Sarah Samuels
Partner and CIO, NEPC · 5 appearances on the record.
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investorexecutiveauthorfoundernepc.com ↗
Samuels leads investment strategy, asset allocation, and manager research across public and private markets for NEPC, an institutional investment consulting firm advising nearly $2 trillion in assets. She is also known for advocating financial literacy, authoring the children's book Braving Our Savings, and founding the "30 Seconds of Bravery" initiative.
59statements → 14claims → 9claims resolved → 89%fully supported → 3.78/5average certainty → 1.81/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 11said about them ↓
8 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 3 not checkable as stated how the 14 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
14 assertions · 5 opinions · 31 insights · 9 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 14 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 9 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 3 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 Sarah 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
Samuels: VCs replace 75% of venture-backed founders by the time of IPO
“There's one study that found that about half of founders are replaced by VC firms who've invested in the company by the time they reach the third round of financing, and that's 75% of founders have been replaced by the time a company IPOs.”
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 Sarah Samuels on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Sarah Samuels said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Samuels outlines six-phase change management cycle including a critical danger zone
“The first is loss, so people don't want to change the way to do things usually because we're humans, and then doubt in the new process and their new leader, and then discomfort, and I watched all this happen. It's like a cycle. After discomfort, it's this dang…”
Samuels: NEPC Assigns a Low Weight to Past Performance in Manager Model
“One is that performance is actually a pretty low weight in the model.”
Samuels: Managers Needing an Information Ratio of 2.0 Won't Succeed
“And if they need an IR of two to be successful, I don't think they're going to be very successful.”
Samuels: Smaller asset managers manage risk by gut compared to larger firms
“The larger firms generally know what their exposures are because they have risk management teams who are looking at these things. The smaller firms are much more gut-driven in general in terms of managing risk, and they are sometimes surprised.”
Samuels: Public and private specialists struggle without a common performance language
“And I think that's a big issue with teams, especially when there are specialists in long only versus specialists in privates is creating a common language. You've got multiple uninvested capital and IRR versus time way to return. You've got all sorts of differ…”
Samuels: GPs must groom next-generation leadership at least five years before succession
“Really, you need to start grooming that next generation at least five years before it's time.”
Samuels: On-site diligence remains essential despite remote work tools
“When it comes to the future of diligence, I do think we can do a lot more virtually, but we still need to be traveling and meeting with managers. You miss a lot of stuff when you're not there face-to-face, whether it's the dynamics of the junior person with th…”
Samuels: Private markets AUM approaches $10 trillion, with $2 trillion in VC
“The amount of capital in private markets, it's almost 10 trillion dollars in private markets AUM, and two trillion of that is held by VC firms, which is astonishing when you think about those numbers for early stage investments.”
Samuels: Top private equity vintage returns occur during corrections and recessions
“Some of the best vintage year returns are in years like this, leading up to and during a market correction or a recession.”
Samuels: Allocators cannot successfully time private market vintage year commitments
“Don't try to time vintage your allocations to private markets. You can't do it.”
Samuels: Replicating Swensen's Yale Model Requires Differentiated Selection, Not Formulaic Allocation
“When you think about the David Swenson model, people think it's this recipe that you can replicate by just throwing ingredients into a bucket and throwing them into an asset allocation model, and you're going to get the same results. And the reality is you hav…”
Samuels: Ideal investment committees should have five to seven members
“Ideal committees should be five to seven people. It increases accountability, it increases the preparation, the discussion is different in the room”
Samuels: Private market allocations can only increase 1.5% to 2% annually
“We went from 10 to 20% in terms of target, 10% in privates to 20%, and they want to do it overnight. You can't. You can't increase it more than one and a half to two percent a year.”
Samuels: Extended underperformance triggers founder fatigue and fund turnover
“If we have an extended period of underperformance, it's going to lead to fatigue on behalf of not only the founder, who has accumulated a great deal of wealth in this organization, and may be tempted to fold and say, you know what, I've made my money. I'd love…”
Samuels: Wellington provides in-house executive coaching for senior leaders
“Wellington has a wonderful program where they are basically providing in-house executive coaching and a leadership program for managing directors and even some partners to learn about these skills, and other organizations support a coach.”
Samuels: $60B to $70B has been raised for GP stake funds
“I've seen research that suggests that 60 to seventy billion dollars has been raised for GP stake funds.”
Samuels: Oaktree floated 6% in its IPO and founders cut equity sub-15%
“They thoughtfully saw the need to begin transitioning ownership, and they had a number of liquidity events, including selling a percentage to clients and then to institutional investors via private placement, and then ultimately via an IPO, and they floated si…”
Samuels: NEPC viewed succession as one of largest portfolio risks
“Five years ago, it was very firmly on my radar. We viewed it as one of the largest risks in our portfolio to just put things in perspective.”
Samuels: Prioritize Company Quality Over Job Titles Early in Career
“Don't worry about titles. Go into the best company and you'll find amazing opportunities there.”
Samuels: MassPRIM Defied Stereotypes by Championing Innovation
“Some people might think that state pension funds are overly bureaucratic or risk averse, but Prim was just the opposite. We had a fantastic executive director and chief investment officer in Michael Trotsky. He's still there. He really encouraged us all to cha…”
Samuels: MassPRIM held 240 underlying hedge fund relationships before moving direct
“Our hedge fund portfolio began a long time ago as fund of funds. We realized we had 240 underlying relationships when we looked through those dozen or so fund of funds, and we built a direct program when I was there.”
Samuels: Generalist model works best for smaller investment offices
“We were generalists at Wellesley, which I think is a really good model. It works really well with smaller investment offices, and I learned a lot about how to think like a CIO and allocate capital across the liquidity spectrum and have perspectives on everythi…”
Samuels: NEPC advises and manages over $1.5 trillion across 400 clients
“And we have over one and a half trillion in assets under advisement and under management. We have about 400 clients across seven different client groups.”
NEPC tracks roughly 1,200 high-conviction focus placement managers across asset classes
“Those are the ones we spend our most time on and try to get into our clients' portfolios, and we have about 1200. So that's across equity, credit, multi-asset, hedge funds, private equity, private debt, and real assets.”
The other half of the tape: Sarah Samuels's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 10 times in 7 episodes on Capital Allocators. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ted Seides 6Kip McDaniel 4
Statements about Sarah Samuels, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2024 6 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- Michael Mervosh - Invest in Yourself (EP.402)
- CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401)
- Todd Simkin - Game of Trading at Susquehanna (EP.399)
- Rob Small and Anil Seetharam - Public Equity Adjacent to Private Equity at Stockbridge (EP.397)
- Charles Duhigg- Secrets of Communication (EP.394)
- Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392)
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2017 4 mentions in 1 episode
Appearances (5)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Succession - Sarah Samuels on Generational Transitions (EP.400) | Aug 12, 2024 | 30m |
| Blythe Masters - Fintech Innovation at Motive Partners (EP.376) | Mar 25, 2024 | 4m |
| Jonathan Tepper - Buying Monopolies at Prevatt Capital (EP.375) | Mar 18, 2024 | 4m |
| Ted Seides – Unlocking Investment Wisdom (EP.352) | Nov 23, 2023 | 3m |
| Sarah Samuels – Framework and Rigor at NEPC (Capital Allocators, EP.264) | Aug 1, 2022 | 36m |