Alan Forman
Founder, Blue Orchard Capital · 1 appearance on the record.
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Alan Forman spent over 31 years at the Yale University Investments Office, serving as Director of Real Estate alongside David Swensen. After leaving Yale, he founded Blue Orchard Capital to advise real estate investment managers on governance and operations.
30statements → 8claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.8/5average certainty → 1.57/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →
3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 4 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
8 assertions · 9 insights · 12 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Alan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
David Swensen modeled Yale's real estate strategy on private equity and VC
“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. And he thought that the fee-based nature of the business, there was no alignment of interest. There was lots of sepa…”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Alan Forman on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Alan Forman said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Reference calls are less useful for real estate diligence than venture capital
“We found that the due diligence calls, which is very common, underwriting venture firms, wasn't as helpful in the real estate business. It's a less collegial business. On a venture deal, two venture firms can be on the board of a company, and they're working t…”
Yale endowment rejected Steve Jobs' pitch for the first Apple Store
“They wanted to open up their first Apple store in our building, and we were very close to wrapping up a deal with someone else. We spoke to Steve Jobs, and he explained his vision for the business, which, to be honest, is exactly what turned out to be the case…”
Yale economists advised the endowment to prioritize manager selection over theoretical portfolio modeling
“And it's funny, because we went to all these very impressive Yale professors and asked them, how do we create a portfolio? How do we Find the efficient frontier, all these economists like Ibbotson and Stephen Ross and people like that, and they just said, find…”
Negotiating minor legal terms reveals a fund manager's true character
“When you're negotiating the small legal terms, you're getting a sense of what the partner is like, and how they think about things, what they care about, what they don't care about, how available they are, how hard are they working, how responsible.”
The best way to decline fund managers is citing unchangeable structural constraints
“One thing I learned from David was there are certain things that managers can't respond to in a way that would change the outcome, and if you could come up with examples where there's nothing they can do about what their structure is, then you have an easy way…”
LPs have a limited window to become a new manager's primary advisor
“When we back at an early stage manager, there's a window where you need to be the person that they call when they have an issue. And that window doesn't stay open forever. And you need to take advantage of that window so that when they're 20 years later, you'r…”
David Swensen modeled Yale's real estate strategy on private equity and VC
“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. And he thought that the fee-based nature of the business, there was no alignment of interest. There was lots of sepa…”
Forman: Yale structured real estate partnerships around GP co-invest and overhead-only fees
“Well, we're very focused on alignment of interests. So whether it's having a meaningful co-invest, whether it's fees that cover overhead, and hopefully are in a huge profit center, there's one pool of assets. So we're all in it together for better or for worse…”
Forman: Rapid endowment growth prevented Yale from reaching private asset targets
“So it probably would have been fully built out sooner had the endowment not grown as much, but it was growing so fast that we were always trying to project where we needed to be and we would never get there. And that was true in all private asset classes.”
Yale Endowment passed on real estate sectors without the right partner
“Historically, we took a pass on the sector. If we couldn't find the right group, we just did not pursue the sector. And industrial was a good example where even once the sector became much more interesting and institutional, it took us a while to find the righ…”
Forman: Post-GFC real estate flipped from alpha-driven to sector beta-driven
“I think one thing that's really interesting that's changed in the real estate business that you were getting the beta regardless of the property type. So focusing on alpha was all that mattered. Unfortunately post GFC that's completely flipped on its head. So …”
Yale's real estate portfolio allocated 80% to 90% to sector specialists
“I'd say the portfolio was probably 80 to 90% specialists, and we just thought being really good at one thing was the way to go, and a lot of the companies were vertically integrated, and they had an ability to add value and do it all themselves.”
Forman: Yale Moved Away From Real Estate Firms Adopting Multiple Strategies
“We didn't invest with a lot of groups that had these really broad platforms. There were some hedge funds that did stuff. There were definitely some real estate firms that tried to do multiple strategies. We tended to move away from them over time as they tried…”
Forman: Yale completely avoided emerging market real estate investments
“One of the smartest things we didn't do is we didn't do any emerging market real estate, and we actually didn't spend any time even looking at it.”
Forman: Yale real estate program invested exclusively in equity
“So essentially, Yale has always just been an equity investor. Unless it's an opportunistic thing within an equity structure, we tended to only invest in the equity, and we only wanted the inflation protection.”
Forman: Real estate firm leaders are dealmakers, not organizational managers
“The guy who got to the top of a lot of these real estate firms is a deal guy. And he's not a organizational guy, and he's not an investment management guy in the same way that maybe in other asset classes.”
A fund manager going public marks the end of Yale's investment relationship
“Once one of our partners goes public, it's the beginning of the exit of the relationship.
It may not happen overnight.
We're usually a very large shareholder of the entity.
Sometimes we're on the board.
So exiting is slow, but there's no more opportunity to in…”
Yale's biggest mistake was giving too much leeway to manager strategy drift
“I think the biggest mistake I made at Yale over the years was managers that had some strategy drift in their portfolio, and because they had done very well in a different strategy, we gave them a little bit of too much of the benefit of the doubt, and I wish w…”
Forman: Yale Did Lion's Share of Legal Work for Real Estate LP Groups
“And in most cases, Yale was doing the lion's share of the legal work on behalf of the investor group.”
Forman returned every phone call because top early talent lacked marketing polish
“The one thing I always did, I took every call. My pride at the end of the day was I returned every phone call, usually before I went home that night. I always felt I really like this business, so I like talking to a lot of people, but I just felt like you neve…”
Forman: Yale's committee usually approved David Swensen's investment recommendations
“What David recommended to the committee more often than not was approved. So, I mean, David was the big hurdle. That we had to get over internally.”
Forman: Committing investment ideas to writing exposes flaws and quality
“And when you put something in writing, it exposed the flaws or how good it was. You were forced to do that, even though you probably weren't learning a lot from the writing process, just the act of putting it on paper was really important.”
Forman: Yale paid $14 million for 50% stake in 717 Fifth Avenue
“And believe it or not, we paid fourteen million dollars for a 50% interest in a Fifth Avenue asset, which is mind-boggling these days.”
Forman: Yale acquired full ownership of 717 Fifth Avenue for $60M total basis
“When they agreed to sell the deal for, I think, forty-seven million in the mid-nineties, Yale stepped up and matched the offer. So we're in the deal for sixty million bucks, and it was almost a 500,000 square foot asset.”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Alan Forman – Yale Endowment Real Estate (EP.340) | Sep 25, 2023 | 39m |