YouSaid · the spoken record

Andy Golden

lines on the record: 107
first: 2025-07-21
most recent: 2025-07-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And this is just one example of why I like still the top-down terminology. And so if you come and you're used to investing in buyouts, in liquid buyouts, you might look and say, you're less familiar with real estate and you say, boy, that real estate performance has not been nearly as good as buyouts. Why are we doing any of that? And if you have the language of portfolio theory, you can explain, well, because it still plays a role.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think there's at least one peer that describes it exactly that way. I'm not sure. I'm willing to give up this framework, admittedly heuristic framework. I think it serves useful purposes beyond the actual decision of how much money to give each manager. One of our strengths, again, is, we've got a great set of bosses or partners, I'd prefer to think of them, but they're managing partners They can fire me. I can't fire them. And these are people who come with a lot of experience in investing. But most of them come with experience investing in one particular area as opposed to, say, the fund to fund.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do those things, you can do those things, and you feel like, well, if I do have an advantage that others don't have, which is the possibility for lessened agency issue drag, the fact that others Don't live with us day to day, and so we can do things. They might be concerned that we would be doing things that they wouldn't like, but when you build the confidence, then you can say, well, look, you know that we're... Had this 4% position. I bet you that in the next 10 years there'll be a time when we stand up and do that attribution I was talking about we have to say and a large share of it was due to this outside position oh well you know remember”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, wait for it. These guys, many of our closest friends invest with them do biotech stocks, fallen agel biotech stocks. So you're not just concentrating, you're concentrating on a sector that can be quite volatile, that is pretty distinctive. And by the way, we got some exposure in that area in other parts of the portfolio there as well, and the independent return and even in the venture space. But I think most institutions are much more prone to over diversification or its cousin deversification as Pierre Lynch would say than they are the opposite. Issue. And that's where a lot of this, again, all is of peace if you've built up confidence in yourself, your own team, but also you've inspired confidence from the governance structure”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your bottom line should be underpinning. Your bottom line should be on the bottom, not on the top. And we want to kind of partner with great people and then we figure out.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We do a little bit of that, but in the first instance, it's more like, well, that 10% in domestic equity is an arbitrary number. Do we really think it's much better than 9% or 11%? Well, it depends how you make it up. So that gets us back to the One Team One dream. We try really hard to not think about these things as silos or make them justify themselves relative to just themselves. So within domestic equity, we've got 40% of that 10%. Your listeners can do the math. It's about four points with just one manager. If you were running a domestic equity portfolio, if you were compensated on just how domestic equity did, you would never take that much tracking risk. But everyone who works here is just thinking about the overarching bottom line.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you change the allocation, or will you just port over the exposure, which is another sort of viable? So if you had a framework of an S allocation and you had too much in U.S. equity, you could either short out or swap it into developed equities.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't articulate it that way. We think the construct is still helpful as just a trail markers, but more often than that, if there's a manager that we like, but it would put us over the kind of allocation, that's when we talk.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's quite different from what you might expect. So one of the things I should have said about a core belief in a tenet here, I'm going to steal a phrase that one of our managers uses, that it's one team, one dream. So our whole decision process is structured in the hopes of moving closer and closer to that nirvana. Nirvana would be if every single investment truly competed against every other single investment. And by the way, what? Never really fully answered the asset allocation process today is really bottom up and it's kind of we like this manager, we like that manager, we think it makes sense to have this much money without one and that one. And when we aggregate that all up, is that a tolerable position? Fully there yet.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just show up, you know, the Withy on the approach to it. 20 years now that's worked. Well, let's walk through each asset class briefly. I'd love to hear your take and your particular spin on each. So U.S. equities is only 10%. Presumably that's not indexed”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. It hurt me. It's like we were really overweight and that's part of why we've done better than we would have otherwise. It's still since 2009, the frustration has still been that not just zero return to diversification. It's been a cost to diversification, but there's also been a cost to hard work. SP500 ride. Just show up, you know, the Withy Allen approach to it.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and even leading up to it, we were steering that boat was moving pretty fast for us. And so then it became a, well, given that you are overweight, that and given that there's no way that you are interested in, at least in kind of correcting that quickly, then why don't you be very deliberate and intentional about how you offset that? So the conversations now are much more about which do you dislike least in terms of holding the smallest amount of that underway?”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Decrease your domestic equity exposure as much as you can tolerate in general and against the tech sector in particular and move it into emerging within domestic, put as much as you possibly can into value. And so we did well cut least relative basis coming out of the bubble because of that. Know what's going on for close to the second half of that 22-year period was this, we developed unintentionally an extreme overweight to private equity.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have to earn a lot of money, so it's equity biased. If we just kind of go around the pie chart, it's 10% dedicated to domestic equity, long-only managers, 6% to other developed markets, longish-only managers, 10% to emerging market public equity managers, 25% in the category we call independent return, subset of what the world calls hedge funds, what many others call absolute return. 25% in private equity as a long-term target, that's venture and buyout, 19% in real assets, that's real estate, energy, timber, some other things in public and private format. And then if I said that right, at least 5% in fixed income. The midterm allocation is quite different from that. For the first half of the 22 years, those differences were all”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so that's the three years ago framework And I don't know if it's varied that much, but that baseline long-term independent of market conditions asset allocation, what does that look like, roughly?”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Apparently. Mom, if you're listening, I want that to happen. You know, so you think about things like how much illiquidity can you... Tolerate, et cetera, and you create that base level positioning, it's then in step two that we say, is there anything unusual going on either in the world or with ourselves that suggests that we need to recognize a midterm target that's different from our long-term target?”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very explicitly and intentionally divide our asset allocation decisions up into two buckets. The longest horizon buckets called our policy portfolio, and it's constructed in a valuation independent framework. That means we're not looking around at what looks particularly good right now or bad. We're saying what are the kind of core beliefs about investing the way asset classes perform and whether their characteristics and what are our distinctive circumstances, including our objectives as an investor, and create this default position, this neutral position that addresses that. I think a lot of investors fail to recognize that there is no one right portfolio. It's right for what you're trying to achieve. Princeton should have a very different portfolio than my 89-year-old mother should have for so many reasons.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the spending is probably going to average a little north of five, according to our. Well, in any given year, it's nominal, but it grows. So to correct what I'm saying, if someone said, Devil walks in and says, here's a contract, you can earn exactly 5% real. I'm not sure I would do that. We'd have to readjust our spending approach. But if they said something closer to the six, you for sure, you would do that. So your ass allocation question, we think about ass allocation a little bit differently. I'll give you the answer I would have given to you three years ago, and then I'll give you the answer today. The answer three years ago would have been, we think about asset allocation a little bit differently.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Although above 10% is shorthand, we think about things in real return space, and then we're assuming... A reasonable level of inflation, and this is a conversation I think we all need to be sensitive to in both the recent market, but also going forward is you got to be consistent in what you're saying. If you think inflation is going to be low, then your nominal return is going to be low. But that's not so bad. I would sign up for that any day. If I can make 5% or 6% real compounding forever, I would sign that.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, as you espouse the goals for the pool of capital, I was surprised to see a very high return goal, at least in these market conditions. The reports say the annual report reports. How do you set up your asset allocation to try to get at those goals”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Black box, any trading strategy where someone's just got a market feel, someone may have also flipped heads 100 times in a row up to that point. And now they've just done tails.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Re examine some of those collegially with our partners and see if there's some strengthening there. But you're really looking at things to just kind of understand the hows and whys. It's one of the reasons why there's a bunch of strategies that we don't invest in, even though others have made a ton of money. But we know that when the bad times come, we would not be able to do anything to give us confidence to continue.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Despite a recent bad track record, it's not that much no big deal. So whether we're trying to think about, we're trying to think about who the people are, what motivates them, and what are they doing? Do they have an approach that can give them an edge and do they seem to be executing on that? You know, you rarely have to re-look at that point at some of these other agency issues. People tend to develop bad habits when things are going well in terms of separating interest with clients, not when things are going badly, although it may be an opportunity to...”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We want to talk about in the first instance what's the simple explanation, the kind of attribution, but we don't want to get too involved in that. Attribution studies tend not to be worth the paper they're written on, and I believe we're not going to go on long about that. I think that's the kind of step into the, what's really going on here, guys. And let's talk about not what's happened, but what we think, what the future might look like. So let's go through a portfolio and understand what your arguments are for this position versus that position and see if we can get confidence from that perspective. You, of course, want to maybe the short answer is you want to just re-underwrite. And if you have experience, like we have of investing with people who don't have a long track record, it's not that unusual. It doesn't feel that strange to invest.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You do sound a lot smarter than I remember a long time ago. What's an example of, let's just talk about a manager, and it would be a specific manager, of what happens when a manager is going through a tough period of performance. What are you doing to figure out what's right, the theory or the data?”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of a sudden, everything you say sounds a whole lot smarter than it used to. You do sound a lot smarter than I remember a long time ago.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really interesting, and I think that speaks to another advantage that we've had to develop around here, which is both the appreciation of theory. We don't use theoretical as a term to denigrate something. We use it to mean not empirically based. Being able to have an appreciation of theory over data in the right balance is key. There are times when you want to say if the data don't support the theory, the data are wrong. And, you know, so anyone listening is scratching their head at this point, and you can say why this is an acquired advantage, because when I used to say this stuff one year, two years into it, people would scratch their heads and say, You know, so another advantage is if you put up good numbers for long enough.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Inappropriately. One of the things I love about this business and I love about what I get to do in terms of focusing on the long term is it brings back the philosopher me right it's like if you set up a system where you say you won't really know how well you're doing until the long term is done, wow, that sounds a little odd that that means you're going to ignore all information along the way So being able to figure out when you should pay attention to the short-term disappointment is”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, you got to talk about long and what we mean by long. There's a phrase we use here that we actually think BLT, we think beyond the long term because a lot of people say long is 10 years or something. And I think, well, I'd like to push our thinking on that. I'd like to not just produce the best possible results over the next 10 years, but I want to make sure that in doing so, at the end of those 10 years, we have a program that really looks like it's got unfair advantages for the next 10 years. So, you know, that's pretty good if you can do that. But the real horizon is not what you claim your horizon is. The real horizon is this thing that you maybe don't even discover until after the fact. It's how long can you go with a large amount of discomfort without changing your path?”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Units of discomfort and they will also allow you to optimize that discomfort spending them in ways that are counter to conventional wisdom. So we got this loyal network, this information network of Princeton alone, but also Princo alums or magwar. So why wouldn't I want to exploit that intelligence? And I don't want to compete against those managers. I want to work with them. So I think those are some of the obvious ones.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mentioned the long horizon is a potential advantage. There are some other ones like the fact that Princeton itself and then Princo has augmented this where an attractive client and that's enmeshed in the ability to take long term. There's a saying that good clients make for good architects. It's also true that good bosses make for good workers. And so the fact that our governance structure is filled straight up and down the line with people who really are not just brilliant but get it, like understand investing. And so getting back to that buy low sell high means you're buying what everyone else is selling and selling what else is buying. It means you got to be contrarian and it means that you got to be able to do some uncomfortable things. And people who understand what you're doing will allow you greater.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but the fourth one that I realized is that I get to come to work every day with colleagues who share interest in those same three. Again, that's all culturally that we feel really good about what we're doing and we feel that we're delivering a bargain to our client, which is kind of us, but we're delivering a bargain. So that's why.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We need to compete to be the very best at what we do, got some tough competition, but no one has any additional tools than we have. But the third one is really the distinctive. Compensation discount underscores that and makes you feel really good. The fourth one I used to stop at three because that's where the rhetoric coach would tell you have three points.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of attracting and retaining people, there is a danger that it weakens an area where we have an advantage, which is this sense of mission. So what attracts people to Princo, I hope, I know, are the same four things that I'm attracted to. First, the intellectual challenge is really special all over the world, all different kinds of things. We get to take a very, in fact, we have to take a very long-term horizon, but we know that the long-term comprise lots of short terms to coordinate this portfolio, we necessarily have to have the 35,000 foot view. I mean that literally and metaphorically in terms of the travel, but we also swoop down from time to time and operate shoulder to shoulder with our external partners and the ways out. I think in the data support make each other better. So that's really cool. We're given all the tools.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so even though to this day places like Princeton operate at some discount to the private sector on the fund-to-fund basis, not much, but still some. It's a huge discount to the front line. This is the issues that Harvard had. And it's even worse than that. Not only are we at a disadvantage in terms of that compensation element,”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take the approach of well, then don't try and do it everywhere, just do it in some areas, or maybe even just one area. And I think where you run into problems there is from an organizational dynamic and a culture and the rhythms of those decisions are so different that it's hard to bring a unified approach mindset, unified talent. There's a reality of the compensation market that in the private sector comparing private to private, security selection in the trench work gets paid a whole lot more than fund to fund work.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the arguments are pretty clear that for any activity that we might pursue, and we pursue a lot of them, there are firms bringing just a whole lot more bandwidth. I won't even say firepower. I don't think that the people who work there are smarter than my colleagues, but their focused and they're structured to reward and they're culturally just about really getting into the weeds. And it's hard to imagine us doing that across such a varied portfolio and competing well. Against these specialized firms, you could”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Buy low, sell high. That's a good one. No, I mean, all seriousness, I think it's a basic business principle about thinking about what you're trying to accomplish and where do you have advantages naturally, where can you acquire advantages and where might you have the disadvantage that's unchangeable?”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So as you framed out a way of thinking about managing this pool of capital, what were the core beliefs that governed how you were going to go about structuring the portfolio? Then we talk a little bit about asset allocation and how you actually did it.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And frankly, that wasn't a real problem because that authority model is almost immediately tested in 98 when there was a little bit of an emerging market and then bigger crisis, the long-term capital crisis. But it was more that the board Would show up and say, What are we doing here? There's no decisions for us to make. We're busy people. So we had to. Try and educate them about the importance of paying attention to us, that they were to us the way we are to our external managers, that we really need to know what's going on.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was a big deal. It did come with a little bit of the risks I was afraid of. And the biggest concern was that the Princo Board would not feel true ownership. And therefore might get more concerned during tough times.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, you know, you reject a lot of recommendations, there's probably a bigger decision that needs to get made. But Ed said, Andy, sounds to me like you're trying to have it both ways. We're empowering you. I'm going to hold you accountable. And that was...”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right. It was really unusual and, in fact, was not what I originally proposed. I said to Ed, I don't want to reinvent things when there's a good model. Here's a kind of Yale-like model where the major decisions manager hires fund re-ups would still flow through the committee or what we'd call the Princo Board. There'd be a lot of kind of benefit of the doubt given that there's a presumption that if recommendations were”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he basically took what was a small staff, but he took essentially all of it with him. So I showed up here and there was one colleague who was pretty frustrated that she hadn't been given the nod to lead the office. Two secretaries and a pretty much of a blank slate. And I spent the next several years trying to present a vision simultaneously trying to improve the portfolio, present a new philosophy for a decision framework, present a vision for an organization that was first with Dick Fisher when his term ended another longtime trustee Ed Matthews who had been at the time was the chief investment officer for AIG. And it was Ed that really helped move the ball forward on a new governance structure which became a staff-centric decision model, fully empowered.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're not going to be the 80s. You weren't going to simply be able to make money by simply showing up a well, turns out you got that wrong, but he got the idea right of diversifying into private investment, hedge funds, and also a third leg. Which was a little bit less clear, was a good move. Global balance management. Randy recognized that the private investment really required an intensity of effort that could not flow through the chair. So he constructed the idea for this affiliated fund Nassau Capital that was given an exclusive multi-year contract to manage our non-marketable. And he basically took, yeah. I mean, they were holding on to it. They did both funds of funds and some direct investment, mostly co-investment.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bowen, his name's Danis Sullivan. He followed Bill Bowen to the Mellon Foundation second Franco president came along. Randy Hack, who had as his first career, he was a brilliant, tremendously successful real estate entrepreneur and well-known entity to the inner circle of trustees. So he was brought in, but he had no real experience outside of real estate. He's trying to figure out this governance model where the chair really remained the decision maker. There was a Princo President, but by no means was the Princo President, the true chief investment officer. And the chair at the time was a guy named Dick Fisher who had a day job as chair and CEO of a little firm called Morgan Stanley. And Dick had the vision to put forward three initiatives that he felt were really going to be important in the 1990s. He knew that the”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outside managers, but those were still selected by a trustee committee, although there was great deference paid to the chair's prerogative, or back then they would have said chairman's prerogative because it was certainly a man. And it wasn't until 1987 that there was any professional staff dedicated to this. And the Princo, which is a university office, we're not a separate company despite the name was set up. Princo president was chosen, and he will tell you this. I'm not besmirching him in any way. He will tell you he was chosen in park because he didn't have a whole lot of experience in investing. And so the trustee who had the most responsibility felt that he wasn't going to get in the way. He's a tremendous smart guy who was a well-known entity to the university president at the time. So from 87 to 95, he served, but he then followed Bill.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there was very little here, here when I arrived. And it's an interesting story about, in some sense, Princeton was a victim of its own success. Its investment track record of what was then a $3.7 billion endowment was very, very, very strong. And so it hadn't really been motivated. There wasn't that much broken to fix, at least in the trustees, you know, the governance powers minds. You can understand why. But Princeton had built up this long track record of success in an unusual way. And for decades, there had basically been a single volunteer who made security level decisions. And that went very well for a long time. Finally, there was a shift to the use of a few, a handful.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back then, back then. So Dave Swenson, I asked for his help and he got me an offer to come at Princeton for triple my compensation. I got my own offer to go to Duke, my alma mother undergrad for double, so I took the Duke job and everyone in the Yale office applauded not just because they're happy to see me go, but because it meant that finally there was a data point of someone who wouldn't put up with the pay scale there. So I went off to Duke and then 18 months later Princeton called and said, hey, instead of actually being number two person in the office, we got some things going on here where... We have a slot to run the university office.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I went off for an informational interview and within somewhere between three and eight minutes he convinced me that socially responsible investing was a silly concept and certainly not a way that not how I would want to spend my career. But if I was interested in doing good while investing, they were looking for an intern in really what was ground zero at time t plus two for this revolution that you know well Takashi Swinson model of investing I can't I'm not allowed to use the Y word, the endowment model. And I just felt like the luckiest guy I found a job that was just so fascinating. I would have stayed there. But for, as you know well, there's an economic issue that endowment management did not pay very well. That was okay. I had bought onto that, but Yale paid particularly poorly”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Andy Golden (Princo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source