Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Allocator and asset management expert, Ted Seides, conducts in-depth interviews with leaders in the institutional investing industry. Guests include Chief Investment Officers from leading allocators, asset managers, strategists, thought leaders, and many more. Our mission is to learn, share, and help implement the process of premier investors. Learn more and join our community at capitalallocators.com.
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Promote Giving – A New Model for Performance-Driven Giving
<p>My guest on today's special episode is Joel Holsinger, Co-head of Ares' $50 billion Alternative Credit strategy. In addition to his long and stellar career in the credit markets, Joel spearheaded the launch of Promote Giving, a philanthropic initiative similar to Warren Buffett and Bill Gates' Giving Pledge, designed for alternative asset managers.</p> <p><br /> Our conversation covers Joel's path to engaging in philanthropy, starting from humble beginnings to now making grants of $5 million in 2025 through Ares and launching Promote Giving in October.</p> <p><br /> The proposition of Promote Giving is simple – GPs commit up to 5% of their promote on at l...
Bruce MacDonald – The Playbook for Building a Mid-Sized Endowment from Scratch
<p>Bruce MacDonald is the CEO and CIO of the Virginia Commonwealth University Investment Management Company, which runs $2.5 billion for VCU's endowment and health system. Bruce joined the University in 2015 and shortly thereafter, had the opportunity to sell the portfolio and start fresh. Since being promoted to CIO in 2022, VCU has been a top decile performer with a team of just five investment professionals.</p> <p><br /> Our conversation covers Bruce's unconventional path from a religion major at Wesleyan to fixed income investing at Putnam and endowment roles at Columbia and UVIMCO before arriving at VCU. We discuss the principles...
Kieran Goodwin – Private Credit Concerns
<p>Kieran Goodwin is a Partner at Saba Capital, a $6 billion hedge fund manager that seeks to identify dislocations in credit and equity markets to generate convex returns in volatile times. Kieran has been one of the top credit traders on the Street for the last three decades across roles at investment banks in the '90s and early 00's, King Street, his own hedge fund, Panning Capital, and most recently, Saba that he joined in 2024. <br /> <br /></p> <p >Our conversation covers a tour of Kieran's background, including early experience with credit derivatives, growth at King Street, lifespan of P...
Jeremy Grantham – Bubbles, Value Investing, and the Long Game at GMO
<p>Jeremy Grantham is the Co-Founder of GMO, a $100 billion Boston-based asset management firm co-founded in 1977. Over six decades in markets, Jeremy has been one of the most respected and outspoken voices on value, market bubbles, and long-term investing. He recently published The Making of a Permabear with Edward Chancellor, an account of his career and investment lessons learned along the way.</p> <p><br /> <br /> Our conversation begins with Jeremy's early lessons in frugality growing up in wartime Yorkshire and his interest in numbers and investing. We trace his career through the founding of Batterymarch and GMO, the golden period of value, p...
WTT: When the Benchmark Becomes a Bet
<p>Throughout most of my career, the S&P 500 has been an appropriate bogey to assess manager performance. More than that, it's the most widely used benchmark in the capital markets.</p> <p><br /> But today, it doesn't represent the broad-based, diversified exposure to the U.S. economy that most participants take for granted when investing passively or measuring manager skill.</p> <p><br /> This WTT, When the Benchmark Becomes a Bet, considers the evidence, implications, and challenges posed by the current composition of the S&P 500.<br /> <br /></p> <p>Read Ted's blog here.</p> Editing and post-production work for this episode...
Will Guidara – Unreasonable Hospitality
<p>Will Guidara is the author of Unreasonable Hospitality and the soon to release Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide. Unreasonable Hospitality has become a New York Times bestseller and a business bible for elevating customer experiences. Will was co-owner of Eleven Madison Park alongside Danny Meyer when the restaurant ascended to #1 in the world, the co-producer of Emmy Award-winning streaming series The Bear, host of the Welcome Conference, and advisor to business leaders ranging from professional sports to financial services on the delivery of hospitality as a primary business strategy.</p> <p><br /> Our conversation explores the operating principles of "unreasonable hos...
Ryan Lovell – Chainlink: The Infrastructure Pipes for Multi-Chain Finance
<p>Ryan Lovell is the Director of Capital Markets at Chainlink Labs, where he leads the development of blockchain-based solutions for tokenized finance across banking and capital markets. Chainlink has powered more than $28 trillion in transaction value and powers the majority of decentralized finance.</p> <p><br /> Our conversation explores the hidden plumbing of modern finance and the upgrade blockchains provide. We discuss Chainlink's critical role in connecting traditional finance with blockchain technology, the rise of tokenization and stablecoins, institutional adoption, and the intersection of AI and blockchains around a single source of truth for financial transactions.</p> <p> </p> <p>Learn M...
Katelin Holloway – Human Side of Venture Investing at 776
<p>Katelin Holloway is a Founding Partner at Seven Seven Six, a technology-focused venture firm backing great early-stage entrepreneurs that she started with Alexis Ohanian in 2020. Alexis was a past guest on the show, and that conversation is replayed in the feed.</p> <p><br /> Katelin and I explore the intersection of human capital and venture capital. We cover her upbringing, work alongside Steve Jobs at Pixar, and turnaround of Reddit with Alexis. We then turn to the application of her operational experience to venture investing. We discuss 776's sourcing and underwriting of founders, interviewing approach, investment selection, and scaling the highly personal a...
[REPLAY] Alexis Ohanian – From Reddit to 776, a Technology Company that Deploys Venture Capital
<p>Alexis Ohanian is the General Partner and Founder of Seven Seven Six, an early-stage venture capital firm with $1 billion under management that he describes as a technology company that deploys venture capital. Alexis was the co-founder of Reddit, one of the most popular online forums in the world, which he sold 18 months after its 2005 launch for $10 million and returned as Executive Chair in 2014 to help lead the turnaround of the business. In between and since, he has invested in early-stage ventures as a partner at Y Combinator, a co-founder of Initialized Capital, and most recently founder of 776. Despite his...
Gavin Baker – Truth-Seeking and Crossover Investing at Atreides
<p>Gavin Baker is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Atreides Management, which oversees $7 billion across public, private, and crossover strategies focused on technology and the consumer.</p> <p><br /> Gavin's deep knowledge of semiconductors and AI may be second to none, but our conversation barely touches the space. We begin with Gavin's upbringing, intellectual curiosity, and path to investing, before turning to the beliefs that shape his approach. We explore his view that investing is a search for truth best pursued through debate, intellectual honesty, and a willingness to be wrong, and why people, culture, execution, and risk management ...
