YouSaid · the spoken record

Ed Grefenstette

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109

first

2025-03-24

most recent

2025-03-24

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1

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1. “It was a very memorable meeting for me. I know that. I'd heard about Bill and people told me this man is punctual and punctuated in everything he does So I was sitting there in his reception with my pitch book rehearsing my forty five minute presentation. This was 2000. Bill came walking down the hall and he looked like a character out of a F. Scott's Fitzgerald novel. He was 6'1", white hair horn rimmed glasses, early sixties, pinstriped suit, pocket square rept tie. He came and shook my hand and said, Bill Dietrich, follow me. And he spun on his heels and went down the hall, and I practically ran after him. We went into a conference room. He sat down, looked me square in the eye, put his watch right in front of him, and said, Well, I'm here, and I'm listening. That's how the meeting began.”

   2025-03-24 · Capital Allocators · Ed Grefenstette – Bold Allocations at The Dietrich Foundation (EP.437) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “I joined PNC Capital Markets in Pittsburgh, and we did MA advisory mostly on sell side deals in lower middle market. And after doing a few of those, you sort of understand how the structure and the financing takes place being a little ambitious. I sat down with one of my colleagues and said, hey, how about if we go and raise a private equity fund and we can be a principal in these transactions? So we pulled in one of my high school buddies with a forensic accountant and one of my MBA buddies who was an engineer ops guy. And we went out to raise a private equity fund in 2000. That's how I was introduced to Bill Dietrich as a potential LP.”

   2025-03-24 · Capital Allocators · Ed Grefenstette – Bold Allocations at The Dietrich Foundation (EP.437) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “So we'd like you to take eight credits of pre engineering calculus before you matriculate. And I said, are you serious? And he said, yeah. He said, all you lawyers know how to do is divide hours into tenths for your billing. And I said, well, that's probably fair. So I got the calculus and I finished the program, which was a great experience. That really started my second career in investment banking.”

   2025-03-24 · Capital Allocators · Ed Grefenstette – Bold Allocations at The Dietrich Foundation (EP.437) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “I went to Georgetown and got an economics degree, met my wife. That's the most important thing that ever happened to me, and stayed for law school, practiced law for about five years as a litigator. I came home and I remember I had a memorable conversation with my wife as she was expecting our second child. And I said, honey, I think I'm pretty good at this. This job will always put food on the table and a roof overhead, but I really don't love it. And she said, well, what do you want to do? And I said, my interest keep going back to finance, being supportive. She said, well, go and retool. So I did. I applied to Carnegie Mellon in our backyard to get my MBA. I remember getting a phone call from the admissions office, and I was pretty excited. They were calling to personally welcome me. And the dean said, we really like to have you, but we're a very quantitative program and you're just a lawyer.”

   2025-03-24 · Capital Allocators · Ed Grefenstette – Bold Allocations at The Dietrich Foundation (EP.437) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “If you look back at the league tables in the 1960s, if they had those preventure, so to speak, the Hillmy Company was right there in terms of investing in early stage companies. 1970s venture finally began to take form, and Henry Hillman and my father were anchor investors in Kleiner Perkins Fund one. And a few years later in KKR Fund One. I learned a lot about investing from my father, not just technology and innovation investing, but really about people, how people are really at the core of making good decisions and private investing.”

   2025-03-24 · Capital Allocators · Ed Grefenstette – Bold Allocations at The Dietrich Foundation (EP.437) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “And my father was able to attend college thanks to the GI bill. He came back from World War II and went to Duquesne University, earned his accounting degree, came out and joined a subsidiary of the Hillman Company here in Pittsburgh as a clerk, and after a couple years joined the parent company for the next sixty years, worked for and alongside Henry Hillman, ultimately becoming CEO of the Hillman Company.”

   2025-03-24 · Capital Allocators · Ed Grefenstette – Bold Allocations at The Dietrich Foundation (EP.437) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Ed. Really excited to do this with you. Thanks. Great to be with you, Ted. Why don't you take me back to how you first got interested in investing? Sure. Well, I've been a CIO now for 18 years, which is hard to believe. But really, I'd say the most consequential thing that happened in my career was probably meeting Bill Dietrich in 1999. Of course, today I'm privileged to have been the CIO there for the last 15 years. But he had a profound influence on the direction of my life. Maybe I'll go back to college because that leads to how things unfolded. Why don't you go all the way back? Okay, we'll go all the way back. So I was born and raised in Pittsburgh and I was the eighth of nine children. And my dear Irish mother said that the babies arrived with pleasant regularity. And later when my wife and I had three children, my father called it a starter set. They grew up in very, very modest circumstances.”

   2025-03-24 · Capital Allocators · Ed Grefenstette – Bold Allocations at The Dietrich Foundation (EP.437) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “To investing and mentorship by Bill Dietrich, which led him to taking the helm at the foundation in 2007. We discussed the foundation's bold approach to illiquid investments with 90% of assets invested in venture capital and private equity, its governance structure that lets it do that, and it's the thematic focus on innovation and emerging markets. Along the way, it shares insights into managing liquidity, constructing the portfolio, selecting managers, and navigating geopolitical risk to maintain conviction in an uncomfortably different strategy. Ed's approach and results will open your aperture to what's possible in an institutional portfolio with the right goals, structure, and governance in place.”

   2025-03-24 · Capital Allocators · Ed Grefenstette – Bold Allocations at The Dietrich Foundation (EP.437) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “My guest on today's show is Ed Refenstead, the chief investment officer 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 11.5 times to $1.5 billion after distributing $400 million to supported charities, including contributions to make it among the largest donors every year to Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Over the last 20 years, the Dietrich Foundation's performance sits at the very top of all endowments and foundations. Our conversation covers ED's”

   2025-03-24 · Capital Allocators · Ed Grefenstette – Bold Allocations at The Dietrich Foundation (EP.437) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source