Jenny Heller
3 appearances on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
46statements → 3claims → 1claims resolved → 3.89/5average certainty → 1.74/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 6said about them ↓
1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
1 prediction · 2 assertions · 5 opinions · 21 insights · 17 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 2 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 Jenny 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
Lloyd's specialty insurance pricing shifted from a soft to hard market
“What's happened in that space is we got a call from a manager saying the pricing environment has moved from sort of a soft market to a hard market, frankly, for good reason, because there's been a lot of risks that have popped up in the space. It might be an i…”
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 Jenny Heller on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Jenny Heller said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Investment decisions should be highly collaborative but not consensus-driven
“I am not a believer in consensus decision-making, so we aim to have a process that's highly collaborative where we can gather as many viewpoints as possible.”
Microfinance NGOs lost money for beneficiaries in public-private partnerships
“They were involved in some public-private partnerships, for example, that were actually losing money for the people that they were trying to support, but they looked really good on paper.”
Heller: Many fund managers struggle to explain their strategy without jargon
“It's shocking. I think sometimes managers use a lot of jargon when they talk about what they do, and when you ask really basic questions, even they have a hard time explaining it sometimes.”
Tax friction adds a 150-200 bps hurdle to active managers
“Tax efficiency creates, you know, an additional 150 to 200 basis At this point, annual hurdle for every active manager in the portfolio. That's what you can lose through turnover, and it can get worse than that.”
Heller: Active alpha will never reliably return to 2000-era levels
“I think alpha's never going to be as high on a repeatable basis as it probably was in 2000 or one, but we still believe in active management very much.”
Heller: Many institutional investment committees exist merely to rubber-stamp ideas
“A lot of investment committees at organizations like ours, Frankly exist to rubber stamp ideas, and it's very easy to get into that model because you meet with them quarterly, and you're meeting with your team weekly”
Heller speaks last and changes scores most during investment evaluations
“We go through this process, a pretty formal process of assessing investments before we put them in the portfolio. And I listen to all of the team's views because I'm always the last person to speak. And I am always the person that changes my scores the most by…”
Brandywine avoids high-fee, high-turnover, cash-heavy equity managers
“So for our long only portfolio, for example, we have a break-even analysis that we run to look at the returns of a manager, and it's something we do right up front of every process to say, what does a manager need to earn after fees and taxes to beat a benchma…”
Brandywine made a crypto investment, viewing it like the 1990s internet
“And we ended up pursuing a small investment in the space at the end of that process, understanding that there's just huge unknowable risks around regulation, around the investment in tokens and their volatility, around how you're owning something and what you …”
Top venture capital managers tend to strictly limit their fund sizes
“The best managers do tend to really limit their fund sizes dramatically in that space.”
Evaluate fund managers on process quality rather than market outcomes
“And there's a number of KDIs that might fall out of that in terms of the accuracy of their decision making, not necessarily on an outcome basis, but on a process basis, because of course you can't control what the market's going to do, but just looking at the …”
Specialty insurance offers rare uncorrelated returns and semi-liquidity
“And it's really hard for us to find Assets that are relatively uncorrelated and provide liquid-ish, not super liquid, but not ten-year lockup illiquidity that provide the post-tax returns that we look for. We have a pretty high bar for our hedge fund portfolio…”
Brandywine targets multi-decade crypto private equity over liquid trading strategies
“And I think relatively quickly, we came to appreciate that the trading strategies were not a good fit for us. And I do think, by the way, people can make fantastic money doing this, but we didn't really want to have our main bet be on the volatility of the ass…”
Sizing new fund positions at full capacity backfires during early drawdowns
“And the problem with that is when that position does something you don't expect, let's say the returns are horrific for the first couple of quarters, it puts huge pressure on the internal process. And I also think it puts a lot of pressure on your relationship…”
Brandywine rates investments 1-to-5, excluding 3 to eliminate fence-sitting
“We also are really, really believers in using a framework at the end of our process where everyone on the team grades any investment we're doing on a series of criteria that's very, very specific to that investment. On a scale of one through five, not using th…”
Manager advantages vary significantly across venture, buyout, and hedge funds
“So in venture, the advantages might be around personal brand, firm brand. On the buyout side, it might be really around their ability to add value post-close. And on the long only or hedge fund side, it might look, it might be much more around their approach t…”
Early reference calls are key to building an investment diligence mosaic
“So we do reference calls really at the early end of our process, because we find that that's just an incredible way to start building a mosaic.”
High-quality compounders are one of the best long-term inflation hedges
“And these businesses typically trade at a premium on the public side. But I do think that given there's a lot of uncertainty around inflation, it's one of the better tools that we have, again, thinking long-term to protect against that.”
Heller: Good entrepreneurs quickly test and blow up bad ideas
“What sets apart the good from the mediocre entrepreneur is how quickly they can test their ideas. That a good entrepreneur is willing to blow up a bad idea in order to let a good idea thrive, even if it's at a cost.”
Heller: Fast-growing economies leave large non-profits facing major talent deficits
“When you're in a really fast growing economy, talent wants to rush towards technology. They want to rush towards finance. So, so there was a bit of a talent gap in the sector and smaller organizations were figuring it out and filling it, but bigger organizatio…”
Heller: Hedge funds are diversifying strategies, not an asset class
“I know that's a silly thing because hedge funds aren't really an asset class, but a diversifying portfolio in the marketable space.”
Redeeming taxable investments leaves only 75 to 80 cents per dollar
“We are managing taxable money, and that means that the cost of wrong decisions is really high, because if we redeem from a manager, we're often reinvesting a 75 or eighty-cent dollar, so that means that the next manager has to be that much better.”
Heller: Early-Stage Funds Offer Greater Alignment and Cheaper Valuations Than Mature Funds
“It's much easier to do that if you invest in funds when they're small, when the alignment is high, when they can buy businesses more cheaply. If you're investing at fund five or six when there's a really stable business, often the life cycle on the strategy is…”
Heller: Reference checking is easier for private equity managers than public managers
“I found there's just a higher level of transparency often on the private side, where managers can really, really dive in and tell you exactly how they were adding value at companies. You can talk to the CEOs of the companies often because they're small busines…”
The other half of the tape: Jenny Heller's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 6 times in 6 episodes on Capital Allocators. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ted Seides 6
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2023 6 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- Seth Klarman – Timeless Value Investing (EP.328)
- Ravi Viswanathan – Venture Secondaries and Growth Capital at NewView (EP.327)
- Don Mullen –Single-Family Rentals at Pretium (Capital Allocators, EP.324)
- Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323)
- Jim Falbe – Modern Value Investing at Saguaro (Capital Allocators, EP.320)
- Adam Shapiro – Post-Breeding Grounds for Rising Stars and Families (Capital Allocators, EP.319)
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
Appearances (3)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Jennifer Heller – Beginner's Mind with Professional Wisdom at Brandywine (Capital Allocato | Aug 30, 2021 | 34m |
| Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.18 | Mar 25, 2021 | 5m |
| Jennifer Heller – Thinking it Through (Capital Allocators, EP.07) | May 17, 2017 | 40m |