‍Joseph Cotton, CPA, is a Senior Implementation Manager at Maybern, where he works closely with fund managers and finance teams to modernize their operating models. Joseph brings more than a decade of experience across public accounting, fund accounting, and private fund operations.

He began his career in audit before transitioning into fund accounting roles at Goldman Sachs and MUFG, where he worked across a wide range of complex fund structures and allocation mechanics. Prior to joining Maybern, Joseph served as a Director at Gen II Fund Services, leading fund administration for buyout funds with layered structures, AIVs, and bespoke economics.

Having spent years managing funds through spreadsheets, legacy systems, and manual workarounds, Joseph has seen firsthand how fragmented workflows introduce risk and slow decision-making. At Maybern, he focuses on helping firms replace those processes with governed, scalable systems that give teams confidence in their data and the flexibility to grow.

What brought you to Maybern?

Joseph: Throughout my career, I’ve worked inside just about every version of the traditional fund operations stack. That includes complex excel models, processes built around a few key people, and systems that require constant reconciliation just to keep things moving.

Excel can handle the math, but once you start modeling nuanced LPA logic, the process becomes fragmented across spreadsheets and manual adjustments. Over time, it becomes harder to maintain consistency, explain results, or feel confident that everything actually ties together.

What stood out about Maybern is that it is built for the full lifecycle of a fund. Being able to track a single commitment in one place, assigned to a specific investor class, and carry it through capital calls, management fees, transfers, hypothetical waterfalls, and ultimately realized distributions is incredibly powerful. Earlier in my career, that lifecycle was spread across multiple systems, which introduced risk and consumed an enormous amount of manual effort. This is a platform I genuinely wish I had access to earlier in my career.

It was not only the software that drew me in. The people across engineering, product, and operations want to understand the intricate details and edge cases that exist in private funds. They take the time to get the nuances right, including bespoke economics and real-world operating constraints, and this level of depth and care was a big reason I wanted to be part of this team.

What common themes do you hear when speaking with fund CFOs about their operations?

Joseph: CFOs want accurate data at their fingertips. Whether it’s fund performance, investor data, or an unexpected LP request, they want to be able to respond quickly and with confidence. Timeliness is just as important. Quarterly reporting, capital calls, and distributions all tend to come with tight deadlines, and delays usually point back to operational friction rather than lack of effort. Accuracy is the other constant. Waterfalls, allocations, and investor numbers have to be right, and CFOs don’t want to spend their time double checking logic or reconciling across systems just to feel comfortable standing behind the results.

Ultimately, many CFOs are looking for a partner and a set of tools that help them be more strategic in their role. They want to spend less time validating numbers and more time using them to support decisions, communicate with investors, and help their firms grow.

What’s one piece of accounting logic or LPA clause that still gives even experienced professionals trouble?

Joseph: Allocations tied to nuanced LPA language are a constant challenge. The intent is usually clear in the LPA, but translating that intent into accounting logic that works consistently over time is where complexity sets in. As funds evolve, exceptions, side letters, AIVs, and amendments are layered on top of the original structure. 

The challenge is rarely in understanding economics, but rather in maintaining consistency as complexity increases. Small changes can have downstream effects that are easy to miss, which is why disciplined, well-structured calculation logic matters so much.

Beyond specific LPA clauses, what’s the most complex fund structure you’ve worked on, and what made it challenging?

Joseph: One of the more complex structures I’ve worked on involved managing investor participation with various opt-outs and exposure constraints across deals. While the structure was manageable at the outset, complexity increased over time as new investments closed, allocation rules accumulated, and subsequent closes introduced additional commitments that required ongoing rebalancing.

As a result, maintaining intended exposure levels required hours of manual adjustments layered on top of an already evolving investor base. All of this was tracked across fragmented Excel spreadsheets, which made the structure difficult to scale and clearly illustrated how quickly operational risk can grow as complexity compounds.

Where do you think the fund accounting profession will be in five years, and what needs to happen to get there?

Joseph: I expect fund accounting professionals to be far more technology-enabled, which will make teams more productive and efficient in their roles. The right tools should allow teams to handle complexity with less manual effort and fewer workarounds.

As operations become more streamlined, the downstream effects are meaningful. Distributions can be processed more quickly, reporting timelines become more predictable, and investor requests can be addressed with greater confidence in real time. Those operational improvements also contribute to a better overall investor experience.

For that shift to happen, the industry needs to continue moving away from tools and processes that were never designed for modern fund structures. Expectations will keep rising as technology that supports fund logic directly becomes more widely adopted.

What's most rewarding about helping funds transform their operations?

Joseph: Seeing a team’s reaction when they first see their fund data brought together in the platform is incredibly rewarding; you can see the sense of relief when they understand they no longer have to rely on fragmented spreadsheets or manual checks to feel confident. When teams realize the power of having calculations, allocations, and investor information all working together in one place, it changes how they think about their operations. That relief quickly turns into excitement about what’s possible when underlying complexity is handled in a more structured way.

Helping teams reach that point, where they feel confident in their data and optimistic about their ability to scale and handle future complexity, is what makes the work rewarding for me.