The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 18 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Laboy: Direct investors in LP roles must recalibrate their decision cadence
“There's a difference in cadence in decision making, even in the amount of research and analysis you do for every decision. You're calibrating that all the time. And I had perfected that for a high turnover world of direct investing. And when you move over to t…”
Laboy: Allocators should never second-guess managers during due diligence
“The goal is To ask managers questions that hopefully create new thoughts, but you never want to come across like you're second guessing a manager. That's not our job. Our job is to understand them and to understand whether our strategies are aligned.”
Laboy: Hewlett Foundation reduced value manager exposure during the COVID pandemic
“We ended up starting to reduce our exposure to, for example, value managers. We thought value would just be a tougher place to be going forward.”
Laboy: Hewlett's next-gen sleeve lowers confidence hurdles but maintains quality standards
“One of the structures that I did is I broke the portfolio into two where I had this core portfolio, and then you carve out a piece of the portfolio for this next generation set of managers where the hurdle isn't lower. We're still trying to find the same quali…”
Laboy: Lacking upfront criteria introduces personal bias risk into manager selection
“If I don't have a set of clear criteria ahead of time, I'm going to end up picking the shiny object that resonates with me. Then you're going to be introducing a certain factor risk, which is your own biases into the portfolio.”
Laboy: Hewlett Foundation maintains a documented 'kill list' for every manager
“One of the things that I've done, and we borrowed this from Annie Duke and her book Quit, we've put together what we call is a kill list. For every manager in our book, we have what we call kill lists and key debates.”
Laboy: Most Hewlett redemptions stem from internal strategy shifts, not talent
“What ends up happening more times than not is that You end up redeeming from a manager because we're shifting our perspective on what's changing in the market. We have to redeem from a manager that otherwise I think is extraordinarily talented, and I wish them…”
Laboy: Hewlett separates evaluating macro opportunity sets from specific manager selection
“When we're selecting a manager, we break apart opportunity set and manager selection. The steps are, we gain conviction on the opportunity set. Because we run as one team, one approach, Once we have an idea of the opportunity set, like at Everest, we're lookin…”
Laboy: Traditional emerging market risks now apply to developed markets
“Markets have indeed changed, and all of those risks that I mentioned now describe any country in the world, not just emerging markets and developed markets are somehow the bastions of the opposite of all of those things.”
Laboy: Old economy companies will differentiate through their application of technology
“It's no longer about tech versus the rest of the world. Old economy names are now going to differentiate themselves based on how they apply tech.”
Laboy: Pitching "quality compounders" cedes narrative control to the LP
“The minute a manager comes in and tells you that they invest in quality compounders, the part that we all don't realize is they've ceded control of the conversation now to the listener. When you use a buzzword like that, the listener is going to fill the gap i…”
Laboy: Top portfolio managers show coherence between strategy and emotional makeup
“This is what makes great PMs. Coherence. Their investment strategy aligns with how they think. Their emotional makeup. That's the most important thing we look for with a manager, is their alignment between their strategy and how they think.”
Laboy: Everest Capital hit 5-to-1 payout on Brazil's Lula election
“Within two months, the market went up 23%. We made our five to one payout on our option strategy, all the money on the cash trade.”
Laboy: PMs use fund marketing to stress-test ideas during LP meetings
“Marketing served two purposes. You had the defense and the offense. The defense was protecting myself against the down here. The offense was that I thought a lot about the portfolio and how I was investing it in those meetings.”
Laboy: Buy-side tenure helps LPs spot cultural shifts during diligence
“When Everest closed and the whole team moved to RWC, I got to see how the same group of people, their energy changed, how a culture changed, and there was a lot of learnings, because in the end, as allocators, we're sitting on the outside trying to understand …”