Top 5 of 2025: #3: Tim Sullivan
Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Release Date: 12/29/2025
Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Kieran Goodwin is a Partner at Saba Capital, a $6 billion hedge fund manager that seeks to identify dislocations in credit and equity markets to generate convex returns in volatile times. Kieran has been one of the top credit traders on the Street for the last three decades across roles at investment banks in the ‘90s and early 00’s, King Street, his own hedge fund, Panning Capital, and most recently, Saba that he joined in 2024. Our conversation covers a tour of Kieran’s background, including early experience with credit derivatives, growth at King Street, lifespan of...
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Jeremy Grantham is the Co-Founder of GMO, a $100 billion Boston-based asset management firm co-founded in 1977. Over six decades in markets, Jeremy has been one of the most respected and outspoken voices on value, market bubbles, and long-term investing. He recently published The Making of a Permabear with Edward Chancellor, an account of his career and investment lessons learned along the way. Our conversation begins with Jeremy’s early lessons in frugality growing up in wartime Yorkshire and his interest in...
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Throughout most of my career, the S&P 500 has been an appropriate bogey to assess manager performance. More than that, it’s the most widely used benchmark in the capital markets. But today, it doesn’t represent the broad-based, diversified exposure to the U.S. economy that most participants take for granted when investing passively or measuring manager skill. This WTT, When the Benchmark Becomes a Bet, considers the evidence, implications, and challenges posed by the current composition of the S&P 500. ...
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Will Guidara is the author of Unreasonable Hospitality and the soon to release Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide. Unreasonable Hospitality has become a New York Times bestseller and a business bible for elevating customer experiences. Will was co-owner of Eleven Madison Park alongside Danny Meyer when the restaurant ascended to #1 in the world, the co-producer of Emmy Award-winning streaming series The Bear, host of the Welcome Conference, and advisor to business leaders ranging from professional sports to financial...
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Ryan Lovell is the Director of Capital Markets at Chainlink Labs, where he leads the development of blockchain-based solutions for tokenized finance across banking and capital markets. Chainlink has powered more than $28 trillion in transaction value and powers the majority of decentralized finance. Our conversation explores the hidden plumbing of modern finance and the upgrade blockchains provide. We discuss Chainlink’s critical role in connecting traditional finance with blockchain technology, the rise of tokenization and stablecoins, institutional adoption,...
info_outlineCapital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Katelin Holloway is a Founding Partner at Seven Seven Six, a technology-focused venture firm backing great early-stage entrepreneurs that she started with Alexis Ohanian in 2020. Alexis was a past guest on the show, and that conversation is replayed in the feed. Katelin and I explore the intersection of human capital and venture capital. We cover her upbringing, work alongside Steve Jobs at Pixar, and turnaround of Reddit with Alexis. We then turn to the application of her operational experience to venture investing....
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Alexis Ohanian is the General Partner and Founder of Seven Seven Six, an early-stage venture capital firm with $1 billion under management that he describes as a technology company that deploys venture capital. Alexis was the co-founder of Reddit, one of the most popular online forums in the world, which he sold 18 months after its 2005 launch for $10 million and returned as Executive Chair in 2014 to help lead the turnaround of the business. In between and since, he has invested in early-stage ventures as a partner at Y Combinator, a co-founder of Initialized Capital, and most recently...
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Gavin Baker is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Atreides Management, which oversees $7 billion across public, private, and crossover strategies focused on technology and the consumer. Gavin’s deep knowledge of semiconductors and AI may be second to none, but our conversation barely touches the space. We begin with Gavin’s upbringing, intellectual curiosity, and path to investing, before turning to the beliefs that shape his approach. We explore his view that investing is a search for truth best pursued...
info_outlineCapital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Today’s show dives into the state of the venture capital from the LP perspective. Sean Warrington is a Partner on the Private Investments team at Gresham Partners, a $13 billion multifamily office, and Ed Grefenstette is the CEO and CIO of The Dietrich Foundation, a $1.6 billion foundation with an unusually large allocation to private markets and venture capital. Ed was a past guest on the show and that conversation is replayed in the feed. Our conversation covers the changing landscape of venture capital, including pricing distortions, power...
info_outlineCapital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Ed Grefenstette is the CIO of The Dietrich Foundation, which supports charitable organizations in Western Pennsylvania through a truly unique investment strategy that seeks to first, last, and always grow the assets. Bill Dietrich, a successful industrialist, published historian, international investor, and innovative philanthropist, formed the foundation after selling his business for $170 million in 1997. Since then, the pool has grown 11.5x to $1.5 billion after distributing $400 million to supported charities, including contributions that make it among the largest donors every year to...
info_outlineWe’re counting down the top 5 episodes of 2025. Coming in at #3 is Tim Sullivan. Tim joined the Yale Investments Office in 1986, a year after David Swensen arrived, and retired this year. In his 39 years in the saddle, he led Yale’s private equity investing, which was the biggest return driver in the biggest success story over the last four decades. He shares four decades worth of wisdom and insights in our conversation.
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