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Ana Marshall

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82

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2019-10-21

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2019-10-21

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1

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1. “Oh God, there's so much you can just let go. One of my managers actually gave me this whole concept about a basket of worries. There's only so much that fits into a basket of worries. If you're going to worry about something, just make sure that you've got something else you can throw out of your basket so that it fits. If I had known that when I was twenty, it would have, wow, the amount of anxiety I could have avoided in my life would have been impressive.”

   2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “A big fan of Ian Brummer. Because, again, he thinks outside the box. So people who think outside the box are the kind of writers I like.”

   2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “My biggest pet peeve is people who pretend they know something when they don't. Like, if you don't know something, own it. No one knows everything. Just get over it and say, I don't know what, or I'll get back to you and move on.”

   2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Travel, which I know is insane given the amount of travel I do. I was raised on an airplane, and so it's in my blood. I love to travel. If I'm in business, Or go explore a new area, new city I haven't been to. I am fascinated by how people live their lives. And just observing people. I can sit, I can drink lots of coffee. I can sit at a cafe and stare out at people for hours. Talk to taxi drivers and talk to the bank people and just kind of understand how they go about their lives. It's fascinating to me.”

   2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “It was a far more diversified portfolio. It was before I became really militant about diversification. So it was a very diversified portfolio. It lacked a level of conviction precisely because of the diversification. And so it wasn't constructed in the way the rest of the portfolio was constructed. It was an outlier. And finally, I just said, okay, this isn't really working. What we're getting is, yes, we're getting beta, but we could get cheaper beta buying a read for God's sakes, people. What are we really trying to do? What is the role of this? So everything goes back to what is the role of the asset class in the portfolio? And what we had as a portfolio was not serving the role that we wanted it to have in the portfolio. So we just started over. But it was brutal. It was a ton of work, costly.”

   2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “We had to accept that we made a pretty significant mistake in the way that we had constructed our real estate portfolio. And it happened to be at the time when we were also switching coverage. And we ended up basically doing a secondary sale and starting over. We just kind of looked at it one day and said, let's just start over.”

   2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “That's the second core value. The third one is this diversity of thought. It's wonderful when we have junior members of the team just asking, wait, do you actually have proof of what you just said? Like, is there data to prove what you just said? And it's great. Like, I want that diversity of thought and I want that freedom. We spend a lot of time in team retreats and in just in social activities to engender that interpersonal trust because that cannot exist without a huge amount of trust. Of the values is you got to trust people, you got to be thinking that people give people the benefit of the doubt. You have to think that everybody is rowing the same boat. We're all here to generate the money so that the Hula Foundation can do what it does. We are not the stars of the play. We are here as the little wheel on the corner.”

   2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “That at least they don't waste a lot of time. We triage very early, and then once they get going, they don't waste time. They pretty much get to that point. And if they're on the fence, I'm on the plane with them the next week so that we can get ourselves off the fence one way or the other.”

   2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Our core value is you got to learn. Argue is if you're right, listen as if you're wrong and be willing to change your mind. Because the amount of times my team has changed my mind is actually pretty impressive. Will be a straight no, and eventually I might get to a yes. If the strength of your argument is such that we all make mistakes and everyone's allowed mistakes, but it's the process of how you get to that decision that really matters and that consistency. And so from the CIO point of view is being able to telegraph the consistency of what I look for.”

   2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “And in that process they learn about capital flows, cost of capital, managers, how do you analyze a team better, that conversation just sparks more learning.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “And then the people who have seen all of them. So you do have to have various points of view to make sure you're not institutionalizing biases into your investment process. Because I think that is a really dangerous thing if you do that. Things don't just happen because I say so. I mean, yes, I run a benevolent dictatorship, but things don't happen just because I say so. I really do. If I can't convince somebody, then that means my argument's not strong enough. And therefore, I need to go back and strengthen my argument. So it tends to not happen. So that's sort of how as a team we work together. And we really do. I mean, there isn't a group vote on an investment. That's not the way we work. But we speak in the team meetings about every investment we make so that everyone around the table understands how we got to that conclusion.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “And so it's this very open, challenging environment of why are you thinking about it this way, not in A mean way, but in a trying to really arrive at an answer because they're trying to learn how you arrived at the answer. And so one of the better ways to do that from a hiring perspective is to hire people that didn't all get raised the same way. So we have two people who were raised in a very highly quantitative. People who believe that active management does not exist. Come into a shop like ours is crazy, but they wanted the challenge, so I was all forgiving it to them. And they look at things very differently from somebody that grew up thinking that they could always generate alpha and active risk. And so you have to have those combinations. You have to have combinations of people who have never seen a down market.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “There is no structure of a week. We theoretically have a team meeting every Monday, but because we all travel, we tend to have those maybe once every three weeks, four weeks. We do a lot of email communication. We zoom a lot from wherever we are, but it really is this part of the reason I've kept the team so small is we're all within shouting distance from each other. And as you can see in our office, it's pretty small. And shouting distance works just fine. And it's very collegial. Everyone's compensation is based on how the portfolio does. Everyone, we have our team values and the number one value is you must think that every day you're becoming a better investor. So this concept of I want to learn. And the only way you learn is if somebody challenges you.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “We know what it is to be in your seat and We really believe in your ability to generate returns for us. And we are longstanding partners and we are here to help. And that's our pitch.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “We have a very coordinated pitch in the sense that we, if we're allowed in, every dollar you make for us goes to save the planet for women's reproductive health or for women's economic empowerment. I mean, we have very compelling programs and our website is great and our comms team is fabulous. And so I think we can definitely pitch that. I think more than that, it's how can we value to you. So I would say one of the really interesting things is because we see and we are so deep with managers and we've been in a relationship for so long, we tend to help them think through things. And that's a learned process. So for somebody like Christy, People want Christie as part of their advisory board. They want to be able to consult. They want to be able to, in my case, to have those conversations. And so our pitch is we were once in your”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “If you're in the process of trying to get into a manager, so you've identified a manager, maybe it's a venture capital manager, somebody that you think is truly exceptional, that has excess demand, what is the Hewlett pitch?”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “The granting programs and just the board ambition for granting programs really does color the type of risk and the type of duration we can run in our portfolios. And so we have that in common. And so once a year we get together and do open book sharing of every part of our portfolios, every part of our challenges. And it's this very cathartic two days that we do that we all come out learning something from each other. And I think that's the value of the peers.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “We have several things. So we have a network of endowment and foundations that it's all the CIOs and it's an email list and you get a question from your investment committee. You send it out to the Endowment Foundation list. You probably get a 60% hit rate because people travel. And then you gather the answers, you roll it back out and say, hey, just in case you're ever asked, this is the latest on benchmarks or this is the latest on compensation or incentives or asset allocation. So there is that sharing. We also have a more dedicated group, which is the large foundations. Who share Would say similar challenges in that”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Than the ones I'm having at a foundation or that somebody's having it at an endowment. I Part of the reason the peer network helps is it's interesting to see what other challenges people are facing and how they're coming up with solutions. And it just helps you be a smarter CIO.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “So I think about my peers, I like my peers. I try to be friendly to my peers. I would say if I can be helpful to them, I mean, they know that they can call me and I'm happy to answer questions. I don't buy into the whole peer competitive dynamic thing. There are several people on my investment committee who do. And therefore, we do have to show that. And I am held accountable for that. More than anything else, I think every institution is and every CIO is trying so hard to just meet the needs of each institution. And I think the difficult thing in endowment and foundations is it's so easy for people to just sort of put us all in one bucket. And each institution is just so different. A hospital can in no way have the same challenges. And as a CIO, the conversations you're having with your committee are entirely different.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Responsibility that comes with that is completely transparent, frequent communication with the chair of my committee. He and I are on the phone all the time. Whenever I'm thinking about anything, I always consult him. And that seems to work for them.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “In many ways, we spend a lot of time on this. So we do it by asset class the way traditional people do it. We have two terrific partners that help us do factor risk analysis. There's people on my committee that love factor risk, so they get factor risk reports. We do it communicating and really instructing them on what the beta of the portfolio is because for many, we are one commitment on an investment committee. they might be on 10 committees they see us three times a year like really they're not going to remember this whole thing And so something that's very easy for them to remember what kind of risk we're running. And we're super transparent. I am fortunate. I have an incredible delegation of authority.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “I would say differs by asset class a great deal. There's more turnover in our commitments, let's say, to some buyout funds. I would say within real estate, within public equity, within fixed income, it's been a fairly stable. We might look at a handful of new managers.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “So an endowment or insurance company, a sovereign wealth fund, they're always putting money, new money to work. We don't have any new money. We just have existing money. So there has to be some differentiating factor, some insight that that manager will bring to the portfolio, not just to that asset class, but in making us smarter about the whole portfolio.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Oh definitely There are managers that we visit for three years We have great conversations and finally it just okay I think we finally get how they think and we think there is a role for them. But for every idea that comes into the portfolio, we have to think about What is their edge and what is particularly differentiating about them and their return stream from our existing portfolio? Because otherwise you would just add capital to an existing manager. We don't have inflows of capital.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Have there been examples where You added a manager that was established, hadn't been in your portfolio for whatever reason, and you decided, you know what, maybe we missed this in the past, but now we think we should invest with them.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “A manager that we just particularly like, and as long as we feel that he's left alone, we're good. So those are very large existing organizations. We also follow people when they leave and form new organizations. We're also willing to support them there. So we don't really have a bias on that one at all. We don't need to see a performance track record, very little of what we do is based on a three-year track record. So much of what we do is about the people”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “We're actually probably the most agnostic on that one. We have found tremendous talent. Locked within ginormous organizations that my ENF peers don't really talk to”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “So, in that process of introducing a new manager to the portfolio, Do you tend to have a bias towards a new organization, or is there a new insight on an existing organization that someone on the team surfaces up?”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “are going to get crushed, you probably see at the least in fixed income, but even in our fixed income manager, they have a whole disruption series that they're running all the time also to make sure they don't get pounded. In corporate bonds, if you get disrupted, you are toast on your recovery.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Actually, I would say the real estate manager is there's the tried and true guys, but then there's the ones who say, okay, the whole Amazon retail disruption was coming. It's about industrial space, or it's about developing only in centers where just choosing their spots more carefully in the sense of this is a knowledge-based economy we're turning into. I really only want to develop multifamily housing or normal housing in submarkets where I think there is either a university or something really more about intellectual capacity. So we see those trends happen even in real estate. So I wouldn't say that this is just a public equity. Yes, you definitely see it more in venture. You see it in someone in the public equity guys. You see it in real estate. You see it in the buyout guys because otherwise.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “As you go across asset classes, the venture capitalists, there's a certain way you could say thinking around corner is new technologies, whether they all have to be in that. How much of that lens is mostly applicable to sort of public equity, public hedge fund managers with slightly broader mandates than just a real estate manager who's developing in San Francisco?”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Manager that has just had a great performance track record and they just say, this is the way it's worked, it's always worked this way, and this is the way it's going to keep working is probably not the manager that's going to stay in our portfolio. A manager that understands that they don't know how this is going to work out, but they're going to try to navigate it. But if they have a very disciplined process of thinking about it, that's a manager that's likely to make it into our portfolio.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Well, it's evolved in the fact that now there's three awesome directors that are constantly looking. But even then, they have a very high hurdle rate because for every manager that they want to bring into the portfolio, somebody else is leaving. I give them maybe a margin of one extra guy, but that's it. I am pretty merciless on this one. And so. The hurdle rate is extraordinarily high. I mean, really high for them. And then once they make it through them, then I come in. I would say it has to be somebody that has the ability to really see around corners. Because we are at a point in time that none of us have ever lived through.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Talk a bit about what it takes for a manager to get in your portfolio. So we know when you started, you had views based on people that were doing what you're doing and you knew who you thought were good. How has that evolved over the last, you know, what, 15, 16 years?”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “About 27 to 30, somewhere around there. So we have a lot of equity risk. In no way would I consider us in the 60-40 camp or the super conservative camp. And quite frankly, you can't be because in a foundation, I have a mandate of 5% payout. So I have to have at least 70% equity risk in this portfolio to be able to, on a long-term basis, achieve the objective, which is to grow or maintain the real spending power of this institution.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “So, I do think there is a sweet spot. I happen to enjoy managing a portfolio that is in that sweet spot where the top allocation at these managers is still significant enough for us to matter. As you grow in assets, I think it's a very difficult thing to try to keep to that 10 core managers and focus. Just simply because you can't get enough access. We happen to be fortunate in that we are in this situation. I couldn't imagine the challenges of running really large pools of capital that are trying to do venture, I think is really difficult.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “No, actually, what happens is we do some of it through swaps. It's a very high cost to do levered corporates. Too much of a drag. And so we tend to do levered in index treasuries. There's not much alpha you can add managing a treasury book. So we don't really bother doing too much of that. So we have an index treasury book where we tend to take our active risk is where people have a specific expertise, be it in RMBS or CMBS or whatever part of the market.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “So Brett Johnson, who's fabulous at this, he runs our fixed income, our distress book, and our real estate book. And he's always making that trade-off because I personally don't care which bucket it falls into as long as he is able to construct me a portfolio that really provides ballast. So at times, it's a lot of RMBS. At times, it might be more treasuries. He works with his managers to be able to really deliver what I expect in terms of return and the level of risk that I'm willing to take on that part of the portvoia.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “12 points of the portfolio, something like that. It's not huge, but it's far more than any of my peers, for sure. I've always felt that there needs to be balanced in a portfolio. And between my distress credit book, some of my non beta exposed absolute return and my fixed income, that serves as the ballast, the true ballast of this portfolio.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “but lowered the volatility. And part of the reason is because we sit on Sandhill Road and our program has been in existence for so long, we have a spectacular venture portfolio So I'm always balancing the risk between the With can I own as many public equities as I would like? Well, no, because I have to balance the risk somewhere. And this pool of sort of distress credit multi-strike guys really did the job for us. So we did something a little bit different there. We also have fixed income, which there, okay, if you want to know bias of mine, yes, if you come from fixed income and capital preservation, you kind of know the value of capital preservation. We have held fixed income the whole time.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “It was one of those moments. We have given opportunity for our managers, if they want to short, they can short, but that's certainly not where they make their money. Then we then took what was the distress credit, the multistrat guys, and we realized the multistrat guys had a really good role in the portfolio. Distress credit guys, too. So we put them together into an asset class. And my theory, which has proven, but I had no way of proving then, was that this group of managers could get me about 70% of the equity return with half the volatility. And it was really important to get a Significant pool of capital of the portfolio in something that still had growth component of”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “What we decided is we can short cheaper than a hedge fund just based on our balance sheet if we ever wanted to. So why are we paying 2 and 2 to have somebody short beta for us? Why don't we just hire the best stock pickers on the planet and then we can figure out what exposure we want? So we pretty much blew out all our longshore guys.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “So the portfolio is your classic endowment portfolio. You've got your public equity, you've got what is different about our portfolio is we don't have a hedge fund category. So we run a risk management system and hedge funds just never fit into the risk management system. So I'm sure like everybody else made the mistake of having the wrong risk attached to the hedge fund portfolio when we were running our risk management. So in 2009, I said, okay, forget this, we're going to break it apart and look at the components of it and see what we like and what we don't. So one of the things that came out was most of the risk had been borne by hedge fund portfolios taking much too much long short exposure because they wanted the beta.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “All right, let's circle back to the structure of how you think about this pool. So we've talked a bunch about how you navigated from the buy side to using that expertise to try to find certain groups of managers and then bring people on your team that have that kind of same capability in other areas. What does the portfolio look like?”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Low cost overlay. So we don't do anything directly. There are teams that do it and they do it really well. We are eight people in an investment team. Okay, we're managing 10.5 billion dollars. One of my first philosophies, know what you know, know what you don't, and where you don't have expertise. There is no competitive advantage on sitting in my seat to be able to make those kinds of calls. And the amount of attention it would require. Probably take our eye off the ball, something else we needed to be doing.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “So the directors each are in charge of doing the continual monitoring of each of the managers. In any given year, I meet with probably 80% of the managers in the portfolio. But I am there as a second chair entirely. I mean, I have to let my team do their thing. It's usually when we start talking with the manager about one of these very sort of esoteric conversations that You sometimes see where they're not seeing around the corner Or they're missing the bigger picture. So you can try to talk about the bigger picture, see how open they are to it. Or you can say, okay, no, this is a manager that just wants to head down and this is what they're going to do. And if something really disruptive comes along, I'm not sure how they're going to handle it. My job is actually in sizing positions.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “So, this is a partnership, it's a friendship, it's a partnership where it's not that I feel I have anything to prove, but if I can be additive in any way or make it help make an introduction, then that's what we do.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Oh, I have great conversations with my managers. I come back and I have spent for the last 10 years a ton of time in China and in Asia because we've had an Asian tilt in the portfolio. And so They only get to see their vertical. Asia or their vertical in the United States or in Europe. And what they're looking is to just have a conversation of like, the first question usually from them is, where were you last and what were you studying? And we'll go on a 20 minute on what it was we were doing because it informs them in some way of just what is happening out in the world around them. And so it's a partnership. Most of our managers, we have a concentrated manager roster. A majority of our managers have been in our portfolio for at least 10 years.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Okay, I still do them. I just spent two weeks in Asia doing these meetings. Like, I can't stop myself. I am highly intellectually curious human. I do them with a different purpose. It's less about where is the economics of the world going and more about So a lot of the focus of my meetings in the last two weeks was on the move to electronic money, monetary systems. So meeting with central bankers, meeting with banks, with insurance companies, with just not just technology. We hear the technology part here in the valley, but how does that actually get adopted? And what are the impediments to adoption? And at the same time, you have an existing success story in Alipay and We Chappe. And what is the ability of those systems to actually permeate Asia? So that's what I spent the last two weeks doing.”

    2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source