Brian Bares is the founder of Bares Capital Management, a $5 billion long only investment boutique that employs independent, qualitative research on growing companies to build highly concentrated portfolios. Our conversation covers Brian’s early life investing lessons, bootstrapping an asset management business, and finding product-market fit. We then turn to his investment approach, highlighting target companies across business quality, management, and growth, the research process, position siz...
Apr 26, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Cade Massey is a Professor at the Wharton School where his research focuses on judgment under uncertainty, or how, and how well, people predict what will happen in the future. In particular, he studies people analytics, or how to predict who will perform well in the future. Cade is the co-host of the “Wharton Moneyball” podcast and for many years, he’s studied talent selection at the NFL draft, which frames our discussion in advance of this year’s draft next week. Our conversation starts with Ca...
Apr 19, 2021•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast In our continuing exploration of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, headlines of late have turned to NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. From NBA Top Shots to Beeple’s artwork, NFTs are the hottest use case in the crypto ecosystem. My friends at a16z recently released an episode on their wildly popular a16z podcast called All About NFTs, featuring Linda Xie from Scalar Capital and Jesse Walden from Variant Fund, interviewed by Sonal Chokshi. Their conversation covers the definition, use cas...
Apr 15, 2021•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Yen Liow is the founder and Managing Partner of Aravt Global, a fundamental global equity firm based in New York that manages long-short and long only products. Yen founded Aravt after a long stint at famed family office Ziff Brothers Investments, where he was part of the team that managed a market, neutral long-short hedge fund in a culture of framework thinking and continuous improvement. Our conversation covers Yen’s background, experience at ZBI, and lessons about process, competitive edge, ...
Apr 12, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep 188•Transcript available on Metacast Dominic Garcia serves as Chief Investment Officer for the Public Employees Retirement Association of New Mexico (PERA), a $16 billion pension system that serves over 90,000 members and provides over $1.2 billion in annual benefits. Dominic is a native of New Mexico, began his allocator career at New Mexico PERA and returned to re-join the system in 2017 as CIO after nearly a decade at SWIB, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board. Our conversation covers Dominic’s path to the helm at PERA, chall...
Apr 05, 2021•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jeff Housenbold, a Managing Director for the last four years at Softbank Investment Advisors, where he led one of the six investment teams that deployed the $100 billion Softbank Vision Fund. Prior to joining Softbank, Jeff worked at sixteen companies, including eleven years as CEO of Shutterfly. four years in the early days of ebay, four as Special Industry Advisor to KKR, and one as Entrepreneur in Residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. He’s also served on the Boards of dozens of companies, includ...
Mar 29, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast As we finish up book launch week, I thought I’d share this interview conducted by Jenny Heller, my friend, the 7th guest on the show, and the President and CIO of Brandywine Group Advisors. We discuss the business of Capital Allocators, entrepreneurship, effectiveness, and investing – including a brief description of my most recent private equity fund investment. Learn More Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe Monthly Mailing List Read the T...
Mar 25, 2021•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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-...
Mar 25, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast I’m excited to share that we have launched our new website at capitalallocators.com or still, at the familiar capitalallocatorpodcast.com . The new site makes it easier for you to engage with everything in the Capital Allocators Community - the podcast, premium content, events, and writing. Speaking of which, my new book, Capital Allocators: How the world’s elite money managers lead and invest, publishes tomorrow. Pick up a copy at Amazon or listen on Audible. It’s now incredibly easy to sign up...
Mar 22, 2021•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast My new book – Capital Allocators: How the world’s elite money managers lead and invest – releases tomorrow. I’ve been on a bit of a podcast tour the last few weeks, appearing on some of my favorite shows. I thought it would be fun to share an interview about the book here, so I asked Patrick O’Shaughnessy to interview me for the show. Our conversation covers the journey of the podcast itself and lessons from the book about interviewing, leadership and investing. Pick up a copy at Amazon, and if ...
Mar 22, 2021•54 min•Ep 184•Transcript available on Metacast Ari Paul is the co-founder and chief investment officer of BlockTower Capital, a crypto and blockchain investment firm he started alongside Matthew Goetz in 2017 with backing from Andreesen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. He started his career as a trader at Susquehanna International Group, and later found his way to the University of Chicago endowment as a portfolio manager, overseeing an internal hedge fund portfolio and assessing risk for the university’s $8 billion endowment. Our convers...
Mar 18, 2021•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Seth Ginns is Managing Partner and Head of Liquid Investments at CoinFund, which he joined a year ago after a seventeen-year run as a large cap growth equity research analyst at Jennison Associates. While in that role, Seth began angel investing a decade ago and became an early investor in Coinbase, Bitcoin, and Ethereum, which eventually led to diving into the space full-time. Our conversation widens the discussion of crypto investments beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum with discussions of base layer...
Mar 15, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Michael Sonnenshein is the CEO of Grayscale Investments, which is the world’s largest digital currency asset manager with $40 billion under management. Grayscale offers investors access and exposure to digital currencies in the familiar format of publicly traded vehicles. Our conversation discusses the basics of how institutional investors can participate in cryptocurrency investing, including counterparties, custody, and on ramping. We discuss Grayscale’s suite of products, its selection proces...
Mar 11, 2021•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eric Peters is the founder and CIO One River Asset Management, where he searches for high conviction strategies coming out of his team’s expertise trading and investing in thematic macro, volatility, systematic, and inflation strategies – each as it turns out, turned his focus on study bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Eric made news in November when he executed a $600 million purchase of bitcoin, then the largest public transaction to date. He has called bitcoin the most interesting macro trade he’...
Mar 08, 2021•58 min•Ep 180•Transcript available on Metacast Chris Dixon is a General Partner at Andreesen Horowitz, where he focuses on the a16z Crypto Funds. Before joining Andreesen in 2013, Chris co-founded, built and sold two technology companies and was a prolific seed investor, founding member of Founder Collective, and personal investor. At various spots along the way, Chris was an investor in BuzzFeed, Uber, Venmo, Hotel Tonight, Coinbase, and Oculus, among many others. Our conversation covers Chris’ early interest in computers and business, and ...
Mar 08, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alex Shahidi and Damien Bisserier are the Co-CIOs and of Evoke Wealth and ARIS Consulting, a $19 billion registered investment advisor they co-founded in 2014. Alex came at the business from a long tenure advising portfolios at Merrill Lynch, and Damien joined after nine years at Bridgewater. Our conversation covers their respective backgrounds, shared investment philosophy, and strategy of searching for uncorrelated returns across public markets, alpha strategies, and private markets. We discus...
Mar 01, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rostin Behnam is the Acting Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. He was nominated and approved by the prior administration in 2017 to serve as one of five Commissioners of the CFTC and in January, accepted the role as Acting Chairman. The CFTC has a mission to promote the integrity, resilience, and vibrancy of the U.S. derivatives markets, working towards effective price discovery and risk management in fair and transparent markets. As a part of his role, Russ sponsors the CFT...
Feb 22, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep 178•Transcript available on Metacast Jennifer Prosek is the founder and CEO of Prosek Partners, a leading international public relations and financial communications consultancy and a popular past guest on the show. In our first conversation, we discussed branding an asset management firm and many of Jen’s leadership nuggets of wisdom. That conversation follows on the feed. Our second conversation discusses the evolution of marketing and brand development in asset management and how the pandemic has accelerated trends already in pl...
Feb 15, 2021•46 min•Ep 177•Transcript available on Metacast 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 foi...
Feb 15, 2021•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Baran and Kazuhiko Shibata are the co-founders of Symphony Financial Partners, a twenty-year old Asia-based manager of $1.3 billion in assets. Symphony focuses on deeply undervalued companies in Japan, with a long-bias, constructive engagement strategy to work closely alongside willing management teams to see intrinsic value reflected in the share price. Our conversation covers their early careers in Japan, the country’s employee first, shareholder last culture, the resulting disconnect of...
Feb 08, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep 176•Transcript available on Metacast I am excited to share the first episode of a new podcast called The Decision Education Podcast . It’s the brainchild of the Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit on whose Advisory Board I serve, whose mission is founded on the belief that better decisions lead to better lives and a better society. In the first season of the podcast, Dr. Joe Sweeney talks to experts and shares tips on all things related to decision making. Today’s special episode is Joe’s interview with Michael Mauboussin...
Feb 04, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s show is a preview of a mini-series coming in a few months, where I’ll be speaking with some of the preeminent leaders in private equity to learn more about what the continuing insatiable interest in the asset class is all about. Paul Salem is a Senior Managing Director Emeritus at Providence Equity. Providence is a premier private equity and asset management firm focused on media, communications, education, software and services with $49 billion in asset commitments. Paul joined Providen...
Feb 01, 2021•57 min•Ep 175•Transcript available on Metacast Collette Chilton is the CIO of Williams College where she has overseen its $3 billion since 2006. Collette is nothing short of a legend in the business. She has sat in a CIO seat since the early 1990s at the helm of public pension MassPrim and corporate pension Lucent before joining Williams. Institutional Investors bestowed its Lifetime Achievement Award on Collette in 2019, and Barron’s named her one of the 100 Most Influential Women in Finance in 2020. Our conversation covers Collette’s caree...
Jan 25, 2021•54 min•Ep 174•Transcript available on Metacast Fran Kinniry is a twenty-three year veteran at the Vanguard Group, where he’s led the teams that spearhead Vanguard’s research into new products. Fran helped Vanguard enter the direct advice business, developed Vanguard’s Advisor Alpha concept, started its Investment Strategy Group, and most recently heads Vanguard’s latest initiative investing in private equity. Our conversation covers an overview of Vanguard business, Fran’s three roles over a quarter century at the firm, behavioral coaching, ...
Jan 18, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep 173•Transcript available on Metacast Chris Dixon is a General Partner at Andreesen Horowitz, where he focuses on the a16z Crypto Funds. Before joining Andreesen in 2013, Chris co-founded, built and sold two technology companies and was a prolific seed investor, founding member of Founder Collective, and personal investor. At various spots along the way, Chris was an investor in BuzzFeed, Uber, Venmo, Hotel Tonight, Coinbase, and Oculus, among many others. Our conversation covers Chris’ early interest in computers and business, and ...
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Clear, author of last year’s New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits, which has already sold 3 million copies worldwide. James also publishes a weekly email entitled 3-2-1 Thursday that works to deliver the most wisdom per word of any newsletter on the web. You can sign up at jamesclear.com Our conversation covers James’ entrepreneurial missteps that led to writing, following what worked to focus on habits, and lessons to build a large audience. We then turn to Atomic Habits, covering the ...
Jan 04, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep 171•Transcript available on Metacast With a big thank you for your enthusiastic engagement with the show, Ted offers a year in review of the podcast and the business behind the podcast. He closes with a countdown of the top episodes of 2020. Learn More Read the Transcript Subscribe to the Capital Allocators Blog or Monthly Mailing List Don't Subscribe, but Let Us Know Who You Are Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides Review past episodes of the Podcast...
Dec 28, 2020•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Dec 28, 2020•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Rasmussen is the Founder and portfolio manager at Verdad Advisers, which he launched in 2014 to replicate the historical success of private equity in the public markets. He’s an outspoken critic of the market’s enthusiasm for private equity, resulting from research he conducted in the business while working at Bain Capital. Our conversation covers Dan’s early education in the Socratic method, research into why private equity works, current risk in the private equity and private credit market...
Dec 28, 2020•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast 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 t...
Dec 28, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast