YouSaid · the spoken record

Gary Sernovitz

lines on the record: 73
first: 2023-12-18
most recent: 2023-12-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Numbers are always surprising, but the five year numbers, the 10-year numbers, are pretty tight from very different sophistications, very different styles. One of the clear challenges that you describe is governance. And we just love your take on different types of challenges that you've seen CIOs face with their governance. I made some joke about the old days Ivy slipstreaming and board of trustees, and we all know there's some legacy institutions that still operate where you have a big partner at a big private equity firm or a big bank to ones where they really keep them pretty removed. This now purposely I tried to put it somewhere in the middle where the CIO has a rubber stamp IC that generally lets him do, but talking to him a lot, and that soft pressure.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a good question. It's hard because, as you know, a CIO doesn't make that many decisions a year. You're not running a pod for 0.72. The ability to move a highly illiquid portfolio is not easy. There's a lot of stages of grief when a portfolio is starting to move and first is denial. The markets can always be different tomorrow. The markets are wrong now. The markets are going to come. Or this manager's J Curve is deeper, but still. So I think those stages of grief is what I see. Vis challenges even defining success.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd love to dive into what you see as some of these challenges of the CI. So clearly, there's this performance pressure from the guy who was in the New York Times who's now not. What have you seen as how different CIOs respond to that performance pressure?”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I think he has a similar ironic remove and wore it lightly too, but found himself very good at it and very proud. And like a lot of novels you want, precipitating action or conflict or something, the self-doubt coming in after he thinks he's kind of figured it out is one where I've a tremendous amount of respect for people to do the CIO job because every day you're relearning things that you thought that you had figured out about a manager disappointed, you manager surprised new things you missed. And so that drama is what I was trying to say, that he had a model and the novel set in a time where the model doesn't really work.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm the IR guy for the 180th largest private equity firm in America, not a particularly important job in finance. And I joke, I'm the stable hand in finance and I'm writing a book where imagining I'm a jockey. So a lot of the CIO's sensibility is another path of my life had gotten me there. That sensibility is how I think about the world, my sense of humor, or a lot of that. I'm also another characters and other people are in the CIO, a few friends who have read the book are like, Gary, you're a very good CIO. And you've imagined yourself as a CIO. Maybe you should just do the job instead of writing a book about it.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whenever you sit down to do something like this, you are the author. There's always a perspective that you're bringing to bear from your experience. How do you describe what perspective you're bringing as the author to this?”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're living, we're observing, we're reading, people are having lunch with CIOs, become friends with CIOs, and seeing pitches and read articles about VC. So it's just been forged from this direct experience. Most of the speaking roles in the novel are from money managers of various asset classes, but there was an intentional effort to say, hey, this is lower middle market credit fund. This is the golden age of VC quant. I'm not going to cover every single sub-asset class. They was trying not to be too focused on private equity or too focused on a specific thing that I know the best.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm trying to get away with everything. None of them, the main characters are based on anyone. I did that because there's sometimes in life where like laziness and conscientiousness merge by not doing the research, by not sitting down in the office of a CIO and taking notes or a manager and asking them to see their pitch deck, but just saying this is going to be forged in my imagination. I also is a little more free to write a little more wit, less worried about the feelings of the person on the other side. The intention of all of it is to be true. This is not a satirical novel. There's some dramatic heightening, but it should make you wonder as a reader this has to be X, Y, Z. So the purpose is not to have fantasy figures, but there's a trusty Russian Goldman Sachs. I didn't make up the name. He's working for Big Bank Inc. And so there are references to existing firms, but those are always rooting into the real language rather than this is analysis.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About the chief investment officer who's unnamed through most of the novel, just referred to as the CIO. It is about a period in his life where he's coming off from being the recipient of the Times article of this is the CIO genius coming out of a very proud, going through a soft patch that gets very difficult in terms of performance. And as that happens, he is dealing with both trustees, the university president, his staff, and a lot of people coming into his office asking for money as his life is tightening, his self-doubts are increasing until the novel ends about a fifth of the novel is a scene where he meets this reclusive hedge fund manager, alumni of the university very aloof from the university in a scene where everything in his life and hopefully investing is brought into a very tense conversation.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“in a LA to New York Plain Reed Funny, but also pretty serious novel What it means to be an investor today, and that is a window to what it means to be alive today.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's VS Nipole line that a novel is a sum of opinions that don't add up to a point of view. The purpose of it is trying in a classic novelistic way to combine ideas and feelings of really what it means to be an investor today, finance in fiction today, usually has two main formats. One is we want to write about rich people in New York City. They need to have a job. We'll ask our college buddy who works at a hedge fund to give us some notes and some trades. We'll have corny names for firms. We'll put in some prostitutes, probably a lot of cocaine. And then the other one is in the school of liars poker, like the young person coming into New York and working in a job. But it's really classic building for a month. But none of them really treated finance and investing. It's always the backdrop about the setting being more of the fabric than the backdrop. So this one I really wanted investing to be the fabric of the novel. The thesis of the novel is can I capture?”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the novel, how it would go, how it would end, who would be the protagonist. It all clicked together in an intuitive way of just subterranean thoughts for many years.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wrote a book about seven, eight years ago on the shale revolution that was primer in my voice on the shale revolution. And I'd always thought a book like that around the age of alternatives, private equity hedge funds, et cetera, would be fun to write, but also never felt particularly compelled to write it when you have a full-time job, you really have to really be gripped by something to obviously write it, especially the time I quit Goldman. I was like a very pretentious and severe novelist. The novel is the highest form of the written word. But then after writing too, they got published. Two didn't get published. I'd put it to the side. And my wife, after me moping around the house for a while, she's like, well, you haven't written a word of fiction 11 years. Here's a story you always tell writing a fictional format. Take a Sunday and write something. So I did it. And then all of these private notes on this other nonfiction book just clicked into place until really what the format became.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then at two thousand four, the founders of LimRock Private Equity Firm Energy focus private equity firm where I work. They were looking for someone to actually write their Fund 3 ppm. I was like, I've never written a PPM. They're like, well, take the Fund 2 ppm and upgrade it. We'll pay you by the week. Classic, lobster in the pod or the frog in the pot 20 years later. That role has gotten a lot bigger, but it's also been very fortunate where it was always this understanding between them that writing was always going to be an important part of my life and they've been shocked.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was fortunate to be born in 1973, the demographic lull in a post-war America. And so at that time, you can get a job with just a liberal arts education. I had no interest in FNAF particularly and had no experience. I had two job offers in front of me. One was to be a speech writer for the Parks Commissioner here in the city, and the other was to be a junior equity research analyst at Goldman Sachs. And I took the junior equity research analyst at Goldman Sachs. I did that for a couple years assigned to the energy group. Eventually promoted to look at Latin American oils. After that promotion, I had a very big bout of insomnia and started writing what was my first novel. And I've always been a big reader of novels, always been interested in it. 25 years old took the job in finance lightly because it was never something I'd really sought, announced like a real pretentious asshole that I was quitting to write a novel and finish the novel sold to almost all my immediate family.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gary, thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for having me. Why don't you take me through your quick background that prepared you to write this book? Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, went to college, Cornell the whole time, I was very certain of my future, which was to be a PhD academic historian somewhere before the senior year of college. I was in London doing research on undergraduate thesis. By the end of the summer, realized maybe I don't want to be an academic historian and the historians of the British Library are like, we don't need a Jewish guy from Milwaukee adding to an already very well-covered history.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before we get going, we're hosting our fifth cohort of capital allocators university in New York City on February 22nd. CAU is designed for allocators with five to 15 years of experience to connect with each other and learn critical frameworks to help advance their careers. Rahul Mudgal and I will be joined by a few past guests on the show for a day filled with presentations about skills, Q&A, and small group discussions. For those who have attended one of the first four cohorts, we're now ready for you to return for a second semester too. Spots are limited, so hop on the website and register today. Thanks so much for spreading the word about capital allocators university. Please enjoy my conversation with Gary Cernovitz.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guessed on today's show is Gary Cernovitz, managing director at Limerock Partners, an oil and gas-focused private equity firm that manages $10 billion where he runs the firm's investor relations and business development efforts. He's also the author of The Counting House, a fictional story about a CIO who oversees a $6 billion college endowment. After 20 years observing CIOs, Gary brings his pointed, witty writing with a nuanced understanding of someone sitting in the CIO seat. Our conversation discusses the perspective Gary brings to his latest book, The Challenges of Serving as a CIO, and Insights from two decades of manager meetings. Sitting outside the CIO seat, Gary shares a side of the CIO role that many experience, but few, are comfortable discussing on the podcast.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hello, I'm Ted Sides, and this is Capital Allocators. This show is an open exploration of the people and process behind capital allocation through conversations with leaders in the money game, we learn how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital. You can join our mailing list and access premium content at capital allocators.com.”
2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
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2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
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2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
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2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
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2023-12-18 · Capital Allocators · Gary Sernovitz - Inside the CIO Seat (EP.357) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source