YouSaid · the spoken record

John-Austin Saviano

lines on the record: 75
first: 2023-01-30
most recent: 2023-01-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Indeed, Ted, it's been a real pleasure. And if there's time, I'll make a little plug as to one of the things I've always loved about the name of your podcast, capital allocators, is that the capital allocation process is the defining characteristic of any investment firm. And whether you're an LP or a fund manager, if you understand why someone said yes to something and why they say no, why they come close to saying yes, but still they know that that friction, that is what defines each of these different investment organizations. And so a program like yours, these capital allocators, that is the crux of what we do. That's why I've always been such a big fan.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See the value of continuous learning. My dad was a surgeon even until late in his career. He was always trying to learn new techniques. I always admired that about him.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was thinking about this it's really too easily rejecting good ideas that feel too conventional that I think of mega cap buyouts I think of it doesn't really resonate with me in it it's really more of a blind spot than it is actually a good well founded reason.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's actually a husband wife pair, and each of them were extremely accomplished in their respective disciplines. But there's a couple that's known me since I was a kid. They're the parents of one of my oldest friends and across the decades they've given me all the encouraging words and at times ungentled feedback. They've opened doors for me. They've always been there to ask me the right questions.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely getting outdoors, the best part of our way of Northern California is being spoiled with all these things to do outside all year round. And so there's nothing that beats the flow state that comes from hours on a quiet trail.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the innovation side of it, they're always interesting teams doing new things. This is the bleeding edge of emerging managers that I work with on the one side, or the bigger existing firms that are trying to reposition themselves. Those moments of change and helping folks understand and navigate those things. I can think of it as those circumstances. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I know a lot of the questions and engaging in those conversations and pulling people forward with their own thinking, their own ideas, it just always excites me.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had a great team, the chance to build the team, especially starting from scratch. I was fully responsible for everyone we hired. It was just a privilege to work with really talented people that were geared towards the mission of what we did. Yeah, that's probably what she missed most.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take on a couple new relationships over the last few years I've built up really nice portfolio of clients across a bunch of different strategies. A dozen firms since I started doing this work and they've collectively gone to raise billions of dollars worth of capital. And the thing that's really satisfying about your work is that I've been able to do it in a way that's aligned as I can be with the LP side of the world so that my compensation, the way in which I work with teams is overwhelmingly tied to this successful realization of carry. I've built myself essentially a portfolio of stakes in the carrie outcomes of a bunch of firms. Although I have an economic relationship with fund managers, my economic relationship is really only based on them delivering great results.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Capital scarcity. They're not getting funded in the same way. I think that can be a real interesting opportunity for all these too.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things that really excite me about the current moment is I think we're in a world of pockets of capital scarcity in a way that there haven't been in a while. Being open and being really on the front of looking for those sorts of opportunities, things that you see now that I think were kind of interesting in the credit markets, we haven't had the major, major credit event yet, but you're seeing pockets of friction and you're seeing pockets of no money showing up resources, the capital scarcity is there. That's really interesting. If I put my allocator hat on right now, you're seeing opposite side of what I described with the challenges for fund managers. You're going to have a great opportunity to get access to great firms. And more importantly, you have great access to great deals. If you can have the resources to have good co-investment programs, you're going to get access to things right now that are table pounding deals, but because there's”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, as you look out over the next couple of years, let's put back on the CIO hat. Tricky times, we talk to a lot of these people, what are you hearing about the way people are approaching their portfolios differently from how they've needed to in the past?”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the best allocators out there, that's, I think, a tremendous win, a team that's been incredibly satisfying to see so well.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bunch of firms over where they've really gone through tremendous change and growth. And I think my very first advisory clients are some guys that work in the carbon markets. I started years ago with them before they launched. And I knew something about the carbon markets. I knew they existed, but I didn't have any expertise in it. And seeing those and their deep, deep expertise in these markets as three partners running this firm and helping them translate their expertise into a language and a cadence that's understandable to allocators like me, helping them see the analogies in their work with other things, particularly in the real asset space is really where they fit and help them communicate their ideas in a lens that allocators are ready to understand. They're not the largest firm I work with, but they've gone from nothing that half a billion dollars of AUM in a set of strategies that most major LPs don't have exposure to. And they've built great roster of LPs that are representative of.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a lot of stuff the impact space that is very, very interesting, that these long-term secular trends around sustainability and resource scarcity, they're all true. They're all great opportunities. There are lots of really good opportunities that are in that space. But some of those strategies are still aspirational in that we want investors to care or we want investors to allocate capital to these things that are new, that are novel, that don't have a 10-year track record. And often they're finding there's not”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always a product market fit, especially for firms that are doing something that's new. You can't guarantee that. And it doesn't mean that the investments are bad or that the investment talent isn't there. It's that the market isn't a big enough buyer of what those people are doing. That's one word. It's not an investment loss, but as a business, it's not going to be as successful because you're not finding the audience for it.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so interesting that this is a role that I think, and I described it as unherald because overwhelmingly this is a role that's not compensated. It's usually someone giving an amount of their time and effort to help an institution. The temperament of that person, the ability to control the agenda, the way in which they manage meetings, those sorts of things can have a massive impact on the outcomes you get. And I always think that the most important determinant of long-term success for any pool of capital is the quality of its governance. And that starts with the investment committee chair. And how is that person bringing good people onto the investment committee? How is that person engaging with their CIO? All of those things are things that that person's volunteering to do in their spare time, but are critically important to actually achieving great results.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, as a component of that, you've recently put out a piece discussing the importance of the role of the investment committee chairs. And would love you to take me through that piece, the insights in it.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The great results. And the great results is great process. You take great people with great plan, you get great results. There's an investment committee. Your best time is spent probing the decision making that's happened, the basis for why the team is doing what it's doing, and ensuring that that's set rather than having specific conversations about, I think this hedge fund should be $25 million instead of $35 million.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You nailed it at the beginning, and the idea is the investment team, the CIO, along in concert with the investment committee, their governance structure, establishes a plan, establishes resources to execute that plan. And then it's the team's job to go and do that. And at that point, the governance structure is there not to manage the process, but to oversee it. And where things, I think, can get off track is when there's too much reach down into that delegation, things that headed grade should have been delegated or their constraints that are put on that effectively change the delegation that has happened as an investment committee, your job is there to agree to the plan, agree to the resources of the plan, pick the captain of your boat that CIO, and then stay on top of is the process working. Because we all want the great results, but you have to focus on the hook drive.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once a group, an investment committee investment team has established a set of policies and principles that make sense for that institution, how does the governance then get derailed off of that when it comes to making effective investment decisions that are in line with that mission?”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That then beyond that, they could have very different dependencies and uses for their pools of capital. If you're an institution that generates most of your revenue through tuition and endowments of supplement, well, that gives you a very different relationship to risk than if you're institution where all of your spending or the majority of your spending comes from your endowment. You should behave differently because of that. And sometimes in governance, those things get lost, that it seems like, hey, these are two institutions that do the same thing. Shouldn't they be invested in the same way?”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mentioned earlier, the diversity of founder-led private donation versus a very vibrant public university with thousands of constituents. That's one issue. It's just constituents, the challenge of who are you managing money for and how are their voices heard in how you actually manage the money. For most pools of capital, most CIOs, that's a big part of what they need to be able to do. Think of it at a public company. You have the CEO who manages external audiences, their shareholders, the general public. In the same way, the CIO has that hat. That person's got to reach all those external audiences. Some of the other governance things that come up, having a plan that is focused on meeting the liability stream and taking the right risks for that institution. All long-term institutions have the challenge of inflation. You have to address.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Emily saw it once, and we'll leave the names out. We hear a lot about governance challenges. And I'd love to get a better understanding of your experience in that seat and what some of those challenges were.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Boy, that's really sinister. We all know that there are little pods of institutions that cluster, and it's individuals who sometimes used to work together or that have just very similar styles that you'll see them turn up in the same annual meetings and there's the same people and four people sitting together in each one. So there are those clusterings that happen, but I haven't heard of anyone overtly trying to block one of their peers.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember one specific example of a manager being told not to take money from a certain group of institutions as a premise of taking money from another one because they were in that same peer comparison.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why most explicitly in compensation? You have CIOs that have compensation that are benchmarked against how they did versus their rival schools. I think it's fair to look at the other schools and say we have similar resources. We could have had a similar outcome to them. But is it actually serving your liability strength? Is that actually time well spent and a risk well spent for the institution that you're stewarding capital for? I don't know that those things are well.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On that point, I remember seeing some behavior that surprised me of CIOs when I was on the other side of the fence. Where are there examples other than just talking about it in a little bit of mindshare where the incentives get, let's just say misaligned with the broader missions of the institutions because of the peer comparisons?”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's see. So, one thing that comes up a lot for CIOs is, I would say the peer comparisons. This is a Football game approach to it and whose school is beating who's? And I think it's an enormous distraction. And I think it's really easy to have folks caught up in how did the other school do. So I think that's one takeaway that I think CIOs spend a lot more time talking about what other folks are doing than is really all constructive to their time with their investment.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd be remiss if I didn't circle back to your experience with investment committees because I know the emerging manager stuff is almost the micro of this. But at the end of these decisions, there's a real macro decision. I'd love to capture some insights from that CIO seat maybe that we can't elsewhere. What are some of the things that you experienced that we could talk about that you think maybe someone else who's sitting in the seat might not be as inclined to talk about?”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say one of them, as I mentioned, this focus on track record that all we care about is track records. And I think they missed how much we focused on ideas and the quality of the people that are executing them. And that we are looking for a total package so that you have to present that total package. That would be one thing that I think GPs often misunderstand about LPs. The second is the opportunity that LPs face. And one of the great joys of being an LP is the ability to lean and pivot to different parts of the world, different asset classes, different strategies. And so if you're a real estate guy, it's always a great time to buy a building. But if you're a CIO with a multi-asset class portfolio, maybe it's not such a great time for real estate. Or maybe I've got a little too much buyout. So I'm going to go spend some time in the credit markets because, boy, those who are looking interesting in ways they have in a long time. So that's another thing I think that's a lot of GPs misunderstand.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, your fund dollars go longer, you're buying yourself more time of capital deployment, while at the same time you're also increasing the AUM of the firm, you're increasing the economics of the firm. It's just not in a perfect way that you want to do it if you could do it the exactly the way you wanted to do it.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing. The second thing is that coaching teams these days just to be really attuned to what resources you have to go the distance because it's going to take longer. Your path as a new firm to escape velocity economics and economic viability is just going to be longer. Do you need to do a working capital deal? Do you need to kind of think differently about how you're doing your work to be open to that? And maybe the third thing I spend a long time with folks now is on kind of modifying capital strategy. Blind pool, committed capital is incredibly scarce right now because there's so many other things that are taking LP's time and attention. But people always say yes to a great deal in an environment where there are lots of things going on. If you've got an extraordinary deal, you can get that deal funded. The idea is for a lot of phone managers to take some lessons from a fundless sponsor leaning into taking more co-investment.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it certainly is. Good news for Allocator? Is it bad news for GPs, particularly newer GPs? In that the world's gotten a lot more interesting. If you're an allocator, if you put my CIO hat on, there's just a lot more things that I can invest in now that have much more interesting possibilities than they've had in a long time. Step one is just recognizing that the opportunity set of the people you're trying to raise money from has changed dramatically, where folks may have been natural allocators to something before. Well, now they've got a lot of other things they could be spending time. So what do you do? The first thing is some of the work I described, you have to have a super compelling story. You have to have a reason to exist. And frankly, there has to be a sense of urgency because on my desk, there are 25 things I could be doing. Why are you going to be one of the top two or three things that I spend time on? And if you're just average, well, I'll get to you eventually. But the idea is you have to be extraordinary and you have to be really clear.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when you've taken someone through these couple of steps, you've worked with them to make sure they're presenting that well, we happen to be in an environment today that is particularly difficult for emerging managers of all types. You've written something about this recently, but would love you to share how you think managers should be approaching a market that is difficult for everybody”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're telling people that are experienced and have other options, something that they want to be a part of. Being able to be convincing to investors, that is a critical part of being successful. I think articulating that to fund managers, letting them know this is part of the job. You have to be able to have ideas that move the room if you want to be successful on running a link firm.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are a couple things. One is this process of having them outline their ideas for people that maybe are the most gregarious or easy in the room. How really extraordinary ideas opens all the doors because investors, we always are hungry for a good idea. And if it doesn't come in a great rapper, well, I'm much more interested in the idea than I am in the wrapper. So a lot of it is helping them be just super sharp with their ideas so that their ideas, in fact, some of their materials can advance the story without them. The other piece I would say is I think of really great founders as convincers, people that are going to be very successful can compel people to action with their ideas. One of the early markers is can you compel someone to join your team who's had better options than taking a risk on your startup idea or your new firm? That's a great marker.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes you have those conversations, you find the right people, but those individuals aren't necessarily gifted at communicating that externally. I'm curious how you've coached people, someone who you think has the real stuff, but they're not expressing that in a way that will be heard easily by someone on the other side of the table.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's some self-reflection actually could be really valuable to them. I found that's actually a really pretty interesting indicator of teams that I want to work with. And frankly, teams that I think are going to be successful are those that are willing to engage in that kind of self-reflection.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting how I showed where we started things you take from early in your career, that's the building blocks of the investment strategy. Those good fund managers, when you're talking, when they're hearing them talk about their strategy, are you sort of reaching for your wallet? Are you hearing something that you're like, this is a great idea, this is a great way of doing something already familiar with. So you're pulled forward by the quality investment ideas. So it starts at that granular level. Tell me about businesses you're buying or the assets you're buying. What are you doing with it? What's the strategy? So he starts, it starts really with that. And the next thing is you're checking a lot for the temperament. And this is when you ask people to take the time to think about the long term. Ask them to put pen to paper for things that they should recognize are helpful to themselves. That's actually a pretty good marker of people who come to their work with a learner's mentality that recognize that they don't know everything.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you're on the other side of those conversations, and it's early on and you have the time and attention of these people, at what point for you and how you're spending the time, do you decide, okay, these things do look aligned and this is a group I want to work with, or maybe you see something very, very early on that, okay, they're not aligned and maybe I can help them, but let's just let them go at it because it's not the kind of thing that from your past you think will be ultimately successful.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those ideas and the realization of those ideas aligns with a personal interest and goals of the people running the firm. That's a coherence that is so rare. As an LP, as an investor, you can smell it when it's all just have a sense of inevitability to it. These are the right people doing the right thing in the right way. And they're going to do it because they can't not. And if you can help people tell a story in that way, they're going to be very effective at connecting with investors and growing the business.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can you totally where you think the firm is going? Fulsome view, what the organizations will, how many people, how many offices, what kind of strategies are we just one firm that does one thing? Are we going to be a broader firm that does a bunch of things? Putting those things together so you have a manifesto, which is the ideas that push the firm, the business plan of how we're going to build an organization that supports the execution of those ideas. And then the third and last thing of this initial work is just doing some really heartfelt goal setting the founding members of the team and what are their expectations for themselves and for the firm as they run this business. They're taking a huge risk on their career from all of their peers and putting a bunch of their own money and time. What are they aiming for out of all this process? And if you put those things together, this is where this all goes, the long going up here. But the idea is that you have a great standard investment ideas with a purpose built firm to execute.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That depth is tall, usually in people's heads. What I try to do is I try to turn them into a teacher. You've learned all this through your years of running this whatever your strategy is. How do you teach it? How do you explain it to someone else and really let it breathe? So that's one piece of it is a manifesto. A second piece of it is pushing them to do some real business planning. One of the questions I'll ask folks is 10 years from now, we're going to have a dinner. We're going to celebrate the last 10 years. What do we celebrate? Is it that you reached $4 billion in AUM, that you have four funds that are top desire, that you're a springboard for talent? What is it that the success of the successful firm will look like? And what you choose in those moments will imply a lot of how you build the firm today. Plans will change and planes won't work out the way you want it or new opportunities to present themselves. But the idea at this moment where you sit today.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sets the table for how we go and engage external audiences. The first of which is making sure that firms understand that good LPs aren't totally fixated on returns and track record. The track record is an output of a lot of other things. And that good LPs recognize that the determinants of a great track record are where the people are involved, what's the quality of their ideas, and how are they going about executing on those ideas? And so as a new firm, a firm is taking its story to the market, they need to be really explicent at describing those things. Most firms I work with, you start with, you do a manifesto. What's the long form? Let it all breathe. I'm trying to do a deck. Give me a long form version of why you're starting this firm, why you created this firm. What is it that you see from your experience? What is the gap that you are looking to fill the marketplace? And what's the best of everything you've learned that you're pouring into your investment? That exploration show ideas.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I work with teams that it's either at the moment they're launching or they're going through a significant strategic change. It's when they need or they seek an outside voice. That's often where I get involved. Sometimes it's in moments like this where you're getting calls from people that are thinking about leaving the Big Firm and they want to have a conversation with you. Do you think I can do it? Or do you think what it takes or is it the right time? So you have those initial conversations with people that are just helping them calibrate. They're going to try to take this huge risk and do this incredibly hard thing. Is it the right time? Are they going to be likely to succeed? But when I get into it with folks, there's a series of steps. You take them through that initial phase that's fairly universal, even for really well-established firms. I mean, I work with firms that are brand new startups to folks that are 20-year-old firms that are repositioning themselves. There are a few things that all these firms can do at first.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Billion endowed portfolio. It's never done because you're right. It does take so long for the things that you do to come to fruition and be objectively good or bad ideas. Fortunately, the bad ideas tend to declare themselves early, but the successes take longer. And I think one of the things I've really enjoyed is having backed now dozens of firms across the years and seeing how many of them have gone on to just tremendous success and the process working. And I once wrote about this. The only disaster fund really truly disaster fund I ever invested in was not an urgent manager. It was a high Roman numeral fund that had a murderer's row of read LPs invested in it. You can see that process working certainly when I was leaving, you could see those firms really starting to get their feet under on it now years later. It's great staying in touch with them and seeing how well they're doing.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We got an incredible access. And for me, I was able to build conviction. In 2017, when I stood down to create my advisory business, this was one of the large ideas in my mind, was there are all these incredibly talented investors that try and start new firms. But it's their first time raising capital or it's their first time running their own firm. And there's a lot of ways they can get off track. And I've been on the other side of billions of dollars worth of subdocs. I've said yes to fund ones in small firms. And can I help younger firms be more effective more quickly? That's a core idea. And I saw that the placement agent community is really good at capital and that's what they do and they say they do some of this stuff. But as a buyer, as an allocator, a guy who signs stop docs, you've had to put your arms around all the good and bad firms. And that's what I help firms now is I help them be better, faster versions of themselves.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things we did a lot of whenever I watched Cal was we backed a lot of younger, smaller firms. And one of the critical reasons we did this was I think it's actually just much better investing in that as an allocator, you need to get to know the firms and you need to understand how those firms work that you back. I give that example, you know, if you show up to a high Roman numeral fund to Fund 13, Fund 14. When you're vertically, we're going to get a 25, maybe $50 million allocation to something. you're going to get a courtesy meeting in a data room and you're going to get a great IR team, but you're never really going to know what's going to go on at that firm. At Berkeley, we flipped at it. We had this incredible global brand where people loved having Berkeley's money in their firms and they loved their premature of this top university. And if we showed up with $25 million to a firm that was raising their first fund or a hedge fund that was only a couple hundred million dollars.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fund of funds, you weren't the only one that we used. One of the folks I brought on my team was an extraordinary investor that didn't have a lot of experience in real assets. We partnered him up with one of the leading allocators in the space with a similar understanding that we are going to draft on you for mentorship and access and insight as we build that capacity in-house. Because again, a place like Cal, you can't go out and hire the tip top best real assets allocator in the marketplace because you don't have that kind of money. You've got to really cultivate, grow people from within. And this was one way of adding leverage to what we did.”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What were some of the other ways when you approached either getting exposures or building up the knowledge base of your team that you did that maybe some other people wouldn't have done if they didn't need to?”
2023-01-30 · Capital Allocators · John-Austin Saviano – Emerging Managers and IC Governance (Capital Allocators, EP.294) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source