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John-Austin Saviano

Founder & Managing Partner, High Country Advisors · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderinvestorexecutiveLinkedIn ↗highcountryadvisors.com ↗

Saviano founded High Country Advisors, where he advises emerging managers and institutional allocators on firm building, capital raising, and governance. He previously spent nearly two decades as an allocator, serving as the inaugural CIO and President of the Berkeley Endowment Management Company and holding roles at Cambridge Associates and the Moore Foundation.

12statements → 3claims → 1claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 2.08/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 1 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 9 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 1 names 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 John-Austin 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

Assertion Supported
Saviano: Some endowment CIOs have compensation benchmarked against rival schools
“You have CIOs that have compensation that is benchmarked against how they did versus their rival schools.”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 39:06 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)

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 John-Austin Saviano on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything John-Austin Saviano said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
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 …”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 13:17 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Saviano's only disastrous fund investment was an established franchise fund
“The only disaster fund, really, truly disaster fund I ever invested in was not an emerging manager. It was a high Roman numeral fund that had a murderous row of great LPs invested in it.”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 25:05 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Insight
Saviano: Evaluating fund managers requires analyzing portfolio company fundamentals directly
“When it goes down to spending time with a fund manager, you go to the assets, you go to the companies to get down to the fundamentals and you start there and you build your understanding up from there.”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 8:00 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Insight
Saviano: Diversify Portfolios by Asset Behavior, Not Asset Class Labels
“How something behaves is far more important than what it's called. And so when you build an asset allocation, you describe the behaviors that you expect out of that asset, and you build a portfolio, you diversify a portfolio of different behaviors rather than …”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 17:01 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Insight
Saviano: Public endowments cannot afford top allocator hires and must cultivate internally
“Because again, on a place like Cal, you can't go out and hire the tip top best real assets allocator in the marketplace because you don't have that kind of money. You got to really cultivate, grow people from within. And this was one way of adding leverage to …”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 21:59 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Saviano: UC Berkeley Allocated One-Third of Capital to Emerging Managers
“About a third of our capital across different and different parts of the portfolio went to firms that would really reasonably be considered emerging.”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 23:25 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Insight
Saviano: LPs pull back on blind pools but always fund great deals
“Blind pool, committed capital is incredibly scarce right now because there's so many other things that are taking LPs time and attention, but people always say yes to a great deal in an environment where there are lots of things going on. If you've got an extr…”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 35:53 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Insight
Saviano: Emerging fund managers should lean into co-investments
“The idea is for a lot of fund managers, To take some lessons from a fundless sponsor, leaning into taking more co-investments so your fund dollars go longer, you're buying yourself more time of capital deployment, while at the same time, you're also increasing…”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 36:10 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Insight
Saviano: Peer comparison among universities is an enormous distraction for CIOs
“So one thing that comes up a lot for CIOs is I would say the peer comparison. This is especially true for colleges and universities where there's just such a football game approach to it and whose school is beating whose. And I think it's an enormous distracti…”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 38:08 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Assertion Supported
Saviano: Some endowment CIOs have compensation benchmarked against rival schools
“You have CIOs that have compensation that is benchmarked against how they did versus their rival schools.”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 39:06 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Insight
Saviano: Governance quality is the top determinant of long-term fund success
“The most important determinant of long-term success for any pool of capital is the quality of its governance. And that starts with the investment committee chair.”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 44:06 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)
Insight
Saviano: A founder's key test is recruiting talent with better options
“One of the early markers is, can you compel someone to join your team who's had better options than taking a risk on your startup idea or your new firm? That's a great marker. You're telling people that are experienced and have other options, something that th…”
John-Austin Saviano Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 33:20 John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294)

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) Jan 30, 2023 34m
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