Alan Forman discusses lessons learned from legendary Yale Chief Investment Officer David Swensen on how to efficiently say no to prospective fund managers.
Insight
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…”
Disclosure
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Supported
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…”