Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry (Ted Seides – Allocator and Asset Management Expert)

For this year’s annual review, our CEO Hank Strmac and I sat down to discuss where we’ve been and where we’re headed.

Our conversation covers the best blogs and podcasts of the year, my investment activity, what’s top of mind for allocators and managers, our upcoming podcasts, Summits, and CAU education courses in 2025, the team who makes it all happen, and a few closing questions.

I hope you find the conversation engaging and informative.

Wishing you a very happy and prosperous new year.

Head of Business Development Job Posting

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Matt Miller is the Managing Director of Grey Rock Investment Partners. Matt co-founded Grey Rock as a traditional oil and gas manager in 2013. Today, the firm manages $1 billion across both natural resources and renewables by identifying attractive niches in each that do not tradeoff human interest for returns.

Our conversation covers Matt’s path to the energy sector and founding of Grey Rock, the ongoing need for natural resources, and the identification of dislocations that create niche opportunities. We turn to Grey Rock’s own ‘energy transition’ intended to resolve ESG pressures while meeting client return objectives, including the overcapitalization of most renewable strategies, discovery of an attractive niche in carbon capture, and complexity in making it work.

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"Nothing lasts forever" as the aphorism goes, and such is the case with permanent capital. The quirk in the theoretically sound concept cause some challenges for both managers and allocators.

Read Ted’s blog here.

On today’s manager meetings, Ellen Ellison speaks with Rashmi Kwatra. Ellen is a past guest on Capital Allocators when she was Chief Investment Officer of the University of Illinois Foundation. Rashmi is the founder and CIO of Sixteenth Street Capital, a Singapore based manager focused on emerging and frontier markets in South and Southeast Asia with $240 million under management. Sixteenth Street manages a concentrated fundamental equity portfolio with a long-term focus on Asia’s fastest growing capital markets. Before they kick it off, Ellen and I discuss her due diligence process and the fit of Sixteenth Street in her portfolio.

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Anthony Pompliano is an entrepreneur, media creator, and investor who has built one of the largest audiences of DIY investors. His following canvasses 1.6 million people on X, 560,000 on YouTube, and 260,000 on his daily The Pomp Letter.

Anthony created Professional Capital Management, an investment company that builds and invests in early-stage companies by leveraging his audience. He’s not alone in his family in creating a following. Pomp’s wife Polina writes the popular blog, The Profile, and his brother Joe writes the sports business blog, Huddle Up. Pomp also recently published How to Live an Extraordinary Life, which shares life lessons through letters to his children.

Our conversation covers Pomp’s passion for competing, leading, and problem-solving, formative business experience at Facebook, translating lessons to build a social media audience, and monetizing that audience through investing. We close touching on his wonderful book with a few anecdotes and lessons to share.

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It’s executive search…for love. On Episode 6 of Season 2 of Private Equity Deals, Brent Beshore from Permanent Equity describes their purchase of the highest end matchmaking firm in the world. When you think of dating, Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and Match.com come to mind. Or if you’re high profile enough or watch Billions, you might think of Raya. Well alongside the world of app dating, Selective Search has paired up the crème of the crop with an old school approach and 87% success rate for years. Learn about the business and deal by searching for Private Equity Deals on your podcast player.

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Michael Schwimer is the CEO of Big League Advance (BLA) and JAMBOS.  Last year, I sat down with Michael and discussed his playing career and the formation of BLA.  That conversation, which you can listen to on the feed right after this one, has been the most downloaded episode of Capital Allocators.

Our second conversation starts with an update on BLA, the private equity fund that takes stakes in the future earnings of minor league baseball players.  We touch on the implementation of the strategy and the development of the BLA sports analytics team since last year.

We then discuss other ideas Michael brainstormed with his team to deploy their unparalleled horsepower in sports analytics.  That exercise led to the formation of a new sports betting service called JAMBOS.  We walk through the business of predicting the outcome of sporting events, the disruption of tout subscription services for sports betting through transparency and accountability, and the potential impact of predicting game outcomes on the future of sports and sports entertainment.  You can find out more about the service at www.jambospicks.com.

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Gregory Zuckerman is a special writer at the Wall Street Journal and the author of five books, including his most recent, The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution.  Greg joined the Journal in 1996 and writes about big financial trades, firms, and personalities.  He’s a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism, and his work has included breaking the stories of the discord between Bill Gross and PIMCO, the London Whale trade, subprime mortgage collapse, and meltdown of hedge fund Amaranth in 2007.

Our conversation starts with Greg’s path to journalism, touches on the aftermath of his book The Greatest Trade Ever about John Paulson and the subprime meltdown. We then turn to his recent tome on Jim Simons and Renaissance, including the formation and evolution of the Medallion fund, precarious moments in its history, the human element of a quant shop, differences between Renaissance and other quant competitors, leadership, impacting the world with vast wealth, and why Renaissance has been so special.

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Tim McCusker is the Chief Investment Officer at NEPC, an investment consultant that advises on $1 trillion in assets on behalf of 400 institutional clients.  Tim oversees NEPC’s 50-person investment research team and leads investment strategy for the firm.  In each of 2014, 2015, and 2016, CIO Magazine recognized Tim as one of the world’s most influential consultants.

Our conversation covers NEPC’s client centric model, meeting the needs of a range of client types, forming and implementing capital market views, researching managers, sourcing in public and private assets, allocating to scarce capacity managers, and forming and leaning into the megatrends of artificial intelligence, income inequality, demographics, and shifting currency regimes.

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Brian Portnoy Brian is currently the Director of Investment Education at $100B investment solutions provider Virtus Investment Partners, where he strives to simplify the complex world of money in an effort to help investors make better decisions and lead a joyful life. For the past two decades, he has held senior investment, research, and strategy roles in the hedge fund and mutual fund industries at Chicago Equity Partners, Mesirow Financial, and Morningstar. 

Brian is the author of “The Investor’s Paradox,” a book about manager selection rooted in choice theory.  His second book, “The Geometry of Wealth” hits electronic and physical bookstores this week.

Our conversation covers Brian’s experience in manager research and lessons learned, choice theory and managing expectations, differences between institutional investment and private wealth management, distinction between seeking wealth and trying to get rich, his terrific new book, and why volatility is risk. Brian’s insightful take on investing and his journey from the complex to the simple is full of investment nuggets of gold.

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Rick Selvala is the co-founder and CEO of Harvest Volatility, a ten-year old manager of a variety of volatility strategies that oversees $13 billion in assets. After starting his career in the Treasury department at General Motors in the mid 1980s, Rick has spent nearly three decades trading derivatives on the sell side and buy side. Rick has an uncanny ability to break down this complicated investment area and make it sound simple.

Our conversation discusses the world of volatility, including intelligent uses of derivatives, overcoming headline risk, characteristics of successful traders, assessment of alpha, the current volatility environment, and strategies that capture returns.  His insights left me thinking twice about some of the assumptions my System 1 brain had formed about volatility. Time for System 2 to go to work.

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Show Notes

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3:03 – Rick’s path to Harvest

5:17 – How should one think about volatility as an asset class

7:56 – Volatility as a path to enhance yield

11:07 – Is there a programmatic way to implement

12:55 – Volatility as a path for insurance

15:45 – Where do people go wrong with leverage

18:28 – What level of understanding of this space do clients really have

21:58 – How would someone express the idea that volatility is cheap in the market

            22:04 – Bill Spitz podcast episode

24:24 – What strategies could managers take advantage of in a low volatility environment

26:01 – How does Rick asses if someone is a good trader

27:32 – How do you identify firms that are too bold

29:26 – Does the community have a good sense of whether traders are acting responsibly

30:08 – How do you determine if a manager is outperforming

32:11 – Is there a structural return from selling insurance to the market

34:13 – Have computer systems changed trading in the derivatives market

35:14 – Taking a look at the current environment

38:43 – Recent market turmoil

39:58 – Are quants impacting market volatility

41:26 – What’s next on the frontier for Harvest

45:02 – Closing questions

Tom Russo is the Managing Member of Gardner Russo & Gardner, where he manages $11 billion in a long only, global value strategy. Tom buys the stock of global consumer businesses with great brands and holds them for a really long time. He looks for businesses with a capacity to reinvest free cash flow and a capacity to suffer through short-term pain in order to achieve long-term gain. Tom started his investment career at the Sequoia Fund in New York, where he worked from 1984 to 1988. His first partnership, Semper Vic Partners, has compounded at 14.6% per year for 33 years, besting the S&P 500 by 3.6% per annum.

Tom is a graduate of Dartmouth College (B.A., 1977), and Stanford Business and Law Schools (JD/MBA, 1984). He has served on Dean's Advisory Council for Stanford Law School, Dartmouth College's President's Leadership Council, and the Advisory Board for the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing at Columbia Business School, as well as on the boards of the Winston Churchill Foundation of the U.S., Facing History and Ourselves, and Storm King Art Center.

Our conversation covers how Tom created an investment strategy by personalizing early lessons from Warren Buffett, the capacity to re-invest, the capacity to suffer, and what it takes to own a stock for decades.  Tom’s time horizon and fortitude as an investor parallels those of institutions with permanent capital. Listeners will get a fresh perspective on what it means to be a long-term investor

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My guest on the 7th episode of Venture is Eating the Investment World is Joelle Kayden, the Founder and Managing Partner of Accolade Partners, a $3.6 billion venture fund of funds that invests across early stage, growth, blockchain, and empowerment strategies and one of the most respected firms in the business.

Our conversation covers Joelle’s nearly two decades in technology investment banking, the launch of Accolade into the dot.com bubble, and its evolution over twenty years. We then discuss her perspectives on the four ways to win in venture capital, assessing culture, adding value as an LP, portfolio construction, re-upping decisions, and investing in the current environment.

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Magnus Grimeland is the CEO and founder of Antler, one of the world’s largest day zero investor. Antler’s pre-seed strategy canvasses 27 countries, 1,000 portfolio companies, 8,000+ founders, and over 120,000 annual applications for 2,000 spots in its residency programs. Magnus founded Antler in 2017 after serving as the co-founder of Zalora, a tech-enable fashion brand in Asia.

Our conversation covers Magnus’ journey from growing up in rural Norway to developing a global startup platform, characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, and the process for building the infrastructure for founders to solve important problems in the world.

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Brett Barakett is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Tremblant Capital, a 23-year-old long-short equity and long-only firm focused on deep fundamental stock research with a senior team that has been together for at least sixteen years. Brett has invested through rising and falling tides in the industry, ups and downs in fund flows, and alongside friends and peers who have since retired. Yet he keeps skating to where the puck is going.

Our conversation covers Brett’s path to launching Tremblant, including lessons from hockey, operational experience, and the early days in a terrible market for the strategy. We discuss the long-short and long-only models, primary research, portfolio construction, sell decisions, risk management, compensation structure, and Tremblant’s launch of TOGA, one of the first active ETFs run by a longstanding hedge fund manager.

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One common refrain across my conversations has been the importance and subtleties of effective governance in making optimal investment decisions.  Alongside Steven Galbraith’s incredible career as an analyst, strategist, portfolio manager, and entrepreneur in the asset management business, he has served on as many Boards as anyone I know. I imagine many of you have heard Steve’s story, but if not, you may want to have a listen to the very first episode of Capital Allocators before diving in here.

Our conversation today starts with an update on Steve’s personal investment in the Narragansett Beer Company and moves into a practical discussion inside the Board rooms of each of his current seats that range across a university, a large family office, a public company, a government agency, and two early stage fintech companies. We touch on time allocation, governance structure, Board composition, adding value, the politics of Boards, and the motivation of Board members.

We also get an update on Steve’s family office, that he’s managing alongside his wife Lucy, a seasoned distressed debt investor, and we close with our brief, contrary outlook on the baseball season.

Steve’s perspective and insights on the real world of Boards is second to none, and this conversation is as full of gems as our first one.

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Show Notes

2:45 – Update on Narragansett Brewery

            2:53 – How Passion Investors Helped Revive Narragansett Beer

4:28 – Narragansett in the White House

5:19 – With all of the boards that he serves on, how does he manage his time

7:34 – How much time do these boards assume Steven is investing in them

9:32 – Highest functioning board

11:46 – Maintaining stability between the board and investment team

16:29 – What Warren Buffet had to say about the Tufts endowment

17:45 – What are the board dynamics in a family office

22:22 – Overview of for-profit boards

26:12 – Is the familial relationships of board members another way an investment committee could construct a board

26:56– Could a university or foundation create a board like this with close familial ties amongst members

28:46 – Optimal board structure of a foundation

29:57 – Steve’s time in government serving on a board

32:52 – Board of startups and early stage companies

35:02 – A look at Steve’s family office

37:20 – What do the analytics of financial companies look like 5-10 years from now

38:35 – Looking at the quality of analytics he currently gets from his outsourced team compared to larger firms he has worked with

39:37 – What is Steve seeing in the markets

40:42 – What is the most interesting idea that’s come across Steve’s plate in the past year

44:32 – Politics of boards and what drives them

48:36 – Closing Questions

Matthew Granade is Chief Market Intelligence Officer at Point72 and the Managing Partner of Point72 Ventures. Matthew oversees all proprietary research and data efforts at the firm, manages several of the internal systematic strategies, leads early stage venture investing, and recently launched Hyperscale, a new strategy that invests in AI-driven startups and connects them with operating companies to build model-driven businesses. Before joining Point72, Matthew started his investment career at Bridgewater and later was a co-founder of Domino Data Lab, a business that develops systems-of-record for enterprise data science teams across industries.

Our conversation covers Matthew’s work optimizing the research process at Bridgewater, creating Domino Data, and leaving the company to join Point72. We turn to his tackling research and data science at Point72, blending the power of computers and humans, and overseeing Point72 ventures and Hyperscale.

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Charles Van Vleet is the CIO of Textron, where he manages $10 billion in defined benefit assets and $5 billion of defined contribution assets. Charles joined Textron a decade ago after eight years at the pension fund of United Technologies and is widely respected as one of the most thoughtful and outspoken CIOs in the space.

Our conversation covers Charles’ background and turns to the objectives of corporate pension funds, Textron’s strategic asset allocation, and Charles’ creative implementation of value-added opportunities across asset classes. Along the way, he shares a host of opinions about what works and doesn’t for institutional investors.

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Daniel Adamson is a Senior Managing Director at Wafra and the President of Capital Constellation, a joint venture between mega asset owners in Europe, North America and the Middle East that invests in the next generation of private equity managers.

Our conversation focuses on this innovative joint venture and how a group of large asset owners came together to scale their resources.  We touch on a host of issues relating to the formation and implementation of the business, the many possibilities that are arising from this novel setup, and the serious challenges in bringing it to fruition.  I suspect we’ll see more efforts by asset owners to disintermediate pieces of the investment value chain, although as you’ll hear, it’s a lot easier said than done.

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Michael Batnick is the Director of Research at Ritholz Wealth Management, author of theIrrelevant Investor blog, co-host of the Animal Spirits podcast, and recently, author of his first book, Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments.

Our conversation starts with Michael’s atypical career path, his arrival at Ritholz, and his blog. We then turn to stories from his book about Ben Graham, Jesse Livermore, Jack Bogle, Stan Druckenmiller, John Maynard Keynes, Charlie Munger, and Chris Sacca.  Lastly, we discuss how Michael applies the lessons in his book at Ritholz. Michael is a widely followed rising star in financial social media, and our conversation is packed with nuggets of timeless investment wisdom.

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David Salem has been a pioneer, practitioner and student of institutional investing for the last forty years. David was the founding president and CIO of The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF), which he led for nearly two decades until 2010. Since then, he has managed a multi-family office, worked and wrote alongside Ben Hunt at Epsilon Theory, and now serves as the Managing Director of Capital Allocation at Hedgeye Risk Management. Along the way, David worked closely with and distilled lessons from David Swensen, Jack Meyer in his time at Harvard Management Company, Charley Ellis, Chuck Feeney from Atlantic Philanthropies, and many other leading CIOs and managers.

Our conversation covers David’s journey to investing, including sitting alongside Jeremy Grantham during GMO’s early growth stage and founding TIFF. We dive into manager selection, decision-making, investment committees, and risk management. We then turn to David’s views on China, Japan, private equity, and digital assets. Throughout our conversation, David shares his profound understanding of the unique pressures faced by institutional investors and the principles that guide successful investment strategies and leadership in complex environments.

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Beezer Clarkson is Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures where she is responsible for the management of Sapphire’s fund investments in early stage venture funds globally.  Her career through direct and fund investing has left her with unusually deep knowledge and insights in the space.

Our conversation starts with Beezer’s meandering career and turns to her work at Sapphire, including its structure and unique relationship with SAP, Series A investing, winnowing through a massive funnel of fund opportunities, the due diligence process and re-underwriting process, implications of companies staying private longer, and #OpenLP, a public forum to hear the voice of VC LPs that Beezer created with past podcast guest Chris Douvos.

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Carrie Thome is the longtime former CIO at WARF, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, a $3 billion pool that arose from monetizing technologies developed at the University of Wisconsin. She recently left to start a venture capital firm called NVNG, or Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained.

Our conversation covers Carrie’s Wisconsin roots, her early experience at SWIB, the State of Wisconsin pension fund, and investing at WARF over the last two decades.

We discuss WARF’s unique structure, technology transfer, and an all-weather portfolio for the Foundation, including separation of alpha and beta, portfolio construction, and manager selection. We then turn to Carrie’s new adventure NVNG, a venture capital firm seeking to bring the benefits of entrepreneurial activities in Wisconsin to local firms and national venture capitalists.

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Sarah Samuels is the Head of Investment Manager Research at NEPC where she oversees teams across public equities, credit, hedge funds, and private markets for the $1.5 trillion investment advisory juggernaut. Prior to joining NEPC three years ago, Sarah worked at the senior level of both a top notch endowment and a public pension fund. She sought to bring the best of both worlds to her role at NEPC.

Our conversation covers Sarah’s early career investing, time in the allocator seat at Mass PRIM and Wellesley College, and decision to join NEPC. We discuss her key investment themes, investment framework blending qualitative and quantitative analysis, second-level thinking, CIO mindset, alignment of interest, private equity allocations, and investment committees. We close discussing Sarah’s work on DE&I and her involvement in Girls Who Invest.

Jonathan Tepper is the founder of Variant Perception, an economic research group that works with institutional managers, hedge funds, and allocators to provide objective and comprehensive data to form actionable ideas from leading indicators and emerging trends. He is also the author of three books, the most recent of which, The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition, received widespread acclaim earlier this year.

Our conversation covers Jonathan's unusual upbringing, learning about currencies from Big Macs, building economic and liquidity forecasting models, and catering Variant Perception's research to investors. We then turn to The Myth of Capitalism, discussing the history, causes, and ramifications of the absence of competition in U.S. industries, natural and unnatural monopolies, examples in the tech giants, funeral home operators, airports, and hospitals, and what can be done to counter this negative trend.

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Tom Lenehan is the Deputy Chief Investment Officer of The Rockefeller University, where he helps lead the management of the University’s $2B endowment.  Rockefeller University is a unique duck – with a focused mission of improving the understanding of life for the benefit of humanity.  Founded in 1901, it was the first institution in the country devoted exclusively to biomedical research.

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Alex Sacerdote is the founder of Whale Rock Capital Management, a technology-focused investment firm that manages $8 billion across hedge fund, long only, and hybrid strategies.

Our conversation covers Alex’s path to running Whale Rock, shaped by early exposure to the markets through his father, a longtime partner at Goldman Sachs, and his formative years at Fidelity. We dive into the key lessons he learned at Fidelity, the development of his investment framework centered around S-curves, competitive advantages, and underappreciated earnings power, and the application of the framework to AI, Mag 7, cloud computing, electronic vehicles, and blockchain technologies.

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Jenny Heller is the President and Chief Investment Officer of Brandywine Trust Group.  Brandywine formed 25 years ago to manage the capital for a small group of families that all share a long-term, multi-generational time horizon. Today, it oversees almost $9B for those same families, much of it from compounding over a quarter century. The Group invests flexibly across asset classes, with a focus on partnering with people who they believe have sustainable competitive advantages, share their long-term vision, and have highly aligned interests.  These elite managers often start with great ideas, but limited capital.

 Before taking the helm at Brandywine five years ago, Jenny worked at the Sloan Foundation, Stanford University Management Company, and Merrill Lynch in its investment banking program. She is a graduate of Williams College, where she serves on its Investment Advisory Committee, and Stanford Business School.

Our conversation starts with Jenny’s frustrating experiences with a non-profit micro finance in India and South Africa and turns to her career allocating money on behalf of non-profits and families. We touch on subtleties in picking managers for taxable investors, challenges in executing a long-term strategy, learning from mistakes, and mentorship. Jenny’s clear and deep thought process provides pearls of wisdom throughout our conversation.

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Shiloh Bates is the Chief Investment Officer at Flat Rock Global, an alternative credit manager specializing in the junior tranches of CLOs. Last year, Shiloh published CLO Investing, a comprehensive review of the structure, payoff rules, and historical performance of CLOs.

Our conversation covers Shiloh's twenty-five years spent in and around the space, an overview of the market, the characteristics of CLOs, the attractiveness of CLO equity relative to other credit opportunities, and Flat Rock’s approach to investing in CLO equity and BBs.

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Marshall Boyd is the Co-President and CIO at Interstate Equities Corporation, a real estate investment firm that manages $1 billion focusing exclusively on multi-family apartments on the California coast. IEC is one of those little-known gems for those in the know. It's an endowment darling with just a dozen or so of the most elite LPs in the business exploiting an attractive, little corner of the investment world.

Our conversation covers Marshall's path to IEC and steps to turn a family boutique into an institutional business. We discuss firm's investment thesis, sourcing, due diligence, deal dynamics, value-added operations, and exit strategy. We close covering risks to the strategies and lessons learned along the way.

For full show notes, visit the episode webpage here. 

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Jordi Visser is the President & CIO of Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers, a $4 billion hedge fund focused on an innovative investment process, insightful data analytics, and cutting-edge thought leadership. Jordi came on the show and discussed his background and Weiss’ strategy back in 2019. That conversation is replayed on the feed. This time around we get a glimpse of Jordi’s thoughtfulness and rigor across work and life, including baseball cards for portfolio managers, the adaptability quotient or AQ, analytics for business development, and the great resignation in asset management. We then turn to Jordi’s market views on inflation and interest rates, blockchain and decentralization, health and longevity, and mental health and anxiety. We close with his passion for horseracing and its application to money management.

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Annie Duke, former professional poker player, decision-making expert, best-selling author, and regular guest on the show. Annie’s latest masterpiece is her book entitled How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices, and it releases next week. How to Decide follows her best-seller Thinking in Bets, shifting from highlighting causes of bad decisions to discussing process for making better ones.

Our conversation covers the six steps to outline a comprehensive decision framework, factors that determine when to shorten that lengthy decision process, the power of negative thinking, decisions in groups, and work with Committees.

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Joel Wittenberg is the chief investment officer and vice president of W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where he has managed the foundation's $8 billion in assets since 2009. The Kellogg Foundation is guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive. In accordance with that mission, in 2007 its Board committed to be an effective anti-racist organization that promotes racial equity. Over the ensuing thirteen years, the organization has become a leader in applying research and taking effective action.

Our conversation touches on Joel’s background in the fixed income markets and the application of duration and convexity to allocating capital. We then turn to his work at the Foundation fostering racial equity. We discuss the importance of open conversations about race, Kellogg’s expanding equity program for majority-owned managers, emerging manager allocations and impact investments. Lastly, Joel shares his plans to broaden the expanding equity program to allocators and managers in the coming years.

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Rahul Moodgal has spent 20 years as a fund raiser across long only strategies, hedge funds, fund of funds, customized solutions, start-ups, and non-profits.  Collectively, Rahul has raised and helped raise $60 billion for firms since 2005.  He started his career in the industry at powerhouse TT International, and later joined The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI) where he led the marketing effort that raised $20 billion in just 3½ years.  Within TCI’s affiliate model, Rahul also was responsible for the largest India fund raise in history ($1 billion for TCI New Horizon Fund), and the largest sector fund launch in history ($1.1 billion for Algebris Investments).

Our conversation covers capital raising lessons learned from teaching, the value of transparency, the gold rush before 2008, the lean times afterwards, modern fee structures, the three key points to effective marketing, the three traits that will kill you, the two biggest issues start-up funds face, the best questions asked by leading allocators, and some of the worst horror stories in attempted capital raising. We close comparing by fund raising for charities and investment firms. 

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Brett Barth is a founder and the CIO of BBR Partners. BBR manages north of $12.5B on behalf of 125 families in its multi-family office. In this episode, we start talking about raising twins, a family issue close to both of our hearts. From there we learn about how Brett came to form BBR. We spend a lot of time going into depth on his firm’s asset allocation process and on the decision-making process of manager selection.  Along the way we touch on inefficiencies in Asia in the early days and in music royalties today.  Brett offers nuggets of practical substance for allocators of all types – from financial advisors to large institutional managers.

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Annie Duke is a renown public speaker and decision strategist. For two decades, she was one of the top poker players in the world, including winning a World Series of Poker bracelet and the $2 million winner-take-all WSOP Tournament of Champions. Her study of the science of smart decision-making began with a National Science Foundation Fellowship, which she used study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.  Among her charity work and television appearances, Annie was a runner-up to Joan Rivers on Celebrity Apprentice, during which she raised $700,000 for Refugees International. She is a natural teacher and storyteller with an active mind that constantly searches for accurate truth.

I highly recommend Annie’s new book, Thinking in Bets, which comes out this week. In her life after poker, she is a featured speaker, writes a newsletter and a blog, and advises companies on improving their decision-making process. Have a look at her website, annieduke.com, for more information.

Our conversation discusses Annie’s path from an Ivy League education to professional poker, the nature of a bet, how we form beliefs, why we make bad decisions, and what we can do to improve our decision-making process. Towards the end, we also talk about bankroll management, poker faces, and advice she would give the President on how to make better decisions.

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Show Notes

2:30 – Annie’s path through the poker world 

6:05 – Her transition into teaching and the lesson of tilt 

11:57 – How do you apply the concepts of betting and gambling broadly to decision making 

13:35 – What is it about the science of the brain that prevents us from making good decisions

            14:17 – Stumbling on Happiness

            14:19 – Dan Gilbert Ted Talk

            15:44 – Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind 

18:50 – Motivated reasoning 

21:10 – Is there anything we can do to fix our decision-making biases (wanna bet) 

28:05 – Other devices to improve our decision-making 

32:29 – Value of a decision group

            33:16 – Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

34:00 – Mertonian Norms, CUDOS 

40:27 – Mental time travel (Marty McFly from Back to the Future)

            42:55 – Jerry Seinfeld – Night Guy vs Morning Guy 

44:55 – Applying these tools and the parallels between poker and investing 

48:59 – Reading poker faces

            49:21 – Joe Navarro books

            49:34 – Joe Navarro Psychology Today 

52:50 – What advice would Annie give President Trump in terms of improving his decision-making process 

53:52 – Favorite sports moment 

55:45 – What teaching from Annie’s parents has most stayed with her 

56:08 – What information does Annie read that a lot of people might not know about that is valuable

            56:18 – The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

            56:19 – Why Evolution Is True

56:58 – What life lesson does Annie wish she knew earlier in life

58:28 – Looking ahead, what advice would Annie give herself today from a ripe old age

Alan Forman is the former Director of Real Estate at the Yale Investments Office, where he spent 31.5 years before retiring last year. For three decades, Alan was one of the core four at Yale alongside David Swensen, Dean Takahashi, and Tim Sullivan. In his next chapter, he hung a shingle named Blue Orchard Capital, where he works with real estate managers to help them understand best practices in the industry.

In our conversation, Alan shares rare insight into Yale’s investment operation and, in particular, highlights the consistent and essential importance of people and alignment in Yale’s strategy. We walk through how he applied the process to the real estate asset class and how he’s looking to help the next generation of great real estate managers in his post-Yale endeavors.

For full show notes, visit the episode webpage here.

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Last fall, I sat down with a fellow former hedge fund of funds professional Khe Hy, who left the business a few years ago and has developed a fascinating media platform around introspection, self-awareness, and self-development. Certainly a set of characteristics we don’t normally associate with folks in the asset management business.

Khe interviewed me about my career path and some lessons I’ve learned about people, business, and life. With his permission, I am sharing the conversation to allow you to learn more about the perspective that I bring to the conversations on Capital Allocators.

If you like the subject matter, I’d encourage you to check out Khe’s podcast, entitled Rad Awakenings, available on iTunes or his website, radreads.co.

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Show Notes

1:53 – Ted’s time with Dave Swensen

2:40 – How did Ted get the job not knowing about stocks

3:56 – The start of Ted’s time at Protégé

5:27 – How did Ted view the world as someone picking managers vs someone picking stocks

9:01 – Early days at Protégé

10:36 – Attributes that Ted tried to unpack about individuals

13:18 – Understanding a team’s intrinsic vs extrinsic motivations

15:03 – How much of investing is about true skill vs being on the right side of a market trend

17:06 – What did Ted learn about greed during the bull market run of the early 2000’s

20:00 – The ego, envy and entitlement of financial professionals

22:36 – The potential to hit a high-water mark and never feeling satisfied

28:20 – Loving what you do despite the financial windfall

32:50 – Would Ted have the same passion for the markets if he hit the proverbial lottery

34:36 – The feeling of financial survival and what would happen if Ted didn’t have it

            37:24 – Citizen Schools

38:41 – How to stop caring about other people’s perception of you

40:46 – Most underrated attribute of Ted that he has discovered in his reinvention

41:53 – Times Ted’s resilience was tested

            43:08 – Ted on Invest Like the Best Podcast

            43:10 – Hero's Journey Foundation

45:02 – What does higher education and first jobs look like for the next generation given the digital changes in society

49:20 – Do millennials have less upward mobility then past generations

            49:43 – The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial

52:09 – Follow and learn more about Ted at capitalallocatorspodcast.com

57:41 – Closing questions with special guest interviewers

Eric Peters is the founder and CIO One River Asset Management, an investment manager dedicated to delivering high conviction absolute-return strategies, where each individual strategy comes out of the team’s expertise in thematic macro, volatility, systematic, and inflation trading/investing. Eric has been a long-time trader and writes a widely dispersed email called Weekend Notes, in which he shares macro insights through colorful anecdotes.

Our conversation starts with Eric’s early exposure to trading, macro blow-ups, and the formation and activities of One River. We then turn to the current environment and get his sobering thoughts on what has transpired and what the turmoil will mean for private equity and asset allocation going forward.

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Brad Briner is the leading candidate for the Treasurer of North Carolina in the upcoming November election, a role that includes managing the state’s $115 billion pension fund. Brad put himself in the ring for the seat after twenty-five years of investment experience, serving most recently as Co-CIO of Willett Advisors, Michael Bloomberg’s family office. For more background on Willett, my conversation from 2019 with Chairman Steve Rattner is replayed in the feed.

I don’t often get to talk about really poor investment performance on the podcast, but this time we do. North Carolina has finished dead last among peers over the last three and five years, that’s 50th of 50 states. Its twenty-year returns are almost equally dismal. This significant underperformance resulted from an overlay conservative asset allocation that will leave you shaking your head. Unfortunately, it’s what happens when unsophisticated professionals are tasked with serious investment jobs.

Our conversation covers Brad’s story, investment and leadership insights from his experience and time at Willett, the problems with North Carolina’s investing and governance, and Brad’s desire and plan to turn around the state’s pension performance.

I’ve known Brad for ten years and want to do everything I can to help him both win the important seat and succeed once there. So if you happen to live in North Carolina, please get out and vote – every vote truly counts in low turnout races like thisIf, like most of us, you don’t live there, please tell any friends you have who do live in the state. Lastly, if Brad is successful at the polls, he’ll need to build out a team with talented professionals who share his passion for investing and making a difference. Maybe you can help there too.

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Matt Brown is the Founder CEO of CAIS, a leading alternative investment platform on which thousands of financial advisors have invested over $12 billion in alternatives across private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and real estate.  Our conversation covers Matt’s background as both a financial advisor and distributor of alternatives that collectively led to the idea behind CAIS. We discuss the development of a two-sided platform, structural features for both financial advisors and managers, and challenges along the way. We then turn to the wave of capital coming from this community and what it means for investors. Lastly, we discuss Matt’s perspective on leadership and the future of CAIS.

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Sachin Khajuria is a former partner at Apollo and twenty-five-year veteran of private equity who recently authored “Two and Twenty,” a fantastic insider’s account of the private equity industry.

Our conversation covers Sachin’s rationale for writing Two and Twenty, the strengths of private equity, areas for improvement, and needs for change. We discuss the defining traits of the industry across the sourcing process, depth of research, use of operating executives, ability to pivot, and democratization of alternatives. We close by discussing opportunities and risks going forward, and Sachin’s application of his insights to investing at his family office.

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Charley Ellis is one of the most highly regarded experts in the investment business.  After spending nearly a decade as an equity research analyst in the 1960s, Charley founded financial services consulting firm Greenwich Associates in 1972 to help institutions understand what their clients think of them.  Over 50 years, Charley has worked hand in hand with nearly every major financial institution in the world and has published sixteen books on investing, including his most recent “The Index Revolution: Why Investors Should Join It Now.”

Charley is not just another preacher for index fund investing. He extols the virtues of indexing after having looked both broadly and deeply under the covers of some of the most successful active managers in the world.

Our conversation begins with a glimpse at what equity research and the structure of the markets looked like in the 1960s and the monumentally different way research is conducted and markets function today. Charley describes elegantly why indexing is a winner’s game for many, and then walks through very special and rare qualities of three of the most successful active managers over the last few decades – Vanguard, Capital Group, and Yale University.

Charley is a brilliant communicator and masterful storyteller. I hope you enjoy the show as much as I enjoyed the conversation. 

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Stephen Nesbitt is the CEO and CIO of Cliffwater, an investment consultant and asset management firm specializing in alternative that oversees a combined $110 billion, including $30 billion in private market interval funds that begin just five years ago. Steve founded Cliffwater in 2004 to serve the burgeoning institutional market for alternative investments and bet the farm with a pivot to managing private credit assets for RIAs in 2019. That shift has been one of the most successful initiatives in the industry in the last five years and catapulted Cliffwater to one of the market leaders and brands serving the RIA community.

Our conversation covers Steve's journey as a consultant, formation of Cliffwater, and focus on alternatives. We then discuss his strategic shift to managing assets for RIAs, including the development of a private debt index fund, innovation in fund structures, management of liquidity, distribution in the RIA channel, and new initiatives on the come.

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Sam Sicilia is the Chief Investment Officer of HostPlus, Australia’s AUZ 37 billion ($25B USD) Superannuation Fund.  Sam joined HostPlus in 2008 after a storied career in academia and the finance industry stretching back to the early 1990s. During that time, he held senior roles, both in Australia and internationally, consulting at Russell Investments, managing assets at Bank of Ireland, and consulting with Frontier Investment Consulting and Towers Perrin.

Our conversation starts with Sam’s mathematics training and turns to his work over the last decade at HostPlus, covering the Fund’s long time horizon, his strategy to take advantage of that horizon, infrastructure investing for downside protection, private equity, venture capital in Australia, public equity focusing on people, hedge funds as a liquidity buffer, and working with a Board.

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Steve Nelson is CEO of the Institutional Limited Partners Association or ILPA, a non-profit that engages, empowers and connects limited partners (LPs) to maximize their performance. It has over 500 member institutions that represent $2 trillion in private assets under management or approximately 50% of the global institutional market.  ILPA is the only global organization dedicated exclusively to advancing the interests of LPs and their beneficiaries through best-in-class education, research, advocacy, and events.

Our conversation covers Steve’s twenty years at Cambridge Associates leading to his time at ILPA, the mission of ILPA and the ways it achieves that mission.  We then turn to the most important needs of private asset allocators before this crisis, their focus during this challenging period of time, and the current status of capital calls, position marks, subscription lines, communication between managers and clients, impacting investing, and the outlook for ILPA’s efforts going forward.

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Mark Baumgartner is the CIO of the Institute for Advance Study, where he oversees a $1 billion portfolio that seeks to achieve just median returns but with significantly less risk. Prior to joining IAS, Mark had stints at the Ford Foundation overseeing risk, at Morgan Stanley’s Alternative Investment Partners, at both quantitative and qualitative hedge funds, and as a management consultant. Oh, and he studied to be a rocket scientist before that.

Our conversation covers Mark’s path to IAS and the principles of luck, risk, and uncertainty on that path. We discuss the IAS portfolio, one catered to achieve a low risk profile, and how he has stayed the course when that structure hasn’t been rewarded by markets. We talk about identifying managers that fit into his approach and different metrics of defining risk at both the manager and portfolio levels. 

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Michael Mauboussin is the Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global, a $70 billion equity manager. Michael is renowned for his ability to articulate important investment concepts backed by academic research. His first of three prior conversations on the show is replayed in the feed. You can find the rest at capitalallocators.com.

Our conversation explores Michael’s most recent piece on pattern recognition, including when it works and when it doesn’t. We then transition to discussing the changing nature of public markets, inspired by another of Michael’s recent research reports entitled Birth, Death, and Wealth Creation.

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Larry Siegel is the Gary Brinson director of research at the CFA Institute Research Foundation and an independent consultant, writer and speaker. Before his “retirement”, he spent fifteen years as the head of research at the Ford Foundation and a dozen before that at Ibbotson Associates.

Our conversation starts with lessons Larry learned in his time as an allocator and turns to his recent paper describing the 10 Myths of investing, an allocator’s version of Byron Wien’s annual surprises. After walking through each, we touch on his recently released book “Fewer, Richer, Greener,” which offers a case for long-term prosperity and growth, even amidst the unexpectedly challenging times we’re currently facing.

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Matt Whineray is the CEO of New Zealand Superannuation Fund or Super Fund, one of the highest performing, most innovative and well-regarded large-scale investment allocators in the world. The New Zealand government created the Super Fund in 2001 to help defray the costs of retirees in the country in the decades to come. Matt joined the organization in 2008 and became the CEO in 2018 and oversees NZ$42 billion.

Our conversation starts with Matt’s background and the creation and objectives of the Super Fund. We then walk through the Super Fund’s investment philosophy, which is guided by four competitive advantages or endowments and nine investment beliefs. From there, we dive into the implementation of the strategy, covering the risk allocation process, reference portfolio or benchmark of liquid assets, long-term risk budget and medium-term tactical targets across five risk baskets. We discuss the difference between these risk allocations and a traditional asset class structure, hybrid structure employing internal and external managers, internal strategic tilting program, structure of the team, current perspectives on asset classes, ESG, scaling activities to support upcoming inflows, and culture.

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Richard Lawrence is the Executive Chairman of Overlook Investments, a leading value-oriented investment firm in Asia that he founded in 1991. Richard was an early guest on the show telling Overlook’s story, and that conversation follows in the feed.

Over the years, Richard grew passionate about the environment and ESG principles, and quietly integrated them in Overlook’s research process starting a decade ago. Our conversation covers the ESG integration lens at Overlook. We discuss stories of early governance challenges in Asia and the development of modern finance technology, social issues related to the quality of businesses, and environmental considerations of excluding industries, reporting challenges, principles, and tradeoffs. We close with Richard’s philanthropic work on climate change and in the closing questions, his take on US-China relations.

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In a new feature on the podcast, we will share an audio version of Ted’s blog, called What Ted’s Thinking (or WTT). His latest discusses frauds and why you're not likely to detect the next one.

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Morgan Housel is a partner at Collaborative Fund and one of my favorite writers about investing. Morgan recently released his first book, The Psychology of Money, and I’ll go on record and predict it will be a best-seller in short order.

Our conversation starts with Morgan’s non-traditional education, his path to writing, and his process for writing each week. We then turn to the book and discuss some anecdotes about luck and risk, greed, compounding, patience, and tail events. We close with two of Morgan’s personal stories – one about his own investing and the other, which seems inconceivable as you listen, about his lifelong challenge with stuttering.

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Seth Klarman is a legendary value investor and CEO and Portfolio Manager of The Baupost Group, an investment firm founded in 1982 that manages $27 billion. Seth authored the very out-of-print Margin of Safety and edited the recently released 7th edition of Graham and Dodd’s value investing classic, Security Analysis.

Our conversation covers Seth’s early experience in business and investing, path to Baupost, timeless value investing principles and those that have changed over time. We discuss Baupost’s application of value investing across sourcing, diligence, portfolio construction, and risk management. We then turn to Seth’s thoughts illiquidity, international investing, the weird current environment, positioning portfolios for it, alignment with clients, succession at Baupost, and his updated perspectives on Securities Analysis and Margin of Safety. We close discussing Seth’s personal investments in the Boston Red Sox, horse racing, and philanthropy.
Seth generally stays away from the public eye, so I was particularly grateful to share this conversation some twenty-five years after we first met.

For full show notes, visit the episode webpage here.

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Stan Miranda is the Founder and Chairman of Partners Capital, a $50 billion OCIO that started in 2001 as a solution for private equity founders. Earlier in his career, Stan spent 17 years at Bain & Company, rising to Chairman of the Worldwide Executive Committee and leading its private equity practice.

Our conversation covers the founding of Partners, learning the endowment model from first principles, and scaling Partners over the years since. We discuss the firm’s original interpretation of the endowment model, manager selection process, evolution of the endowment model since. Along the way, we touch on a range of portfolio and business management challenges, including team structure, internal and external management, succession planning, and insights across asset classes.

For full show notes, visit the episode webpage here.

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Jennifer Prosek is the founder and CEO of Prosek Partners, a leading international public relations and financial communications consultancy with offices in New York, London, Los Angeles and Connecticut. Prosek Partners ranks among the top 10 independent public relations firms in the U.S., and among the top financial communications consultancies.  The firm has been listed as an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company for nine years running.  Jen is also a two-time author. 

Our conversation covers the foibles of professional marketing in asset management, building a brand, measuring a successful branding effort, managing the story of weak performance, and describing the differences in hedge fund and private equity branding.  We then turn to some of Jen’s fascinating observations learned from her experience, including raising entrepreneurial children, working with millennials and Gen Z staffers, and implementing the principals of ‘Just Ask’, behave with humanity, and not thinking in black and white.

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Bill Orum is a Partner at Capricorn Investment Group, one of the largest and longest standing mission-aligned investment organizations. Capricorn oversees $9 billion across three distinct but related investment strategies - an OCIO serving families and foundations, a seeding business that backs impact asset managers, and the Technology Impact Fund, a venture capital fund focused on clean technology and climate solutions.
Bill joined Capricorn twenty years ago in the firm’s infancy with the mission to deliver extraordinary investment results by leveraging market forces to scale solutions to global problems with a focus on the climate.

Our conversation covers the establishment of an investment program to match the Capricorn’s mission, universe of available investment opportunities to address climate solutions, and Capricorn’s strategy to implement.  We discuss seeding new funds, venture capital, emerging markets, public markets, current opportunities, and the potential for a long-term solution for the world.

For full show notes, visit the episode webpage here. 

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Sachin Khajuria is a former partner at Apollo and twenty-five-year veteran of private equity who recently authored “Two and Twenty,” a fantastic insider’s account of the private equity industry.

Our conversation covers Sachin’s rationale for writing Two and Twenty, the strengths of private equity, areas for improvement, and needs for change. We discuss the defining traits of the industry across the sourcing process, depth of research, use of operating executives, ability to pivot, and democratization of alternatives. We close by discussing opportunities and risks going forward, and Sachin’s application of his insights to investing at his family office.

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Michael Mauboussin is the well-known investment strategist currently plying his wares at Blue Mountain Capital. He joined me for the second time to discuss his new research entitled “Who’s on the Other Side?”

Our conversation dives into the work, discussing how investors can focus on process over outcome, the four types of investment edges, behavioral traits of single and group portfolio managers, portfolio position weighting, informational edges available from paying attention and complexity, the principal-agent issues that create cycles and opportunities during dislocations, the growth of private markets, and implementing his research. We close with a discussion of data analytics in the game of lacrosse.

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I’ve been thinking about what it takes for allocators to lower the fee burden charged by managers on the path to increasing net returns.

Read Ted’s blog here.

Chamath Palihapitiya is the founder and CEO of Social Capital, where he invests in private businesses, public markets, and experiments with that objective of compounding capital at high rates so that he can advance humanity by solving the world’s hardest problems. Chamath previously was an early employee at Facebook, a prolific angel investor, and co-founder of the venture capital business that was the first version of Social Capital. He’s been in the press of late for raising and deploying a series of large SPACs and for his outspoken views.

Our conversation covers Chamath’s path to Facebook and Social Capital, his period of self-discovery, and the resulting Social Capital 2.0 to express his views of the world. From there, we dive into SC Emerging Managers, Social Capital’s newest program to back managers from diverse backgrounds. Lastly, we circle back to the purpose of Social Capital and how Chamath gets it all done.

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David Blood is co-founder and Senior Partner of Generation Investment Management, a pioneering sustainable investing firm he started with seven partners in 2004, including Vice President Al Gore.

Our conversation covers the importance of culture in organizations, building businesses at Goldman Sachs, and David’s fortuitous introduction to Al Gore. We turn to Generation’s investment philosophy, principles, and investment process, including its focus on desirable industries, great businesses, and integration of ESG factors in research. We close by looking out at the next 5-10 years and addressing the urgency of the initiatives to improve the climate and social injustice.

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Ben Reiter is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and the author of Astroball:  The New Way to Win It All.  He joined SI in 2004 a few years out of college and has written for them ever since. In 2014 Ben wrote a cover story for SI entitled YOUR 2017 WORLD SERIES CHAMPS featuring the then sorry Astros who were the laughingstock of baseball at the time.  Three years later, his prediction came true. His book chronicling the journey has been dubbed Moneyball 2.0.

Our conversation blew me away in how closely the parallels have been between baseball management and fundamental investing over the last 15 years.  From the incorporation of data to the challenges in managing people, I suspect if you just change the names of the players and the labels for the process, this could be a full blown conversation about investing. Baseball may even be ahead of the data revolution in investing, and the story of the Astros could hint at lessons that money managers will need to apply going forward. 

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I’d like to invite you to attend a special bootcamp on Decision Making I’ll be teaching on July 20th at 11am EST.

I’ll share actionable frameworks with special clips from Annie Duke, the legendary decision-making expert, bestselling author, and former professional poker player.

The one-hour webinar is one of the most popular classes of Capital Allocators University and is chock full of insights to take back to your team in the investment office.

The cost to attend is $250 and Capital Allocators premium members will receive a 50% discount.

If you’re interested in attending and are not yet a premium member, you may want to consider subscribing first and receiving our library of transcripts, weekly email, and a whole bunch more, for effectively half off the first year of membership.

Log on to capitalallocators.com and click University to register for the bootcamp. And before you do that, click on Premium and sign up.

Hope to see you on July 20th.

A few months ago, Marcel van de Hoef interviewed me on his podcast, The Meeting Strategist.  He created Meeting Strategist to help senior professionals across industries think more strategically about business conversations and improve their listening, questioning and meeting skills. 

With his permission, I’ve shared that discussion on this week’s show.  You can learn more about his work at meetingstrategist.org.

Our conversation starts with my background and covers my communications with Warren Buffett, characteristics of successful active managers, manager meeting structure, culture assessment, tools for effective listening, lessons I learned from David Swensen, and my preparation and conducting of podcast interviews.

Please enjoy my thoughts on interviewing and manager meetings, with Marcel van de Hoef asking the questions.

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Sarah Williamson is the CEO of FCLTGlobal, a non-profit consortium of large asset managers, allocators, and corporations dedicated to encouraging long-term behavior in business and investment decision-making. FCLTGlobal conducts research, convenes business leaders, develops actionable tools, and generates broad awareness of ways in which a longer-term focus can increase innovation, economic growth, and future savings.

Prior to joining FCLTGlobal in 2016, Sarah spent 21 years at Wellington Management Company, where she was most recently a Partner and Director of Alternative Investments.  She started her career at Goldman Sachs, and had stints at the U.S. Department of State and McKinsey before joining Wellington.

Our conversation beings with Sarah’s career and turns to FCLTGlobal. We talk about potential improvements at the corporate level, including eliminating quarterly guidance, executive compensation,  capital allocation, and Board dynamics, and then turn to the relationship between money managers and allocators, including fee structures, setting expectations, reporting returns, and governance. Lastly, Sarah discusses new research initiatives. 

I’m pulling for Sarah.  If her work bears fruit, we all will be better off, and most importantly, so will our clients.

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Shane Parrish is the founder of Farnam Street, host of the Knowledge Project Podcast, and author of Brain Food, a weekly email full of timeless insight for business and life. His goal is to uncover the best of what other people have already figured out.

Our conversation covers Shane’s background, work in a three-letter-intelligence agency, and creation of Farnam Street. We then discuss the learning loop process and lessons from reading, interviewing and writing. Lastly, we discuss Shane’s application of those lessons to managing a team, investing, building relationships, and forming habits.

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Colin Campbell is a Partner at Bain Capital and co-head of the Partnership Strategies team that manages assets primarily for Bain Capital’s partners in strategies that diversify away from the equity-orientation of the firm’s core. In its search for attractive, uncorrelated assets, the Partnership Strategies team became an early mover in environmental markets.

Both Tom Steyer and Bill Orum cited carbon credits and offsets as a necessary and important near-term component to effect climate transition. Colin’s deep engagement in the space provides a wonderful primer for those interested.

Our conversation dives into Colin’s background and investment approach that led to the discovery of the opportunity in environmental markets. We then turn to his investment thesis, sourcing, description and nuance of compliance and voluntary markets, and implementation.

For full show notes, visit the episode webpage here. 

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3G Capital’s buyout of Burger King may be the most successful private equity deal you’ve never heard about. Over the last fourteen years, or the length of a typical private equity fund, 3G turned a $1 billion investment into $28 billion in value. The annual dividends from the investment accruing to 3G today are around 70% of its invested capital. The deal is one of the highest earning buyouts ever.

3G is an organization with a storied history. Founded by Jorge Paolo Lemann, Carlos Alberto Sicupira, and Marcel Herrmann Telles, the group created an owner-operator model of investing. They rose to prominence through building the largest beer company in the world, initially buying local brewer Brahma in 1989, expanding it and merging with a competitor to become AmBev in 1999, merging with Interbrew to become ImBev in 2004, and taking over Anheuser Busch in 2008 to become AB InBev.

Twenty years ago, Alex Behring, a young star on their team, moved to the US to form 3G Capital and take the approach abroad.
Burger King was the second largest hamburger fast food chain after McDonalds in 2010 when 3G took it private. What it accomplished since then has been extraordinary.

My guests to discuss 3G and the deal are Alex Behring and Daniel Schwartz. Co-Managing Partners of 3G Capital.

Our conversation covers the history of 3G, Alex's journey to form 3G Capital, and the 3G playbook. We then dive into the deal, covering the sourcing and deal dynamics, improving operations, growing the business, taking the company public unexpectedly, and reloading to buy Tim Horton’s, Popeye’s, and Firehouse Subs. Today’s Burger King is part of Restaurant Brands International (QSR), a public company with a $32 billion market cap and $50 billion enterprise value.

This classic deal will widen your aperture on what’s possible with a long-term, compounding holding period and operational excellence.

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Jeff Glass is the Cofounder and CEO of Hometap Equity Partners, a novel platform with $1 billion of investments alongside a mission to allow homeowners to access their home equity without having to sell, stress, or borrow. Jeff started the business eight years ago after a series of successes as an entrepreneur followed by seven years investing at Bain Capital Ventures.

Our conversation covers Jeff’s early lessons in sales, entrepreneurship, and investing that led to the founding of Hometap. We then discuss Hometap’s investment strategy, including the chicken-and-egg problem of starting the business, sourcing homeowners, sourcing capital, and developing the team, culture, and infrastructure that brings it all together.

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Jase Auby is the Chief Investment Officer of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, where he oversees the $200 billion pension fund that’s the fifth largest in the U.S. TRS manages assets that support the retirement security of over two million public education employees in Texas, and has long been known as a thought-leading steward of capital in the pension community, including engagement with emerging managers and innovation in fee structures.

Our conversation covers Jase’s background and path to TRS, including early working with computers on Wall Street and entrepreneurship. We discuss TRS’ organizational structure, competitive advantages, and investment approach and close with Jase’s role and accomplishments in his tenure as CIO.

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Morgan Housel is a partner at Collaborative Fund and one of my favorite writers about investing. Morgan recently released his first book, The Psychology of Money, and I’ll go on record and predict it will be a best-seller in short order.

Our conversation starts with Morgan’s non-traditional education, his path to writing, and his process for writing each week. We then turn to the book and discuss some anecdotes about luck and risk, greed, compounding, patience, and tail events. We close with two of Morgan’s personal stories – one about his own investing and the other, which seems inconceivable as you listen, about his lifelong challenge with stuttering.

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Ali Hamed is the co-founder of CoVenture and Managing Partner of the CoVenture VC Fund.  CoVenture is an innovative company that identifies and invests in novel assets formed by the intersection of technology and finance. The firm manages an early stage venture capital fund, direct lending fund, and crypto asset index fund, with each taking a creative twist on its market.

Our conversation starts with Ali’s entrepreneurial path to the creation of CoVenture, and covers examples of previously unpriced investment opportunities, including produce receivables, employee payroll loans, AirBnB accounts, and loans against employee stock options. We walk through the world of crypto assets and the state of the venture capital industry. Ali’s fresh lens on the world offers a fascinating perspective on every aspect of early stage investing.

If I didn’t say it in advance, you’ll be astounded to hear that Ali is only 26 years old.  He’s one to watch for the long-term.

Michael Mauboussin currently is the Director of Research at BlueMountain Capital, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund and asset manager. He spent the majority of his professional career thinking and writing about decision making, behavior and complex systems, with long stints at Credit Suisse and nearly a decade alongside Bill Miller at Legg Mason. Michael has been an Adjust Professor at Columbia Business School for 24 years.

Our conversation covers Michael’s early career, the paradox of skill, academic research more favorable to active management, decision-making, optimal size and composition of teams, unsettling features in the market, data analysis in sports, career risk, the Santa Fe Institute, and Michael’s new research on the horizon.

Every time I speak to Michael I come away thinking better and feeling smarter, and this time was no exception.

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Today's Sponsored Insight features Chad Summe and Mike Veith, Partners at eGateway Capital, a Cincinnati based, thesis-driven firm that focuses on growth stage, enablement technologies that drive the future of digital supply chains, marketing, and commerce.

Our conversation covers their path to creating eGateway, their investment strategy and process. Chad and Mike highlight the firm’s regional and relationship-based sourcing and value add opportunities that benefit from the importance of the Midwest in supply chains and commerce.

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On today’s show, Roz Hewsenian interviews Jan Garfinkle. Roz serves as the Chief Investment Officer of the Helmsley Charitable Trust, an $8 billion foundation dedicated to increasing access to health care. Jan is the founder of Arboretum Ventures, a $700 million health care-focused venture capital firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Arboretum focuses on investments “off the coast” targeting companies that seek to reduce healthcare costs in devices, diagnostics, services and IT. Before they begin, Roz and I discuss her discovery of Arboretum, attractive qualities of the firm, and positioning in Helmsley’s portfolio.

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David Druley is the CEO of Cambridge Associates, a global investment firm that works with premier institutional investors and family offices to manage custom investment portfolios that aim to generate outperformance so they can maximize their impact on the world. David works with Cambridge’s leaders to set and execute the firm’s strategy, enhance its capabilities, and evolve its processes. David brings a quarter-century of investment experience to the role, including a 16-year tenure at Cambridge.

Our conversation covers David’s path from value investing to Cambridge Associates, including a key early career lesson in calibrating risk tolerance. We discuss the history of Cambridge Associates, key characteristics of generating great investment returns, the manager selection process, and David’s take on co-investments, long-only managers, hedge funds, fixed income, innovation, and future opportunities and challenges for the business.

The discussion offers a nice compliment to my earlier conversation with Margaret Chen, who oversees Cambridge Associates’ OCIO business.  You can find that conversation replayed right after this one on the feed.

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Richard Lawrence is the Chairman and Executive Director of The Overlook Group, a $5 billion investment organization focused on Asian equities that Richard founded in 1991. Over the past quarter-century, Overlook developed and implemented disciplined investment and business philosophies that interconnected to drive extraordinary results for its partners. Overlook has compounded capital at an annualized 14.5%, outperforming its benchmark by an insane 9% per annum. But that’s not all, as Richard would proudly tell you himself, the capital weighted return of the average investor in Overlook is nearly identical to the time weighted return over any period of time – a rare feat in the money management industry. Indeed, today’s asset base is the result of $4 billion of investment gains on top of $1 billion in contributed capital.

Our conversation starts with a look at investing in Asia in Overlook’s early days and walks through the particulars of the approach Richard takes to investing and running his business, including attractive investment attributes, management integrity, portfolio construction, selling discipline, and China Yangtze Power - the only stock the firm supersized in an SPV in its history. We discuss Overlook’s long-held cap on subscriptions and periodic reductions in its management fee, two business philosophies that Richard believes have been key drivers of Overlook’s success.
If you enjoyed my conversation with Tom Russo, you won’t want to miss this one with Richard.

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Jordi Visser is the President & CIO of $1.7 billion Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers, an asset management firm with a 40-year history of focusing on innovative investment processes and cutting edge thought leadership. 

Our conversation covers Jordi’s decade of learning at Morgan Stanley, and then turns to a deep dive on all aspects of Weiss’ equity market neutral, multi-manager process, including the importance of data visualization to risk management, behavioral alpha, improving portfolio manager performance, blending macro insights with a multi-manager team, factor-based replication, hiring managers, ranking managers, and knowing when to move on.  We then discuss issues with the use of analytics outside of public equities, pending problem caused by high corporate leverage, opportunities in biotech and healthcare, the future of the hedge fund industry, and positioning an asset manager for the future.

Jordi leads a rigorous approach to identifying, assessing, and improving an internal multi-manager team using data analytics.  The transparency and tools he employs are a few steps ahead of where most allocators find themselves today, and as such, his insights can shine a light on the path where all allocators can develop going forward.

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