Peter Haskopoulos is the Co-founder and CEO of Petra Funds Group, a fund administrator built on the premise that experienced talent — not scale — is the true differentiator in private fund administration.

Pete’s career began in public accounting at Arthur Andersen before he spent nearly 16 years at Riverstone Holdings, ultimately serving as CFO. We discuss how that experience convinced him the fund administration industry had it backwards: relying on lower-cost offshore talent to service increasingly complex fund structures. That frustration as a client became the founding thesis for Petra.

From there, we dig into how Petra finds and retains the people who make the model work. Pete walks through the firm’s hiring framework, what they call the “fingerprint” — a specific set of criteria built around technical depth, an ownership mentality, and client service skills he believes have become a lost art in the industry.

For anyone launching a fund or considering a change in administrators, this is a ground-level look at what separates a true fund administration partner from a processor — and why getting that decision right in your first few closes matters more than most GPs realize.