Cambridge Associates
also referred to as: cambridge associate
43 statements across 14 episodes · 23 bullish · 6 bearish · 14 people on the record · first statement Jul 3, 2017 by Chris Douvos · said 182 times in 34 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Ted Seides (81), Margaret Chen (17), Letitia Johnson (11), John-Austin Saviano (10), Liqian Ma (9), Steve Nelson (8), Christy Hamilton (6), Marcos Veremis (4)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Homegrown CIO at Williams College - Abigail Wattley (EP.507)
- Jeremy Grantham – Bubbles, Value Investing, and the Long Game at GMO (EP.493)
- Senior Decision Makers: Nicholas Csicsko, Trinity Wall Street (EP.508)
- Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483)
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2024 19 mentions in 3 episodes 6 per episode
2023 14 mentions in 3 episodes 5 per episode
2022 19 mentions in 1 episode
2021 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- Paula Volent – Star Endowment Manager's Next Act at Rockefeller University (Capital Allocators, EP.219)
- Innovation in Private Markets 3: Sulaiman Alderbas – A Massive Restart at PIFSS (Capital Allocators, EP.194)
- Collette Chilton – Humility and Loyalty at Williams College (Capital Allocators, EP.174)
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 42 mentions in 5 episodes 8 per episode
- Steve Nelson – Assisting Private Equity Allocators Through Turbulent Times at ILPA (Capital Allocators, EP.129)
- Sustainable Investing 2: Liqian Ma – Allocator Perspective (Capital Allocators, EP.140)
- Christie Hamilton – Tweeting on Allocation at Children's Health (Capital Allocators, EP.124)
- Sandra Robertson – Oxford's Queen of Endowment Management (Capital Allocators, EP.130)
- Beezer Clarkson – Sapphire Gem of Early Stage Venture (Capital Allocators, EP.120)
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 38 mentions in 4 episodes 10 per episode
- David Druley – Structure into Action at Cambridge Associates (Capital Allocators, EP. 106)
- Kip McDaniel – How to Get an Allocator's Attention (Capital Allocators, EP.115)
- Jon Harris – Investing in People at AIM (Capital Allocators, EP.105)
- Ash Williams – Florida SBA's Reigning Chief (Capital Allocator, EP.104)
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 31 mentions in 4 episodes 8 per episode
- Margaret Chen – Leadership and Outsourcing the Investment Office (Capital Allocators, EP.35)
- Mark Baumgartner – Luck, Risk and Uncertainty at the Institute for Advanced Study (Capital Allocators, EP.77)
- James Williams – Curating The Getty's Assets (Capital Allocators, EP.50)
- Bill Spitz – Seasoned Commodore (Capital Allocators, EP.37)
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 7 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- Meredith Jenkins – A Path to Trinity (Capital Allocators, EP.31)
- Jim Dunn – Protect, Perform, Provide (Capital Allocators, EP.24)
- Scott Malpass – The Fighting Irish's Twelfth Man (Capital Allocators, EP.25)
- Chris Douvos – Venture Capital's Super LP (Capital Allocators, EP.14)
- Brett Barth – Asset Allocation for Families (Capital Allocators, EP.03)
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
Everything said about Cambridge Associates, oldest first
Jul 3, 2017 neutral
Cambridge Associates Study: Over Half of Top Venture Funds Are Funds I-III
“Hambridge Associates did a study, and they looked at post-two thousand venture funds. The cohort of top 10 funds in each vintage year, typically more than half were funds with a Roman numeral lower than Roman numeral three.”
Sep 18, 2017 positive
Jan 1, 2018 positive
The OCIO industry and its service models will consolidate by 2028
“If we looked up five, 10 years, I'd say we're in the early innings in the sense of there will be consolidation in the industry. And there also, there will be a consolidation of models, you know, in terms of, you know, what clients want in terms of their OCIO p…”
Jan 1, 2018
Jan 1, 2018 neutral
Top-performing private fund managers rotate entirely over twenty-year periods
“If you look at sort of the top performing private funds, they may not be the same as they are in 20 years from now. Well, they won't be the same, you know, in 20 years previous. And so, there's always this I don't subscribe to a fixed pool. I do think that the…”
Jan 1, 2018 neutral
Cambridge Associates lets fund managers decide how to allocate limited client capacity
“So the mechanism is pretty straightforward, and that has to do with, you know, we ensure we're compliant too, but the manager decides. So that fund, the GP, decides who ultimately, as the manager does for any client outside of Cambridge or, you know, within Ca…”
Jan 1, 2018 positive
The initial liquidity phase is critical when managing spend-down portfolios
“The most important concept that I always wanted to, you know, make sure we protected against was the first phase, whatever that is, one, two, three, five, whatever that first phase is, is the absolute most important critical phase. Because if you don't get tha…”
Jan 1, 2018
Jan 1, 2018 positive
Great investment ideas are useless without stakeholder buy-in
“Management consulting is actually excellent for process and being able to take a institution or a group of people through a decision, you know, and so, Advocating for a recommendation. Those are really important skills because you have, you can have the most f…”
Jan 1, 2018 negative
Early financial success blinds young institutional trustees to their own inexperience
“There's so many of even our peers who earn so much wealth at a very young age. Instead of going through the training program and going through the apprentice, you know, everyone says yes to you because you have been so successful so early.”
Aug 19, 2019
Aug 19, 2019 positive
Aug 19, 2019
Aug 19, 2019
Aug 19, 2019 positive
Druley: Co-investments only generate strong returns within a manager's sweet spot
“And what they found out is that when you did co-invest with the managers we like, if you did it in their sweet spot, the sweet spot being either sector or industry expertise or size deal, that co-invest worked out very well. When you did the co-invest outside …”
Aug 19, 2019 negative
Aug 19, 2019 positive
Aug 19, 2019 positive
Aug 19, 2019 neutral
Druley: Cambridge Associates walks away from managers with operational red flags
“On our side, the fundamentals, we could think they're going in the right direction, but if the operational due diligence shows red flags, that's it. I mean, we'll walk away. Now we will give the manager feedback and say, we have issues with these things. We th…”
Aug 19, 2019 positive
Aug 19, 2019 negative
Aug 19, 2019 bearish
Druley: Only 100 to 200 hedge funds merit institutional capital
“What I would say is hedge funds is an asset class not worth the money. That said, there's seven, 8000 hedge funds. We think there's a hundred to 200 that actually do merit institutional capital and continue to merit institutional capital.”
Aug 19, 2019 bullish
Druley: Cambridge still finds significant active value-add in liquid equities
“We are still finding the ability to generate significant value add in the liquid markets, specifically the liquid equity markets. There's pockets of those markets which are harder to generate value add, but in the most part, we're still finding the ability to …”
Aug 19, 2019 bearish
Mar 9, 2020
Jun 11, 2020 bullish
Ma: Software connecting EV charging to grid offers compelling investment value
“One area that we're seeing is a lot of folks that focused on EVs and EV charging, which I think is certainly an area to look at. It's a market that's going down in terms of cost and pricing as more players come in. So I think what's more interesting in that ar…”
Jun 11, 2020 bullish
Jun 11, 2020 positive
Ma: ESG engagement must tie to financial statements to avoid greenwashing
“So again, tying it to the financials, tying it to the economics, the fundamental economic statements are really important when you're having these conversations, because otherwise, we're going back to that greenwashing topic again, and it's not just about the …”
Jun 11, 2020 neutral
Jun 11, 2020 positive
Jun 11, 2020 positive
Ma: Clean tech VC and PE returns rebounded strongly since 2013
“Since really, 2012, 2013, and we tracked this data at the company level in our database of venture and private equity backed clean tech companies. They've actually rebounded quite significantly since 2013, where if you look at the IRRs and the TVPIs of these c…”
Jun 11, 2020 positive
Ma: Industry operators and family offices launch dedicated climate funds
“We're actually also seeing some, especially on the private side, some operationally focused managers who have spun out of industry, of strategics, and even some family offices who have been very active in certain areas like environmental sustainability and cle…”
Jun 11, 2020 positive
Ma: Allocators must probe portfolio holdings to catch ESG inconsistencies
“What's really more relevant when you're engaging with these managers is, okay, let's go through your portfolio, and let's go through your holdings, right? How did you arrive at these decisions, given you have this ESG policy? And sometimes you can call out som…”
Jun 11, 2020 positive
Ma: Allocators should engage all managers on ESG, not just dedicated funds
“We think that there is a strong opportunity for allocators to be engaging with all of their managers on sustainability, on ESG integration, on team diversity, And especially for public equity firms, right, how their practices and policies are reflected in thei…”
Jun 11, 2020 bullish
Ma: Concentrated sustainable global equity strategies add value through market cycles
“We're finding really strong high conviction opportunities in global equities, for example, that have very high concentration and high sustainability oriented approaches. And they have added a lot of value to portfolios because again, they're focused on that du…”
Jun 13, 2022 bullish
Jan 30, 2023 neutral
Saviano: Consultant-driven portfolios will not reach top-decile returns
“And it's the natural thing of a consultant driven pool. You're not going to be top decile. What you're really trying to avoid is you're helping them avoid being bottom quartile. You're helping them really be good stewards of the capital because you're focused …”
Aug 14, 2023
Sep 30, 2024 positive
Mar 24, 2025
Carnegie Mellon transitioned its endowment from Cambridge Associates to internal staff
“It was a great opportunity because they wanted to move the program from consultant-centric to staff-centric. So we were relying on Cambridge. We moved away from them. I hired Chuck Kennedy, who is now the current CIO at CMU, as my number two, and we built out …”
Jan 26, 2026 positive
Mar 23, 2026 positive
Grantham: Foundation beat Harvard, Yale, Princeton over 10 years in Cambridge data
“Three years ago, before the current unpleasantness and the venture capital green business, we were number zero on the Cambridge Associates database, which is their code for number one. On a ten-year basis, we were beating Harvard and Yale and Princeton with ou…”
Jun 29, 2026 negative
Csicsko: Public equities have vastly outperformed broad private markets recently
“You pair that with a public market that's vastly outperformed, the broad private market measured on, say, a Cambridge index level, and it's causing most people I know to have very difficult conversations around what is the future path of private allocation in …”