you want to be.
For many people, the most straightforward route is through a wealth advisor. Advisors who work with higher-net-worth clients often allocate to private credit on their clients’ behalf through private funds or alternative investment vehicles. This can be appealing because the diligence and manager selection are handled for you. The tradeoff is higher minimums and less direct control, so it’s worth asking your advisor whether private credit is part of their strategy, and if not, why.
Another increasingly popular option is investing through online platforms that package private credit strategies into more accessible structures, often with lower minimums and simpler onboarding. These platforms, like Percent and Yieldstreet, meaningfully expand access, also make it especially important to understand liquidity terms, fees, and the underlying credit risk before investing.
You can also invest directly through personal introductions or fund commitments. This approach is more network-driven and often requires larger upfront investments, along with higher comfort level evaluating risk. It’s generally best suited for investors who already have experience navigating private markets or private credit specifically.
Our goal at Girl Math is always to make alternative investing feel more approachable, not intimidating. Private credit is an asset class institutions have quietly benefited from for years, and it’s starting to open itself up to individual investors. If you’d be interested in a virtual private credit session or have guest speakers you think would be rockstars, reply to this email and let us know. ✏️💭🤝
Deal Spotlight: Mila🤰
ICYMI: Each month, we’ll share a few of the deals our community has backed, not to give investment advice, but to show you the breadth of opportunities Girl Math members are exploring and spotlight some epic founders.
Our favorite Girl Math Capital deals are the ones that are not only invested in by members but also sourced by members.
When Melanie Gonzalez discovered Mila, she said it “felt like a natural fit for Girl Math Capital.” Founded by Anna Morales and Lindsey Snyder, Mila is an AI-powered pregnancy companion that pairs expecting families with a team of experts, starting with doulas. Its proprietary technology delivers instant answers, personalized birth plans, and ongoing guidance, all paired with human support for deeper, more emotional questions. This foundation made the opportunity feel both “deeply impactful and truly scalable.”
Mila immediately struck a chord with member Emily Bargabos, who joked that “pregnancy seems terrifying.” What ultimately made her join the cap table was Mila’s ability to make meaningful support more accessible at scale. “Better experiences and outcomes for moms and babies shouldn’t depend on privilege.”
Investor Resource ✏️
Why a Pre-Money Valuation can be a Warning for Angel Investors
When considering investment in a startup or other private company, one of the most important data points to consider the company's valuation, or how much it's worth, because it helps determine how much your investment may be worth if the company were to exit.
In order to calculate your potential returns though, you need to understand if the founder is raising funds on a pre-money or post-money valuation.
Pre- vs. Post-Money
A common term in venture capital, pre-money refers to the valuation of the company before the investment, while post-money refers to the valuation of the company after investment.
Let’s take an example - say you’re evaluating a company that’s raising $1M at $5M valuation.
- Pre-Money Scenario
Prior to receiving the $1M investment, the company will be worth $5M. That means that with the additional $1M investment, the company's post money valuation becomes $6M ($1M investment + $5M pre-money = $6M post-money).
If you provided the $1M investment on pre-money terms, you would own ~17% of the company ($1M investment / $6M valuation = .17 or 17%).
- Post-Money Scenario
After receiving the $1M investment, the company will be worth $5M. That means that prior to the investment, the company’s pre-money valuation is $4M ($1M investment + $4M pre-money = $5M post-money)
If you provided the $1M investment on post-money terms, you would own 20% of the company. ($1M investment / $5M valuation = .20 or 20%)
The difference here is critical - you can see between these scenarios that a pre-money valuation would dilute investors 3% more than if the company were raising post-money.
While every investor should pay attention to pre- vs. post-money, it's especially important for angel investors who may be writing smaller checks at early stages, as the opportunity for upside can really be affected if it's a pre-money valuation. Small checks can and do go a long way - just make sure your checks are set up to do the most for you long term.
Media & Press: The Modern Angel Playbook 📖
On Thursday, January 22nd, Emma Pratt will be joining Remedy Product Studio’s Modern Angel Playbook summit so share how Girl Math Capital is helping drive angel investing’s shift toward a more collaborative, syndicate-led approach. RSVP here for the 6 pm panel! 🎤
What’s Coming Up: Member Resources & More 💭
We’re coming off a big week at Girl Math, welcoming Cohort 3, hosting our NYC cohort kickoff, and partnering with Slow Street Granola, Sourmilk, French Squirrel, and Frothé for a CPG breakfast spotlighting female-founded brands. Looking ahead, we’ll be announcing an exciting new partnership to unlock even more resources to our members and sharing invites to our next big community event and a women’s health event for founders & funders. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok so you don’t miss a thing.
Closing Note 💌
Girl Math Capital was born from the frustration that deals were shared in some circles and not in others. This newsletter is one more way to make sure those conversations and opportunities reach more people, and in particular, more women. If you know someone who’d love this newsletter, pass it along. We believe alternative investing isn’t just for finance and tech bros - it’s for women who want to get smart, build community, and build generational wealth. See you next month 💸💅
The Girl Math Team
¹ PitchBook. As of May 2025.
If this got you curious, submit your information to join our next cohort, or apply to be a community member here.
