Capital Allocators

→ WHAT IT COVERS Will Guidara, co-owner of Eleven Madison Park when it ranked number one in the world, explains how businesses can systematize exceptional customer experiences through "unreasonable hospitality" — investing equal energy into how people feel as into the product itself, across industries from restaurants to financial services. → KEY INSIGHTS - **The 95/5 Rule:** Manage 95% of expenses with extreme frugality to earn the right to spend the remaining 5% on relationship-building...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Ryan Lovell, Director of Capital Markets at Chainlink Labs, explains how Chainlink serves as middleware infrastructure connecting traditional finance to blockchain networks, having facilitated over $27 trillion in transactions. The conversation covers tokenization, stablecoin adoption, cross-chain interoperability, and how AI and blockchain technology function as complementary systems.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Katelin Holloway, founding partner at 776, explains how a decade as an HR executive at Pixar, Klout, and Reddit directly maps onto early-stage venture investing. She breaks down sourcing, selecting, and servicing founders through an operational lens, and details how 776 built proprietary software (Cerebro) to scale human-centered portfolio support.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Alexis Ohanian traces his path from co-founding Reddit in 2005 and selling it for $10M after 16 months, through managing social media platform challenges, to building 776 — a venture firm he deliberately structures as a software company, using a proprietary operating system called Cerebro to systematize deal flow, founder support, and portfolio management.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Gavin Baker, CIO of Atreides Management ($7B AUM), details his crossover investing philosophy across public and private markets, covering how deep fundamental research, hypothesis-driven culture, rational decision-making under error, and simultaneous public/private exposure create durable informational and behavioral advantages—particularly in AI and semiconductors.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Sean Warrington of Gresham Partners ($13B multifamily office) and Ed Grefenstette of Dietrich Foundation ($1.6B, 52% allocated to venture) assess the current venture capital landscape from the LP perspective, covering AI pricing distortions, liquidity constraints from stalled IPOs, GP behavior analysis, solo GP dynamics, and geographic opportunities in China and India. → KEY INSIGHTS - **GP Underwriting via Downturn Behavior:** Use 2020–2022 vintage data as a GP filter.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Ed Grefenstette, CIO of the Dietrich Foundation, explains how a $170M charitable pool grew to $1.5B over 27 years by allocating 90% to illiquid private assets — primarily venture capital — while distributing $400M to Western Pennsylvania charities, achieving top-ranked returns across 10, 15, and 20-year periods among all endowments and foundations.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Bobby Jain, CEO and CIO of Jain Global, discusses launching a $6 billion multi-strategy hedge fund from first principles after seven years as co-CIO at Millennium and twenty years at Credit Suisse. He covers the migration of risk-taking from banks to hedge funds, talent strategy, portfolio construction, risk management frameworks, and the structural advantages of building diversified multi-manager platforms from scratch.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Private equity faces a structural exit crisis as unrealized portfolio value reaches $3.6 trillion across 29,000 companies. Strategic buyers and IPOs cannot absorb supply, forcing industry-wide changes in fund structures, LP commitments, and GP relationships as normalization remains unlikely. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Exit Bottleneck Math:** Strategic buyers historically provided 60% of private equity exits but transaction volume stayed flat at 700 deals and $250-300 billion annually...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Stephen Gilmore, CIO of CalPERS, the $600 billion public pension fund, explains the Total Portfolio Approach he's implementing after leading similar transformations at Australia Future Fund and New Zealand Superfund. He contrasts TPA with strategic asset allocation, emphasizing governance improvements, accountability structures, and avoiding procyclical investing mistakes.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Matt Whineray, CEO of New Zealand's Superannuation Fund, explains how the organization manages 42 billion kiwi dollars using a reference portfolio approach with four competitive endowments and nine investment beliefs. The fund targets an 80-20 equity-bond allocation, employs strategic tilting as its largest active risk strategy, and operates with complete operational independence to smooth retirement costs through 2100.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Raphael Arndt, CIO of Australia's $145 billion Future Fund, explains how the sovereign wealth fund operates with a one-team, one-portfolio philosophy. Arndt details their approach to disaggregating beta from skill, managing private markets at scale, navigating capacity constraints, restructuring fee arrangements with external managers, and positioning portfolios for economic scenarios including potential US recession.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Brendan O'Connor, CEO of Regal Partners, explains how his firm grew from 1 billion to 21 billion AUD by building Australia's premier alternatives platform across hedge funds, credit, royalties, and natural assets, leveraging unique structural advantages in Australian markets including the 4 trillion dollar superannuation system and resource-heavy economy.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Jonathan Lewinsohn, co-managing partner of Diameter Capital Partners managing $25 billion across credit strategies, discusses credit microcycles driven by technological disruption and policy volatility. He covers private credit evolution, AI's impact on software lending, housing market dynamics, creditor competition, insurance-driven investment grade markets, and specific opportunities in telecom, chemicals, and healthcare services.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Kristen Van Gelder interviews Jonathan Lewinsohn, co-founder of Diameter Capital, a $6 billion credit-focused hedge fund. Lewinsohn explains their all-weather credit strategy, combining research depth with trading speed across investment grade, high yield, and distressed debt. The conversation covers their COVID-19 response, shorting philosophy, and approach to building concentrated positions while maintaining portfolio liquidity.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Lane MacDonald, CIO of SCS Financial managing $46 billion, discusses his journey from US Olympic hockey player to allocator across Harvard Endowment, Fidelity's family office, and now SCS. He examines how to identify truly differentiated investors, the importance of domain expertise and structural alpha, and building investment platforms that balance scale with nimbleness in increasingly efficient markets.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Nick Rohatyn, CEO of the Rohatyn Group managing $7 billion in emerging markets, explains why traditional mono-asset class investing fails in emerging markets and advocates for horizontal multi-asset strategies. He covers benchmark flaws, currency management techniques, GP acquisitions as growth strategy, and why the current moment represents an inflection point for emerging market capital flows.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Scott Kleinman traces Apollo's evolution from a 13-person private equity boutique in 1996 to a trillion-dollar integrated alternatives platform, emphasizing post-GFC expansion into private credit, retirement services, and origination-focused growth strategy. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Post-Crisis Strategy Shift:** During the 2008 financial crisis, Apollo bought tens of billions in bank debt at discounted prices, recognizing private credit and private equity as two sides of the same...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Ashby Monk explains Total Portfolio Approach implementation at major pension funds, detailing how asset owners like CalPERS shift from traditional bucket-filling to real-time portfolio optimization using AI-powered data systems and integrated risk management. → KEY INSIGHTS - **TPA Implementation Requirements:** Total Portfolio Approach demands real-time portfolio valuation, unified risk budgeting across all assets, and organizational restructuring where compensation aligns...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Ashby Monk explains his investor identity framework for institutional investors, detailing how capital, people, process, and information combine with governance, culture, and technology enablers to determine portfolio performance and strategic capabilities. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Investor Production Function:** Every institutional investor operates through four irreducible components: capital with its encumbrances, people with expertise, process including delegation frameworks, and...