Disclosure
Williams College endowment no longer backs dedicated oil and gas funds
“Similarly, we no longer do funds dedicated to the extraction of oil and gas.”
Insight
Allocators are rewarded for returns, not investment difficulty, says Wattley
“In this business, we don't get points for difficulty. We get points for making money. You don't necessarily have to always go find the least discovered idea. If somebody's recommending a manager to you over and over again, for example, probably worth taking th…”
Disclosure
Williams College avoids co-investments and direct investments at its $4.5B scale
“Things that we don't do right now that we've wondered, should we do more of? For example, we don't do co-invest. We don't underwrite direct investments. We're at four and a half billion.”
Opinion
Late-stage venture winners are still compounding despite lack of liquidity
“For most of those companies, we agree with our venture managers that they're still compounding. Whether or not they're publicly traded, they're still great companies, and we're going to benefit long-term from their continued growth.”
Disclosure
Williams College recently raised allocation targets for buyouts and venture capital
“One of the things that we did do over the last few years was increase our target to buyouts and venture.”
Disclosure
Williams College endowment holds only 1% to 2% of portfolio in cash
“We're fully invested. We only maintain between one and two percent Of the portfolio in cash.”
Disclosure
Williams College cut its fixed income allocation from 10% to 1%
“We did reintroduce it about a year ago as rates came off of zero, but it's still a modest position. It's one percent position in our portfolio, and it's meant to be that rainy day. It's not a big piece of what we do anymore. It used to be 10% of the portfolio …”
Opinion
Major AI process changes are premature given rapid tooling evolution, says Wattley
“The technology is changing so quickly that in some ways it feels premature to put a big stake in the ground and make some big investment or process change when in a quarter from now, The tools that are available to us could look entirely different or 10 times …”
Disclosure
Williams College uses LLMs to find off-sheet diligence references in its network
“Somebody discovered recently that it's great at suggesting off-sheet references. We found some really good off-sheet references by saying this is who we're doing diligence on. Who in my network would you talk to?”
Assertion Supported
Williams College endowment supports nearly 60% of the operating budget
“Our job is to earn a five percent real return to make sure that we're doing that with the appropriate level of risk that we're taking, ensuring that we have sufficient liquidity because we support nearly 60% of the operating budget for the college.”
Disclosure
Williams College automated data aggregation for 350 endowment line items
“We used to have probably a person and a half worth of people time doing that work. We have 350 different line items in this portfolio.”
Disclosure
Williams College investment team re-underwrote its entire portfolio for new directors
“We have re-underwritten the entire portfolio because you have to when you have new people coming on board and taking over responsibility for asset classes.”
Disclosure
Williams College endowment historically avoids secondary market transactions
“Another thing we talk a lot about, but we haven't done much of, is participate in the secondary market, whether it's selling pieces of our existing portfolio or buying pieces of other portfolios.”
Disclosure
Williams College targets a 27% allocation to absolute return and hedge funds
“Today, our target allocation across our long, short, and absolute return portfolio is 27% in aggregate.”
Disclosure
Williams College adjusts private market pacing models amid slower liquidity
“From our perspective, there is no big headline change in how we're thinking about the role of private asset classes. Where it does change is our modeling as it relates to our commitment pace modeling. If the expectation is going to be that things may be less l…”
Disclosure
Williams College endowment maintains $150 million in credit lines for liquidity
“We also maintain a hundred and fifty million dollars worth of lines of credit for the investment office.”
Insight
Early CIO tenure is exhausting because minor decisions set institutional precedent
“Early on, even the smallest decision can feel very consequential, because you feel like you're establishing the expectations, the path, the process. You think about things a lot, and it's exhausting. Eventually, you've set the path, Some of those little decisi…”
Assertion Supported
Seven investment professionals manage the $4.5B Williams College global portfolio
“We're seven investment people covering the global opportunity set.”
Disclosure
Williams College requires all investment staff to join AI working groups
“We have multiple different working groups across the team that are focused on different themes within AI. Everybody on the team is on at least one team, if not more.”
Assertion Supported
PIMCO once ran a bond boot camp taught by Bill Gross
“I remember going to a PIMCO bond boot camp for a week. They used to run this amazing boot camp, spent a week out in California. Bill Gross was there, and they had all their senior PMs teaching us everything there was to know about bonds.”
