Today’s Sponsored Insight features Jim Falbe. Jim is the founder of Saguaro Capital Management, a newly launched value-oriented investment firm spun out of Vulcan Value Partners that blends traditional value investing with modern AI and data science inputs. Our conversation covers Jim’s path to value investing, experience at Vulcan, introduction of AI automation into the investment process, and founding Saguaro. We discuss sourcing the best businesses in the world, researching investments, makin...
Jun 08, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep 320•Transcript available on Metacast Adam Shapiro is the Managing Partner of East Rock Capital, where he oversees $3 billion on behalf of a handful of families investing primarily in hedge funds and private deals alongside early-stage sponsors. Adam has recently begun sharing his insights on a LinkedIn newsletter entitled “From Star to Founder.” Our conversation covers Adam’s background, his investment objectives for families, and his process for achieving them. We discuss East Rock’s assessment of managers, portfolio construction,...
Jun 05, 2023•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to Mavis Tire Express Services on Private Equity Deals. On Private Equity Deals this week, our 7th and penultimate episode of season 2 features the purchase of longstanding independent tire dealer Mavis Tire Express Services by recently launched private equity firm BayPine. Mavis is a great business with steady cash flow, economic resilience, and a great management team that was a widely sought after asset in an auction process. You might imagine that it commanded a full price and the att...
May 31, 2023•52 sec•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s episode is a true hedge fund master class. We convened a panel of three longstanding investors in the space - Craig Bergstrom, CIO and a Managing Partner of Corbin Capital Partners, Adam Blitz, CEO and CIO of Evanston Capital Management and a past guest on the show, and Dan Fagan, portfolio manager at GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. All three have been in the space the better part of two decades and have both a wealth of experience and nuanced understanding to share. Our conversa...
May 29, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Ep 318•Transcript available on Metacast Adam Blitz is the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Evanston Capital Management, a $4.5 billion hedge fund of funds manager with a decade and a half of experience managing hedge fund portfolios. Adam joined Evanston at its inception in 2002 and leads investment research and portfolio management. Previously, he worked in the Prime Brokerage area and Asset Management Division of Goldman Sachs and served as head trader at AQR. Adam earned a B.S. in Economics at the Wharton School. Our conversatio...
May 29, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast I share a bunch of questions on my mind for which my best answer is “I Don’t Know.” These include issues around sovereign debt, asset allocation, an economic slowdown, the stock market, private credit, and life itself.
May 27, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s sponsored insight is another empty room, an opportunity ignored by most investors because they either don’t want to or can’t participate. This time around, we’ll discuss investing where capital is truly scarce - the frontier of the frontier markets. Kiyan Zandiyeh is the CIO of Sturgeon Capital, a +$300 million private investment firm that backs bold founders building the leading technology companies in countries early into their digital transition, including Bangladesh, Central Asia, Eg...
May 25, 2023•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Amy Falls is the CIO at Northwestern University, where she oversees the school’s $14.2 billion endowment that supports university operations and funds about a quarter of the University’s annual revenue. She also serves on the Board of Harvard Management Company, the Ford Foundation, Phillips Academy, and the Pete Peterson Foundation. Our conversation covers Amy’s background and path to Northwestern, frameworks she learned along the way, and different challenges she faced in three different CIO s...
May 22, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep 316•Transcript available on Metacast Last Thursday, we lost Sam Zell, one of the true investment greats and one of the most popular past guests on the show. As a small tribute to the great man and investor, we are replaying my conversation with Sam from last year. Please enjoy the incredible and entertaining story of Sam Zell, the true contrarian whose common sense generated uncommonly exceptional returns – in dollars and in a life well lived.
May 20, 2023•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. ...
May 17, 2023•54 sec•Transcript available on Metacast Marc is the Chairman, CEO, and Co-founder of Avenue Capital Group, a global investment firm focused on distressed debt that he founded in 1995 with his sister, Sonia Gardner. Almost thirty years later, Avenue manages $12 billion in assets. Our conversation covers Marc’s background and path to investing, the early days in distressed, inflection points in Avenue’s history, including the decision to return half the capital in 2011 and to sell a minority stake to Morgan Stanley, and owning a stake i...
May 15, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep 315•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s Sponsored Insight is from Richard Craib, the Founder and CEO of Numerai, a machine learning-based hedge fund launched in 2015 that crowdsources models from data scientists around the world to predict stock returns, incentivizes participation through cryptocurrency, and centralizes portfolio construction and risk management. Our conversation covers Richard’s background, some basics of data science, and the Numerai thesis. We discuss the firm’s idea generation, incentive system, quantitati...
May 11, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tony Yoseloff is the Managing Partner of Davidson Kempner Capital Management, a forty-year-old, $40 billion multi-strategy investment management firm that specializes in opportunistic credit and event-driven investing. Tony joined DK twenty-five years ago out of business school and became its third Managing Partner in 2019. He also sits on the investment committees of Princeton University, Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, and New York Public Library. Our conversation covers the early days of Davi...
May 08, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Ashby Monk is the Executive & Research Director of the Stanford Research Initiative on Long-Term Investing. Ashby has studied and advised the largest asset owners in the world for more than twenty years with a particular interest in how to improve outcomes for their beneficiaries and the world. Ash also serves as the Head of Research at Addepar, a fintech company that helps investors make smarter decisions. He has twice appeared on the show – as the 29th guest back in 2017 and again two year...
May 01, 2023•1 hr•Ep 312•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Ashby Monk is the Executive and Research Director of the Stanford University Global Projects Center. Ashby was named by CIO Magazine as one of the most influential academics in the institutional investing world. His current research focuses on the design and governance of institutional investors, with specialization on pension and sovereign wealth funds. Ashby’s most recent book, The Technologized Investor, is a practical guide showing how institutional Investors can gain the capabilities fo...
May 01, 2023•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Ashby Monk is the Executive and Research Director of the Stanford University Global Projects Center. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the University of Oxford, a Senior Advisor to the Chief Investment Officer of the University of California, and the co-founder of Long Game. Ashby advises sovereign wealth funds and large pension funds, and is involved with a bunch of fin tech companies, all of which attempt to create innovative solutions to fixing the financial future for individuals...
May 01, 2023•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast My guest on today’s sponsored insight is Aaron Sack, the head of Morgan Stanley Capital Partners, Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s middle market private equity business. Our conversation covers Aaron’s path to Morgan Stanly sixteen years ago, the strengths and weaknesses of investing under the umbrella of the bank, and his team’s investment principles and approach across sourcing, due diligence, deal making, and operational improvements. We close discussing the current market dynamics, com...
Apr 27, 2023•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast On today’s show, we’ll discuss a continuing empty room – an opportunity ignored by most investors because they either don’t want to or can’t participate. We’ve shared conversations under the theme about investing in Venezuela, Africa, CLO equity, tax assets, and biotech. Among them, biotech is a room that just keeps getting emptier, so I thought it would be fun to pay it another visit. Rod Wong is the founder and Managing Partner of RTW Investments, a life sciences-focused investment and innovat...
Apr 24, 2023•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to Yahoo on Private Equity Deals . The fifth episode of Season 2 of Private Equity Deals releases today. We discuss Apollo’s purchase of Yahoo a year and a half ago. You heard that right – Apollo bought Yahoo. Yahoo is comprised of legacy Yahoo and AOL businesses, which peaked at a combined market cap of $350 billion in the dot.com heyday. It still hosts 900 million monthly active users and is the 3rd largest internet property. So what did Apollo see as the potential in this longstanding,...
Apr 19, 2023•54 sec•Transcript available on Metacast Mario Giannini and John Toomey lead two of the largest private equity fund investors in the world. Mario is the CEO of Hamilton Lane, which manages over $100 billion and supervises another $700 billion in non-discretionary assets, and John is half of the Executive Management Committee of HarbourVest, which also manages in excess of $100 billion in the space. Both are past guests on the show, and we’ve replayed those conversations on the feed. Mario and John joined me to canvass private equity ma...
Apr 17, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mario Giannini is the CEO of Hamilton Lane, where he oversees nearly $1 trillion of assets under management and advisement in private capital, making it perhaps the largest investor in private equity in the world. Mario joined Hamilton Lane thirty years ago and has spent the last 21 as its CEO. His breadth of knowledge and experience, alongside at times unconventional views, offers an unparalleled bird’s eye view into this powerful area of investing. Our conversation covers Mario’s background an...
Apr 17, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast My guest on the first episode of Private Equity Masters is John Toomey, one of two members of the Executive Management Committee at HarbourVest Partners. For more than thirty years, HarbourVest has invested across all parts of the private equity spectrum - in funds, secondaries, and direct co-invests. Today , it oversees over $75 billion of assets and canvasses the world. Our conversation discusses the early days of private equity investing, evolution of strategies across primaries, co-invests, ...
Apr 17, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s sponsored insight is a special podcast drop from our friends at Thoma Bravo. If you liked the episode with Orlando Bravo on Capital Allocators or Scott Crabill’s discussion of RealPage on Private Equity Deals, Season 1, you’re going to love this. Thoma Bravo has launched a new podcast called Behind the Deal , which takes you behind the scenes of one of the largest software investors in the world. It’s an insider’s view of Private Equity Deals – offering a first-person account from the de...
Apr 13, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Coach Paul Assaiante is the winningest coach in college sports history. For 30 years until announcing his retirement at the end of this season, Coach led the Trinity College squash program to 17 national championships and 20 finals appearances in the last 25 years, including at one point winning 252 straight matches and 13 straight national titles. In his final season, Trinity’s squash team entered the national championships with the #6 seed and rode an almost fairy tale bookend to Coach’s caree...
Apr 10, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast The mismanagement of SVB’s balance sheet got me thinking about other times in the past investing through periods when asset prices felt inflated across the board. Institutions strive to meet return hurdles pretty much year-in and year-out, but that’s not how markets work. Playing for Tomorrow discusses one of my favorite long-term investing disciplines – positioning portfolios to play for opportunities yet to come. Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing...
Apr 08, 2023•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to Yellowstone Club on Private Equity Deals The fourth episode of Season 2 of Private Equity Deals drops today on the Private Equity Deals podcast feed. This time around Sam Byrne from CrossHarbor Capital Partners joins me to discuss the Yellowstone Club. The Yellowstone Club is a private ski mountain located in Big Sky, Montana, whose exclusive members reportedly include Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Justin Timberlake, and Tom Brady. CrossHarbor bought the Club out of a messy bankruptcy in 2...
Apr 05, 2023•57 sec•Transcript available on Metacast Tom Joy is the Chief Investment Officer at the Church Commissioners of England, where he is responsible for the stewardship of the Church of England’s £10.1 billion endowment fund. Our conversation covers Tom’s background, the history and goals of Church Commissioners to achieve sound returns with modest volatility and invest responsibly. We discuss Tom’s four pillars to achieve these objectives across governance, people, genuine diversification, and operations, and dive into team structure, int...
Apr 03, 2023•58 min•Ep 306•Transcript available on Metacast My guest on today’s sponsored insight is Andy Lee, the Founder and CIO of Parallaxes Capital. Andy spun out of Lone Star in 2017 to focus on the niche opportunity to invest in Tax Receivable Agreements or TRAs. Our conversation covers Andy’s background and path to the hidden gem of TRAs. We cover the basics of a TRA, rationale for their use, drivers of return, and risks. We then discuss Parallaxes’ investment process, team, the future of the organization. For full show notes, visit the episode w...
Mar 30, 2023•38 min•Ep 305•Transcript available on Metacast Adam Rodman is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Segra Capital Management, the largest fund dedicated to investing in nuclear power across public and private markets. Adam founded Segra in 2013 to focus on a concentrated portfolio of contrarian, underfollowed investment ideas. In turn, this led to a dedicated focus on nuclear power. Both Tom Steyer and Bill Orum discussed nuclear power as an essential, although very long-term component of addressing climate needs. Adam’s insights provi...
Mar 27, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Since I wrote Short-Term Gain, Long-Term Pain three weeks ago, we certainly hit a big one. I had a chance to take a step back and draw from my experience working at Yale for some parallels. Suffice it to say David Swensen didn't play the game like SVB did, but I think I know how he would've been spending his time to prepare for what comes next. Read Short-Term Gain, Long-Term Pain, Part 2 Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing list Access Transcript wit...
Mar 25, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast