YouSaid · the spoken record

Lane MacDonald

lines on the record: 74
first: 2026-01-26
most recent: 2026-01-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Start to the kids, as always. I've got two kids are still playing college sports, one who's launched, but continuing for the next five years to stay engaged with them, get to every game I can. Seeing them get launched is number one. Number two is for this last chapter, having the opportunity to build something that I'm really proud of. I didn't really feel like I could do it, Harvard or in the family office space. Something that I feel is back to one of those enduring foundational platforms. That is going to be important. The last piece for me in the next five is making sure we've time for friends. We get so busy in life, you focus on family, career, but making sure we have time for friends. As time goes by, my parents are getting older, you're seeing death happen. It goes by fast. So trying to enjoy that time on all fronts.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never thought I'd have a career in finance. I feel so lucky every day. Professionally, I do something that I really enjoy and love. My family and friends. It's been a great ride. I feel blessed that I've lived a life that I never thought was possible.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My parents instilled in this and lived it. Education is the greatest gift you can give a child. That was number one. And they lived it. And my dad went to school for 14 summers, gets undergraduate degree. My mom was a registered nurse and did not have the opportunity to pursue a traditional education. They almost overvalued education, but viewed as the greatest gift. Hence, when I had the opportunity to go to Harvard, they leaned in. The second thing was humility. One comment is why I stayed with me. If you need to tell someone how good you are, you're probably not that good. That's something that resonated. People want to give you your resume all the time.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My first real paid job was catying. My parents are from Nova Scotia, Canada, very small town. My dad loved to golf, so grew up golfing. They did my caddy program. This is like a public course. For tournaments, we'd all caddy the young. I got put on a bag of someone who everyone scared me to death. They're like, he's mean. Last year didn't even pay the person who caddy for him. Like, caddied for him. Turns out he was a nice person. Number one, reputation doesn't always hold. Number two, if you're polite, thoughtful, respectful, and work hard, it generally works out. My parents still have great values. I came away from that. He ended up giving me a good tip, and I end up staying connected with him and see him around the course thereafter and went from being afraid of him to really looking forward. That was a great lesson where I learned don't judge a book by its cover, don't listen to everybody.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love working out because I love pushing myself. If my daughter and I are going for a bike ride, which I do every Sunday in the summer in the Cape, we're going from where we live in West Falmouth to Woods Hall and we time. All my kids are wired the same way. If I get a Peloton, I can't help but chase the leaderboard. I love to play hockey. I get to play hockey with people who are my age in these days with people who are younger, which is quite humbling. I love the competition. I love working hard. I love pushing myself. These days, when I play with the young guys, I may only make one good play during the course of the skate, but it's fun.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about that. Don't react to short term swings. If anything, marginally lean into that. What we do is bring one tranche forward if your dollar cost averaging into publics. It's not trying to turn too many dials or be too tactical. It's really to be more strategic.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biggest upside surprise is access. I came from HMC. I had breakfast with Charlie Munger at his home in LA. SES, I knew about the platform and knew about portfolio, knew about the managers, but the access to co-investments in particular has so vastly exceeded my expectations. That's been fun. I think it's interesting when you have clients who have a lot of money, how responsive they are to the public market. Now, one of the benefits of having a diversified portfolio is you're not 70, 30, you're not 70%, and so the market's down 20 on a certain day in April. It is fascinating that when you have the benefit of duration of capital, people still worry very much about the short term. Part of my job is to continue to provide guidance and comfort to people that we're thinking about the long term here. We're not traders, we're investors. We're not macro-driven, we're macro aware, trying to optimize for the long term.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Access, but you need to balance those too. So it's imperfect. We can rationalize everything, you need to be intellectually honest about that. There are trade-offs to getting bigger, and hopefully we'll do it at a pace that is consistent with allowing us to make really good decisions. But if we're 200 billion dollars in three years, that would be a shock to me.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something our clients ask us about a lot, and certainly very mindful of the growth because we want enough capital matter, but not so much you can't do the nimble, niche things. We're not going to be doing a lot of M&A within our platform, but we will grow organically. I feel we've got a bunch of room to run. In some cases, there are benefits and there are concerns. On the concern side, it is, can you keep doing the small managers? Can you still write a 10 million check into a great funded sponsor who came out of some of my partners, who you think is world-class and has a great deal? You want to be able to do that and not get so big you can't. On the good news side, things like seeding GPs. If you believe with someone, you'd write a check as an LP. If you write a bigger check and can own a piece of the GP, you have the option to do that. You also have the opportunity to lean into some deals that you really believe in. An area like oil and gas can be chunkier where you can write more meaningful co-investments. It allows you more flexibility, writing a little bit bigger check in some cases creates a little bit better.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's frankly hubris at times, and they think it's all about them. I have a relationship with the LPs. I'm the one who raises money. I'm the one who built the track record. Now, if you want to have an enduring business, you evolve from being an investment shop to a franchise, you better build a culture, a team, and a capability, but it starts with attracting, retaining the best talent, and that is by sharing more than you probably need to.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Steve Orstaglio, who's a CIO before me. Extraordinary person. He did a great job, and I'm so grateful for all the things he did. Then when I joined the Johnson family, Ned Johnson had done a lot, stepping into a platform that he built was daunting. He was one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the generation. Fideli is one of the greatest businesses created. They're a wonderful family. So that was daunting. This was less daunting, but very enjoyable. Once you become a big machine, the big Apollos and Blackstones, Goldman's, those are machines. More in the boutique area, which I describe us, it's more important, certainly in the private equity realm, the succession of the leadership and ownership. I've seen that handled really well in really poorly. The most important thing for succession to be handled well is having founders who along the way share more than they should. Too many founders think it's them, it's ego.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Star with aligned foundation of the firm. They also really value the relationships with the client-facing folks. Number three is the investment platform. We're so lucky here. Many of our clients are GPs. Public, private. I love the conversations I get to have with those folks around investing. I learn every time I have the conversation. Those are the pieces that for our clients they would highlight. As you can see,”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For us it's easy because we differentiate in the alts, in private equity, in the expression of publics, but even independent return. We view it as a fixed income replacement because it's not particularly tax efficient, nor is fixed income. Therefore, we try and construct a portfolio that has a low beta to public equities of 0.2.3. There's multistrat in that, there's equilong short, but certain flavors to rightly construct something that is highly uncorrelated, that is where you can really differentiate. If you're doing 60, 40, 70, 30, the democratization of alts is what you're delivering to the masses. That is how to differentiate from an investment standpoint. You have to have good relationships and sticky relationship with clients at this end of the market. You can differentiate much more from an overall relationship standpoint, the value you can bring to families, and certainly from an investment standpoint.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So your organic growth is just five, six percent before you do anything. There'll be corrections over long periods of time. Number two, you add clients. That's highly accretive. Number three, you go inorganic and do M&A. Now you've got a business that you can grow without doing anything too heroic. Call it 10 to 20% depending on how you're doing top line. Very attractive. Now you get the operating leverage in the business, which is a low capital intensity, high free cash flowing business. You're converting a lot of those growth dollars into free cash flow dollars. Hence, private equity was late to this game. Now there are over, I think, 60 private equity-backed roll-ups in their eyespace. It's a great business. People have figured out. Then the question becomes, within that morass, how do you differentiate?”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's been fascinating. I spent the first 13 years where we needed investors, then HMC and working for Fidelity where you didn't need money. Now being back in an environment where you're raising money has been an interesting change and I've really enjoyed it. This is a great business, the RIA business in itself. We're slightly different here at SCS because we focus on family offices. Our average client is $100 million. With that, they have the ultimate advantage of duration of capital. So we can lean into alts. Not many folks are in our category. So let's separate us for a moment where we do something very different from an investment standpoint. The broader market, in some ways it's similar to fidelity. You start at the beginning.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A JCR standpoint and velocity of capitalist standpoint, co investing is more attractive. You don't have to go through a fund investment cycle. Private equity at the higher end, there's just some real challenges in terms of getting capital back overall. I don't think there are as many efficiencies there. There's now this democratization of vaults that I have real questions about in certain asset classes, particularly private equity and the expression of it in public markets. I'm a believer that inefficiencies will continue to exist in the lower end of the market. Now, I think venture is slightly different in that there are those handful of larger funds, crossover funds, who continue to access many of the leading companies with that becomes more franchise value, I believe, in venture than in the bio space. Some of those firms that are bigger, I still believe, have an opportunity to perform given their access to the leading companies, whether it's OpenAI anthropic cognition. There's more opportunity for the larger venture funds, Frank.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am still a private equity bull inefficiencies continue to exist there that are much harder to find in the public markets. From a math standpoint, if you look back over any ten year rolling period, privates of outperformed publics by 580 basis points, over three-year rolling periods, 500 basis points. This lasts three years is one of the rare three-year cycles that hasn't. It's been an extraordinary period. When you look at private equity, all the managers that we get to meet, the funded sponsors, the emerging managers, there are lots of inefficiencies out there. There are hundreds of thousands of companies that exist in various parts of this economy. In that inefficiencies exist, that is where the alpha is in private markets. And the question is, how do you access it? On the bigger side, there's some real challenges. As a sector, private equity needs to give money back to folks. The DPI is not great. One other byproduct of co-investing is from a...”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An enjoyable process because it just ends up being best ideas. There are times where you do think about sizing, where you really love something but you don't have much space. So you may size it down back to having enough capital pattern and not so much that you can't do small things ends up being one of getting the best expression that you can in the portfolio. Those discussions I find are some of the most enjoyable discussions. You've got good manager A and really good manager B. How do they fit? Now sometimes there's an exposure piece because we're very conscious about how much tech do we have, how much healthcare, where are we in terms of biogrowth equity venture in our independent return bucket, how much equity long short do we have? That ends up being foundational. The ultimate ends up being the expression of trying to find the best managers.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Constant communication in the meetings, vetting this. At the same time, it's important that the team is out there meeting everybody. That's where it all starts, sourcing to me, whether you're a GPU or an LP, too few LPs take the GP mindset. As an LP, you better have a GP mindset and you better source. You better be out there finding opportunities. Peter Lacolade, that's what he's done. He's gifted at building relationships. He's built relationships with some of the best investors in private equity because He's gifted at sourcing, he's gifted in relationships. He loves these people in many ways. That's his gift for each of the team. You take 11 people on a private team and they're all out there networking sourcing. You're going to see a lot of really interesting things.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way our privates team works is that we have two meetings a week. There, the flow is so significant, looking at fund of sponsors, search funds, trying to canvass that part of the universe as well. There's a lot of flow in addition to the larger and existing managers. Then the co-invest piece, we've got to be connected. We have two meetings a week. Those meetings are an hour, an hour and a half. In that way, you stay connected. The public's team meets once a week. From a process standpoint, that is where the flow happens. Oh, it had a good meeting last week with so-and-so. We should put them on our list. They go on our list of something that we're serious about. Who drops off that list? Because what you want is a capacity constrained environment for investing. I want it with my GPs. I want it for us where you're having to make our decisions about what GPs you're backing and the equity long short space, private space, co-investment space. The only way to do that is with”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Such a great balance, you need to have a culture of people who want other opinions. The most knowledgeable person may have the strongest voice. It's the flaw in family offices where the system of checks and balances isn't there to try to optimize the decision. There has to be healthy debate around all of it. If people aren't pushing me on things that I'm supporting, I start worrying about wait a second, what are we missing? The senior members of the team have a bigger voice, but you need to have the checks and balances. I'm a big believer in investment committee and not investment committee of one, finding the environment where you can really encourage debate is important.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A new equilong short manager comes in. I want our team who has seen every equity long short manager for the last fifteen years to be looking at that. Now we all need to evolve because things change, times change, we need to be thoughtful about that. But I want that depth of knowledge and expertise. I want to be like the GPs we back where we have an edge. We can capture the inefficiency. That structurally how we're organized to make sure that we're making the best decisions we can make. It doesn't mean they're all going to be right, but the best decisions we can make with the most information.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tell a lot of the young men and women who I mentor, you need to think about your career like investment. It's the most important investment you're going to make. Be thoughtful about every step along your career. Create optionality. I did a lot of work before joining. So I knew the team. But I am a believer in domain expertise. You can't tell the GP. You want to main expertise and then not walk the walk. My expertise really matters. From a structure here, we have 11 folks on our private investment team. We have 10 on our public markets team. Within privates, we've got folks who focus on venture. We have folks who focus on buyouts. We have focus who focus on more of an opportunistic bucket and then real assets. Public equity is very similar. Domain expertise wins so structurally here we are focused around that.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a billion 250. Now you're underwriting something very different phishing in a different size pond, writing bigger checks. They're going to add a sector. They're going to add more people. Now what you're underwriting is something very different than when you underwrote before. With GPs who rationalize raising more money without being intellectually honest about it is a first indication that you should be thinking about heading for the exit.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The math piece, which is statistically significant sample size, you better be doing this for a period of time, and it's very hard in venture. There are many Mike Moritz out there. You start there with a great track record, but then you come down to the other pieces. Integrity to me is so important. These are partnerships that are going to be long-term. It's a little bit like getting married. It's a long-term relationship in private equity or hopefully with in public markets. You're going to be investor for 15, 20 years. The integrity of the firm, the quality of the people of the firm, the culture of the firm are all those things that are part of the mosaic that you need to build. But at the end of the day, it comes back to domain expertise, proven ability to capture inefficiencies, understanding investment process-wise, how you get to that. One of the challenges for me had been, okay, GP has a $500 fund. They do great and they're focusing on two sectors. Now they're in hot demand. Next thing you know.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But where those things align you can de-risk it and you can own a piece of the GP going forward. That is where you can find more structural alpha”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A great LP, pick great managers, not easy, but hopefully you do it really well. You can be top quartel. Number two, the co-investing that I described, structural alpha. Number three, we do a bunch of this, which is seeding emerging managers, helping to launch emerging managers. 20% of each of our platforms that we raise every two years are emerging managers. If you're going to lean in and do that, why not own a piece of it? You can't do that with a $10 million check. But if you have a manager who's going to spin out of somewhere, you can de-risk it, and we in an endowment, maybe another family office show up with $150 million, and they're going to raise $250 or $300, and we're going to help them with introductions. At that point, can you own a piece of the GP for that value add? I'm hesitant to make that a strategy where we're going to do eight seeds, or we're going to do eight of these because I think that's more bespoke. If an opportunity comes up, many talented emergency people don't need that. They can raise the money on their own. You don't want to have the adverse selection.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tax efficient passive investing in the public markets and co invest in the private markets, you describe a form of structural alpha or getting at excess return. I'm wondering if there are other aspects of structural alpha that you've identified in your investing.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now we'll look at co investments where we're not an investor in the GP. Historically, we had been limited to the GP. We've broadened that aperture because you can see deals outside of your existing GPU inverse that it becomes too limiting. That being said, the bar is the same. It is a GP that you would love to partner with. And that GP, it could be a family office. Someone who's got true domain expertise, that your conviction in them is very high as a lead investor and they are really compelling. That is still the bar.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is one of the gifts of co investing. Having been a GP as well, I have seen so many GPs and how the underwrite deals. You learn so much about who's really gifted in terms of what they see, what they think, the optionality that may be embedded, the catalyst for outsized returns, that part of it is incredibly informative of getting in the trenches. The point of co-investing is not to render the deal. It's to benefit from what they're doing. But what they've done and how they share is incredibly informative to let you know about how deep they are, how knowledgeable, what their edges.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Structure is important. The size of the deal is more subtle in the size of the opportunity. If you think back when Covesty became big in the late 2000s, all of a sudden it became anchored with a lot of big deals. Big GPs doing big deals in leading to Co-Invest. The bigger the deal, the less excitement about co-investing. Is it a beta deal? Number one, two, with that, finding those managers who are doing smaller deals who give you the opportunity to co-invest. That generally means it's smaller fund. Then it becomes manipulating that. What's a meaningful check to them in what's going to be the check to us? Deal size is underappreciated. I'm a believer that the alpha is in the smaller end of the market. Mid-cap small cap microcap funds. If you're going to try to pursue alpha in co-investing, that's where your co-investment should sit.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You want to be aligned with smart people, it could be a great deal, but if I'm not the expert, I'm insecure about not knowing what I don't know. And then if I don't have alignment, I'm worried about if this doesn't work, who's going to be working this deal? That part is really important. The next part is giving people a quick answer. If it's going to be a no, give them a quick no. Don't drag things out.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a 10-point checklist around co-investing starts with a GP, who the GP is, and is a sector where they have true domain expertise. Some GPs are in four sectors. They're great in one or two, but not always great in three or four. Then it gets to the partner. Is the partner true alpha generator? Not every partner in every private equity firm is created equal. Some are truly gift investors and some are more beta investors. Trying to align yourself with those truly gifted investors who are leading the transactions in the sector where they have to do my expertise. You want the sector in the industry to be wind at your back, but then you continue to roll through not far down that list further is alignment. You've got to be aligned. If a co-invest comes to us and the GP is putting in a small check and looking for us to put in a bigger check on them, that's not happening. If it doesn't work, I want it to be a lot more painful for them than it is for us. That's not rocket science, but the tool of all these sectors invest.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Foundational League at Harvard, you had the benefit of all the history, all the coin investments that had been done within Harvard history and across multi-asset classes. The track record was compelling. That led us to do a lot more work as we were rebuilding it and lean into it. If you take the mean return in most vintage years from a Cambridge Associate and you back out Fee and Carrie, that's top quartel. I term that structural alpha. If you are smart and thoughtful, partner with mean GPs, do mean co-investments. Absent fee and carry, you're top quartel. That's the foundational piece number one. The math is working for you. Then you get into the selection.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's clearly a multi-year period. We're very lucky being able to access world-class managers. We write big enough checks to matter so you get mindshare, you get opportunity, and then underwriting ends up being back to this piece about just spending the time understanding what is unique about that manager, track record, team, their process, the investment process is what you're underwriting so many times though, people change and evolve the process, whether it's public or private. When that happens, you're re-underwriting a whole new strategy or a whole new manager. Having managers who stick to what they do really well interdiscipline around that, and have a humility around it to is really important.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the public side said that thirty percent that's an active given the high bar because you can generate that tax alpha on the passive side, how do you think about the duration of time where you're trying to measure sufficient alpha that you're willing to pay the fees for an active manager”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of that is a foundational peace on public equities around the margin. Are there some gifts to public investors? There sure are. Generally in less efficient parts of the market. It could be small mid-cap. It could be Europe. It could be Asia. That really became foundational. Where there's dispersion, you go active, where there's low dispersion, like public equity, you go passive. Contrast that. Private equity, high dispersion. And given my history with HMC and being a private equity, they're your active. You lean in trying to find the alpha in the best managers in the world. Because what you get, as we all know from being top quartile in the outperformance that exists there is worth it. When you think about the implementation here and you think about the two biggest asset classes of public equity and private equity, couldn't be more different in terms of the implementation. That was important to me as a foundational piece.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was my last chapter. I spent a lot of time on this, making sure we were like minded because the last thing you want to come into an organization and be like, okay, we're ripping this thing up. I wouldn't have joined if I didn't believe in it, but two examples of things that were really important that are probably the two most important building blocks. Public equities here, we are largely tax managed passive. I work for the Johnson family, so I know Active very well. I was lucky to lead the public markets team at HMC too. So I've been around the sector. I have become increasingly concerned about the consistency and the opportunity to generate Alpha. Fundamentally, in low dispersion asset classes like public equity is, the bait is very attractive. I still believe there's alpha out there, but we're 70% tax managed passive. And if you can generate 100 to 200 basis points of tax alpha and there are now extension strategies that build upon that, if you're thoughtful about it and don't put too much leverage on it, there's effectively some tax alpha you get for free.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take a platform that I liked and I was an investor before I became an employee. I worked on a number of investment candidates. One of those we chose SCS. That was when I was working for the Johnsons three and a half years before where I saw what was here and was impressed. Coming in was to take what was here, pure luckily built the private thing. He's done a great job building this private platform. Steve Perry runs publics. He is a gifted investor and I love working with him. My view was what I bring is the best of family offices, the best of endowments to bring some of that learning to help continue to evolve this platform. So the things that I could do in the family office world in person are partnering with other family offices that are only for the multibillion dollar families that I can now access. I love this platform. Hopefully I can make it better and bring all the mistakes I've made and all the learning I've had.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The investment side. That was the vision. They started with one client and then over time built it to when I joined, I believe we were $35 billion and have grown since then. That was the foundation of the firm. Alignment and to try to deliver all three legs of the stool to families in a aligned way.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like so many things in life, I could take zero credit for the success of this firm. But I'm good at picking partners and teams. The firm had started over 20 years ago. P. Matoon, Tony Abiyati, Dagetali, Greek group folks, had come from the traditional model, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and just didn't believe in the model. They thought if this was my money working with ultra net worth folks, families, how would I do it? They built a model based on alignment. We're not trying to pitch a stuff. We're going to think in your best interest. We're going to provide the scaffolding for a family office, real reporting, balance sheet reporting, everything, all the estate, trust, tax management, getting beyond our wealth planning, education around for your kids. What many people failed to do and really didn't invest in was the investment side of that. So how do you build a compelling investment platform for these families who have three legs of the stool? You've got the scaffolding of family office. You've got the estate planning and wealth management.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“HMC, which was $30, $40 billion when I was there, 30 to 100 is the sweet spot where you can have enough capital to matter, but if a $500 or $100 opportunity comes up that's compelling, you still have the ability to do that. You need a great team. If you want to be a leading investor, you want to try to do something that you are proud of, it helps to be surrounded by a great team.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you were thinking about bringing together the best of what you saw at a place like Harvard, the best of what you saw at a big family office, what were the most important principles that you encapsulated that you wanted to bring to the table at SCS? The opportunity to truly partner with leading investors, playing hockey. I like to play with the best and makes you a lot better. I'll be partner with the best. Alignment's really important to me. I want to be aligned with everyone around me in terms of from a team standpoint, but also from a capital standpoint. I'm not trying to pitch you something that I do well you don't do well. I also think if you're going to try to optimize a platform, you need enough scale to matter where you can write real checks to drive terms in some cases, drive structure in some cases, lead to co-invest in some cases. It's important to me to not be so big that you can't do the small, nimble, nichey things. We're all victims of our past or beneficiaries of our past. Being in platforms”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“some to it well some rely on less capable teams to do a direct investing that's where you set yourself up to fail Now you have another seat where balance and purposes you can imagine you thought you were going to be there forever too. What led you to end up coming over to SES? Back to my teamwork. That to me is so central. I've never been someone who felt like I have all the answers. And the family office construct, I felt we weren't prepared to partner with the best. In many family offices, there aren't enough checks and balances on the decision-making process. The family calls the shot. That leads to suboptimal decision-making back to the view of I want a team to make the best decisions. Those who have the most expertise on my team, I want them leaning in, helping to drive that. Always the family has the ad size view on those things. In some cases, you may want to invest directly, but in many cases, you really want to partner.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As the strengths and drawbacks of investing directly across asset classes in a seat like that compared to Harvard portfolio of managers? It comes back to where I kind of true north in terms of domain expertise. My view is be the best or partner with best. But have the humility to know which bucket you're in? If you're going to invest directly, you better be the best. It's so competitive out there. The flaws in many family offices, they don't hire the teams. If you're going to focus on direct investing in an area like private equity, in a sector like manufacturing, you better hire a world-class team who's got a real edge, experience, top quartile track record, have the team that can execute and deliver really outstanding returns. Otherwise, you're a tourist investor, or worse, and you're showing up, you're looking things in different sectors, and you're taking risks you don't really understand. Many family offices who do direct.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As it is in most family offices, once again with the Johnson family, they had the ultimate advantage as well of duration of capital. In their case, you have some flexibility within that mandate, reputational benefits with that family and how unique as they are in scale. Very few families really have enough scale to really optimize the platforms. They did. What was the expression of those asset classes inside the office? It really was more about a willingness to accept concentration. In cern asset classes, there were very high concentration. Different families have different priorities. Some families go the endowment model and they want a partner. Some families like to do things more directly. The Johnson family as entrepreneurs lean more directly as opposed to investing through managers. That was obviously, in hindsight, wonderfully complementary to what I did with Harvard, but very, very different.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we circle back that phone call comes in, what was the phone call? The phone call was from the family that owns Fidelity Investments. One call becomes meetings. They're a wonderful family. It was a unique seat in terms of leaving their family office, which is for their family, but also broadly for some other owners of Fidelity and the other employees. It was a unique opportunity to be the chief investment officer of a platform like that in Boston with a family that has done so much for the city of Boston philanthropically and otherwise. It was a compelling opportunity. So you go from an endowment to a large family office. What was the breadth of investment activities that you were involved with for the Johnsons? If you think about the endowment model, basically the asset classes were the same. Public equities, private equity, net resources, real estate, the expression was different.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them being internal paying them that to them being external and paying them one and a half and twenty and some of that for beta. That is so illogical from an investment standpoint. The other one I'd say is too institutional bias. Oil and gas, we all want the world to be green for our kids. That being said, thou was an institutional push that happened at Harvard to eliminate all oil and gas investing. When you take a capital intensive sector where many are running and not deploying capital, that becomes a very attractive sector. The loss to Harvard by not investing a sector like oil and gas over the last eight, ten years is very meaningful because it was a target-rich environment for returns that go to support the financial aid for students. Those are some of the challenges that people don't think about when they look at these endowments. They're great people running these places and they try to optimize within those parameters, but there are some constraints that exist because of the institutional biases.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Firm transition, next generation, which I think were important. A lot of people think of a seat like that at a top endowment as the pinnacle of a seat in the LP. You mentioned that in addition to some of those great strengths, there are some drawbacks of the endowment seat. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what some of those drawbacks were. There are challenges to being part of these institutions. I love Harvard. I'm forever grateful for the experience I had, and I wouldn't be where I am without Harvard. With the institutional biases, and I'll give you an example. There was such a big push that people at Harvard were making too much money. This was before I joined. The only reason they were making too much money is because they were performing at such a high level. Those folks were generally making roughly 4-8% carry the alpha that they were generating while they were at HMC. All these initiatives at Harvard lead to spinning out these firms. You think about adage? High fields, convexity? Charles Bank. Now you go from”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're all biased by our own experiences. Being a GP was helpful. It could be simple as it's a GP you really like. You want to be supportive. Looking at their marketing materials before they go out to raise their next fund, being a confidante. Here's what I think you're doing well. Here's what you're not doing well. Shooting straight in being honest as opposed to telling them what they want to hear is really important. Number two is if you really want to build a mutually beneficial partnership is to be a great partner. When times are a little bit tough, you lean in and you understand things. But you also show up with a real check. You have to be a meaningful investor. If you're a five million dollar investor, it's hard to be meaningful. Fortunately, reputationally and dollar-wise are Harvard. We were able to craft relationships where we were first seating the back of the bus, but therefore people wanted our opinion and we could share best practices. Everything that we're seeing across the entire universe to help our GPs in terms of how the thing but strategy.”
2026-01-26 · Capital Allocators · Lane MacDonald – Teamwork, Alignment, and Investing at the Highest Levels at SCS (EP.483) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source