David Swensen, every mention
205 scenes · ← back to David Swensen
tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone Ted Seides 293Charlie Ellis 43Alan Forman 31Tim Sullivan 19Kimberly Sargent 19Kip McDaniel 17Ben Inker 15Cameron Passmore 13Anne Martin 12Patrick O'Shaughnessy 11
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where David Swensen comes up
Operator-Led Private Equity at Ethos - Erik Brooks (EP.504)
- ▶ 11:46 Eric Brooks It was a magnificent, exciting, terrifying period of time where I had the opportunity to work with David Swenson, Julian Robertson, and Andrew Golden, who were investors in our fund at the time, and also meet with people that had spent…
Making Mistakes – Josh Steiner (EP.502)
- ▶ 41:21 Josh Steiner I was fortunate to work with David. 8 times in the scene
- ▶ 47:02 Ted Seides I am driving to New Haven to join David for a hockey game and poker. 18 times in the scene
Jeremy Grantham – Bubbles, Value Investing, and the Long Game at GMO (EP.493)
- ▶ 59:09 Ted Seides Jeremy, for many years you had a close working relationship with David Swenson.
Michael Kelly – Democratizing Access to the Middle Market at Future Standard (EP.473)
- ▶ 12:37 Mike Kelly And of course, as you were very familiar with David Swenson, then in the mid eighties adopted the endowment model and began to say, I want to invest the way these sophisticated pools of capital are investing.
Jay Ripley – Emerging Manager Selection at GEM (EP.470)
- ▶ 49:15 Jay Ripley When I was doing my original LP study, I was reading all the seminal texts from Swenson and Klarman and all these folks, and was learning a ton about investing and what's worked for institutions and endowments over time.
Ted on Alt Goes Mainstream (EP.458)
- ▶ 0:41 Ted Seides Our conversation covers David Swenson's Last Thing Legacy, perspectives on private market interests from the Wealth Channel, parallels of private equity and the hedge fund industry, behavioral biases in manager selection, and the power of…
- ▶ 6:33 Ted Seides My first job out of college was working for David Swenson at the Yale Endowment long before he wrote his book. 7 times in the scene
- ▶ 8:43 Ted Seides So David wrote a second book that didn't get nearly the traction of the first book, and it was geared towards individuals. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 10:49 Ted Seides Just like David would say, you have to go back to first principles, and that starts with
- ▶ 28:19 Ted Seides It starts, I would say, going back to my time with David with first principles.
Tim Sullivan – Yale's Private Portfolio (EP.456)
- ▶ 4:40 Ted Seides He joined the Yale Investments Office upon graduation from Yale College in 1986, just one year after David Swenson took the helm. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 7:01 Tim Sullivan When David Swenson got the job in 1985, there were no articles in the Wall Street Journal about him getting a job at Yale Endowment.
- ▶ 10:41 Tim Sullivan One insight David had early on particularly was financial engineering as a commodity. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 18:06 Tim Sullivan And it was really the period in time where David made his reputation. 7 times in the scene
- ▶ 22:58 Tim Sullivan We also always had an appreciation for what does leverage mean relative to your return, and David was one of the first people to think about
- ▶ 1:03:35 Tim Sullivan David had some great insights about what is it going to take to succeed in these two investment strategies.
- ▶ 1:07:50 Tim Sullivan One of David's true talents was he was really good at a lot of different things. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:11:46 Tim Sullivan Whereas we want to make a huge amount of money in China, as China opened up as an investment opportunity, but a lot of that happened because of our relationship with Lei Zhang, who founded Hill House, and he happened to go to Yale's…
- ▶ 1:12:40 Ted Seides So David came out with his first book around 2000, and that opened the door 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:16:20 Tim Sullivan One is David, obviously. 4 times in the scene
Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452)
- ▶ 4:32 Ted Seides David Swenson led a movement to an approach to portfolio management that broadened the asset mix to alternative investments, including hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and real assets.
David Breach – Software Specialist Enters Private Wealth (Private Wealth 6, EP.450)
- ▶ 4:32 Ted Seides David Swenson led a movement to an approach to portfolio management that broadened the asset mix to alternative investments, including hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and real assets.
Kipp deVeer – Scaling for Private Wealth Globally in Credit (Private Wealth 5, EP.449)
- ▶ 4:32 Ted Seides David Swenson led a movement to an approach to portfolio management that broadened the asset mix to alternative investments, including hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and real assets.
Kristin Kallergis Rowland – Alts at J.P. Morgan's Private Bank (Private Wealth 4, EP.447)
- ▶ 4:32 Ted Seides David Swenson led a movement to an approach to portfolio management that broadened the asset mix to alternative investments, including hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and real assets.
Eric Mogelof – KKR's Pivot to Private Wealth (Private Wealth 3, EP.446)
- ▶ 4:32 Ted Seides David Swenson led a movement to an approach to portfolio management that broadened the asset mix to alternative investments, including hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and real assets.
James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445)
- ▶ 28:38 James Clark I very much bought into David Swenson's book, Pioneering Portfolio Manage. 4 times in the scene
John Mathews – Steering the Largest Wirehouse at UBS (Private Wealth 2, EP.444)
- ▶ 4:32 Ted Seides David Swenson led a movement to an approach to portfolio management that broadened the asset mix to alternative investments, including hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and real assets.
Michael Sidgmore – Alternatives Go Mainstream (Private Wealth 1, EP.443)
- ▶ 4:32 Ted Seides David Swenson led a movement to an approach to portfolio management that broadened the asset mix to alternative investments, including hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and real assets.
David Zorub - Navigating Hedge Fund Headwinds at Parsifal (EP.434)
- ▶ 39:51 David Zorub Certainly within a portfolio like ours, I think in our first conversation at Columbia, I wished for a world that looked more like David Swenson's original formulation of long short, where he was putting a four to five percent short rebate…
Brett Barth and Evan Roth – Stewarding Family Wealth at BBR (EP.433)
- ▶ 9:29 Brett Barth And the big innovation, and you'll know, as a Yale guy, Ted, it was David Swenson's pioneering investment management.
- ▶ 38:50 Brett Barth So we allocate to strategies, not asset classes, and we talked a little while ago about David Swenson and stocks, bonds, and other.
Michael Choe - Atomization of Private Equity Decisions at Charlesbank (EP.432)
Year in Review 2024 (EP.424)
- ▶ 8:11 Ted Seides My training under Dave Swenson was always the optimal money manager is a boutique, single strategy, doesn't grow, optimizes on performance, doesn't optimize on business profits.
Chris Heller - Ten Years of Weird Alternatives (EP.420)
- ▶ 8:37 Ted Seides So in terms of that core strategy, if you circle back before the 10 years, so the 20, 25 years when Dave Swenson wrote his book,
WTT: Yale Backs Emerging Managers… and Then What?
- ▶ 1:05 Ted Seides Despite Yale's amazing success backing early stage funds under David Swenson, this program is a different animal.
- ▶ 3:01 Ted Seides David Swenson was extraordinarily successful in backing early stage investment talent. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 5:24 Ted Seides Yale held this imprimatur under David Swenson.
- ▶ 8:00 Ted Seides David Swenson built a network of top performers and leaned into multi-decade relationships to source the next generation of talented founders. 2 times in the scene
David Salem - Investment Wisdom from the Owner's Box (EP.409)
- ▶ 5:01 Ted Seides David Swenson, Jack Meyer in his time at Harvard Management Company, Charlie Ellis, Chuck Feeney from Atlantic Philanthropies, and many other leading CIOs and managers.
- ▶ 11:32 David Salem Swenson hadn't even yet arrived in Yale in May of 1985. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 18:09 David Salem We decided then, with a lot of help from a lot of people, including particularly Swenson and Jack Meyer, we set up all the private programs at TIFF.
- ▶ 18:52 David Salem It was Swenson here and Jack Meyer there, and Mike McCaffrey from Stanford, Larry Landry from MacArthur. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 24:57 David Salem He was for a long time the chair of the Yale Investment Committee when David was the CIO.
- ▶ 29:39 David Salem I couldn't really do that with David Swenson and Jack Meyer and say, no, sit there for 45 minutes.
- ▶ 1:06:07 David Salem I talk about Swenson all the time, and if you said three, he'd be on the short list. 4 times in the scene
Rob Small and Anil Seetharam - Public Equity Adjacent to Private Equity at Stockbridge (EP.397)
WTT: The Investment Manager Playbook - What Allocators Don't See
- ▶ 5:01 Ted Seides Allocators that follow David Swenson's gospel love boutiques with closely aligned interests.
Cliff Asness - Simple Investing is Hard (EP.385)
- ▶ 50:07 Cliff Asness If you go back to the David Swenson, I think a lot of the idea of private equity was illiquidity in all its effects, not being able to trade out, not knowing what the real prices are perfectly. 2 times in the scene
Letitia Johnson - Concentrated and Long-Term at Amherst College (EP.382)
- ▶ 10:43 Letitia Johnson In the later part of my first year, I read an article in the Yale Alumni Magazine about David Swenson.
Training Grounds – Carnegie Corporation of New York (EP.377)
- ▶ 4:47 Ted Seides Ellen Schumann became Carnegie's first CIO in 1999 after working for David Swenson at Yale.
Brian Christiansen – High-Conviction Growth Investing at Sands Capital (EP.361)
- ▶ 9:27 Ted Seides At the outset, you said you were reading Swenson and there are these characteristics of investment firm and one of his well-known characteristics was also a value bias. 2 times in the scene
Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357)
- ▶ 41:22 Gary Sernovitz But, you know, you reverse engineer it, and it's like Swenson. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 44:55 Gary Sernovitz Ellen Schumann line of the Swenson Tree, of the Ellen Schumann branch, and so this is Lisa Maul, and Kim Liu, and Meredith Jenkins, and now it's Brian Ken Lee, and their curiosity of people, and motivations, and how you think.
Ted Seides – Unlocking Investment Wisdom (EP.352)
- ▶ 6:41 Sarah Samuels And you were trained under David Swenson. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 8:41 Ted Seides So I was there from 1992 to 1997, and the reason those years are relevant is David didn't write his seminal book until 2000. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 14:15 Ted Seides As I mentioned, there weren't any other opportunities, and David really liked keeping things quiet and insular. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 25:38 unnamed speaker David wrote his book to share a way of thinking about investing. 14 times in the scene
- ▶ 28:39 Sarah Samuels So what portfolio would David build today? 3 times in the scene
Bruce Ou – Private Market Investing at GroveStreet (EP.347)
Alan Forman – Yale Endowment Real Estate (EP.340)
- ▶ 4:37 Ted Seides For three decades, Alan was one of the core four at Yale, alongside David Swenson, Dean Takahashi, and Tim Sullivan.
- ▶ 7:26 Alan Forman I interviewed for the job, and it took a few months to get through the process, and I picked up and moved to New Haven and was working for some guy named David Swenson that nobody had ever heard of before. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 9:14 Alan Forman And we were going to see them, and I said to David, do you want me in this meeting? 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 20:03 Alan Forman Early on, Dave was very involved, maybe even in first meetings in many cases. 10 times in the scene
- ▶ 22:25 Alan Forman Also, David was very focused on the mission of the organization and Yale specifically, whether it was basketball games or financial aid or working with students, and that was fantastic.
- ▶ 26:30 Alan Forman And myself and one of my colleagues went to David and the president of Yale, and we said, we have a plan to redevelop this asset.
- ▶ 28:27 Alan Forman David Swenson was a first principles investor, and he looked at the real estate business in the eighties and said, this doesn't make any sense. 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 48:06 Ted Seides I'm coming from the lens of knowing that David wasn't particularly fond of any outside ownership. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 51:38 Alan Forman It was funny because I said to David at my 30th review, I've done this for 30 years. 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 54:58 Alan Forman I would have to say David and Ellen Schumann. 3 times in the scene
WTT: The Real Yale Model
- ▶ 0:05 Ted Seides A few weeks ago, somewhere on a sunny beach, I sat down with David Swenson's revised edition of Pioneering Portfolio Management that he wrote just before the financial crisis and published in nine, nine years after his original work. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:08 Ted Seides The Yale model in David Swenson's words. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 3:00 Ted Seides David's words of warning. 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 4:56 Ted Seides What David said on illiquidity. 15 times in the scene
- ▶ 7:38 Ted Seides What David said on asset allocation. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 8:55 Ted Seides What David said on active management. 8 times in the scene
- ▶ 10:06 Ted Seides What David said on private equity and venture capital. 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 11:47 Ted Seides What David said on rebalancing. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 12:49 Ted Seides What David didn't say. 10 times in the scene
Stan Miranda – Modern Endowment Model at Partners Capital (EP.334)
- ▶ 10:56 Stan Miranda We just went to the next asset class, and the next asset class, and the next asset class, pulled out a blank sheet of paper, reminded ourselves what the Swenson book said, but really pulled out a blank sheet of paper and said, how do we…
- ▶ 16:48 Stan Miranda May not be your definition, may not even be David Swenson's definition, but it had three pillars. 2 times in the scene
Kimberly Sargent – Passion and Mission at the Packard Foundation (EP.333)
- ▶ 4:34 Ted Seides Kim is a well-respected member of the Yale diaspora, having started her career under David Swenson. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 7:25 Kimberly Sargent By the grace of people doing me favors, someone ended up introducing me to David Swenson, and he hired me, and he took a chance on me, and here I am. 16 times in the scene
- ▶ 12:10 Kimberly Sargent I think I read Dave's pioneering portfolio management and underlined and highlighted three times.
- ▶ 55:25 Kimberly Sargent Well, we talked about David, not only because he got me into this industry and took a chance on me, for which I'm very grateful. 2 times in the scene
Ted Seides – The Art of the Interview (EP.330)
- ▶ 13:18 Ted Seides I saw this intuitively that David Swenson would do. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 57:31 Ted Seides Dave Swenson was my doubles partner at the New Haven Lawn Club. 4 times in the scene
Seth Klarman – Timeless Value Investing (EP.328)
- ▶ 1:13:36 Seth Klarman The endowment world, following your and my mentor's wisdom, Dave Swenson,
- ▶ 1:19:19 Seth Klarman And then Seth Alexander, who's another wonderful protege of Dave Swenson, and somebody you and I both know and appreciate, wrote about endowment management.
Adam Shapiro – Post-Breeding Grounds for Rising Stars and Families (Capital Allocators, EP.319)
- ▶ 36:30 Adam Shapiro Should have the option to spend 95 plus percent of their time not thinking about investing, but should have the level of care that you would expect if you were the Yale endowment and your money was being managed by David Swenson, or now,…
- ▶ 42:53 Adam Shapiro When we first created our business, we were very much inspired by David Swenson, the Yale endowment, and the endowment model, but we also had quite a different perspective on how to build the portfolio.
Amy Falls – From Bonds to Boards to Leading Northwestern (Capital Allocators, EP.316)
- ▶ 11:26 Amy Falls In 1998 or nine, and so I did, and that just really opened my mind to this whole world of endowment management, and at the same time, Barton Biggs, who I adored, periodically would write a book report, because he was, maybe didn't want to… 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 27:54 Amy Falls One of the things we talked about was David's view of culling versus weeding.
- ▶ 1:05:18 Amy Falls It's really hard to pick two, but it's really easy to say David Swenson had the biggest impact, but there have been many others. 2 times in the scene
Ashby Monk – Investor Identity, Navigation, and Resilience (Capital Allocators, EP.312)
- ▶ 43:59 Ashby Monk Everybody has tried to copy the Swenson model, so you can understand why they're so careful.
Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300)
- ▶ 1:10:10 Tom Steyer In terms of people who are professional counterparts or partners for me, the three people who were in senior positions and really impacted me were Bob Rubin, Warren Hellman, and David Swenson, who was the head of the Yale Investment Office.
Venture Capital Panel – Beezer Clarkson, Chris Douvos, and Joelle Kayden (Capital Allocators, EP.299)
- ▶ 25:04 Chris Douvos And it made me think of, you know, David Swenson once said the secret to Yale success in private markets was that they got off the bus one stop too early rather than one stop too late.
- ▶ 45:28 Chris Douvos And we've all got, like, an example of that, and that, that really kind of tugs at my, like, you know, Swenson-esque, get off the bus, one stop too early rationale.
Charley Ellis - Figuring Out Investing and Vanguard (Capital Allocators, EP.286)
- ▶ 58:20 Charlie Ellis That's David Swenson. 11 times in the scene
Friends Reunion 2 – Five Allocators Riff on Investing with Meredith Jenkins, Casey Whalen, Brett Barth, Jon Harris, and Ted Seides (Capital Allocators, EP.271)
- ▶ 56:28 Ted Seides Before we wrap, last time we did this, we were talking about Dave Swenson when he had passed away.
page 1 of 3 · 100 scenes per page · newest episode first next →