YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Rockefeller

lines on the record: 58
first: 2023-12-14
most recent: 2023-12-14
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

“So I was fortunate enough to spend time with Will I Am from the black-eyed piece a couple years ago. And I was asking him, Will, what was it that really made you so successful? And he said that at a very early age, when he was in high school, he started looking forward 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. And then he would envision himself then and then work backward. So I would say, you know, let's all be like, Will I am and look 30 years ahead and envision what the future will look like so we don't miss out.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a third of the way through. What I didn't know, maybe I should have known this, was that Elon actually started SpaceX before he took over Tesla.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's so great. What I love about that is after a long and sometimes grueling road for him building Nike, he said he wished he could go back and do it all over again.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Ken Griffin is a larger than life figure and teacher that leaves an imprint about how you think about things your entire life. I'd also say that Brandon Haley, who started Holocene, he was the first of our group at Citadel to launch his own fund, and he blazed a path for Woodline and others and was critical in helping all of us get started. Woodline wouldn't be here without him. And then on a personal level, my father, for teaching me the value of loyalty and hard work and consistency, I've been really fortunate, Barry. So I could go on for a while.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most recently, I've been listening to founders. Where David Senra summarizes the biographies of past leaders and entrepreneurs.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we want to pick the winners and the losers. And we want to structure portfolios around those winners and losers. And the market just does not matter.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what makes a good market for us is breadth of companies, liquidity, and having a rules-based system. And in any of these markets, the market being upper down really doesn't matter to us. If tomorrow you told me the market was going to be up 5% or down 5%, it would likely have very little impact on the performance of Woodline. And so we really look at talent and then the types of companies that are within a market that we can structure a diversified portfolio with.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So ultimately, the goal for all investors across strategies, public, private, is to generate uncorrelated alpha. And it starts with good risk management and optimal portfolio construction. If you look at the average investment fund, it has a risk profile of around 30% idiosyncratic risk. So let's flip that around. That means the average investment firm has 70% of their performance that will be influenced by macro and market factors. That's not high quality. And we think the industry can do better than that.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are doing jobs that may not have that same kind of glorified role? And at Woodline, Carl likes to say that people join because they choose to be on a great team rather than being an all-star on an OK team. And I think that's true. And I like to think of Woodline as an organization of linemen, defensive ends, and kickers where every role is celebrated and every person critical to achieving its goals.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just watched an interview where Ray Dalio was speaking to Bill Belichick, the head coach of the Patriots. Bill had just earned his 300th career win. And Ray is all about principles. And so he asked Bill what his principles as a head coach are. And Bill said, put your team first. Do your job and continually focus on improvement. And these are the key principles to any successful organization. And they're certainly part of the DNA of Woodline. But a football team has a lot in common with a successful investment firm. On a football team, you have a little over 50 people who dress for the game, plus an entire organization around that. And everyone dreams of being the quarterback or the star running back, but the success of a team is driven by all those people.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's complex and it's critically important to have a fully built out infrastructure to support your investment team and manage the operations of your business. And we're fortunate to have Matt Hooker and his team doing that for us very effectively and allows our investment team to invest even more than we were at Citadel, which is incredible.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. That's right. And what the platforms offer is Two things. One, from a PM and analyst standpoint, they allow PMs and analysts to invest in their portfolios and not worry about the operational complexities of running a business. That's huge. And from an LP standpoint, there are lots of decision makers, so there are lots of ideas, and it results in an uncorrelated, diversified alpha return stream, and one that an LP can do in a single investment versus the complexity of multiple investments and many funds.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when I talk about the platforms, some people refer to them as the multi-managers, the big market leaders are Citadel and Millennium.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Growth in the number of hedge funds has slowed recently, and we think that all likely continue as the consolidation of talent into the large platform models of peer structural. And like any fast growing business, there will be winners and losers. But the platforms offer a material value proposition to their portfolio managers and limited partners alike and will likely survive various market regimes.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to take the cells out of a person's body and align it just for that individual person and then put them back in. And so this is not something that you can do like a pill where you're manufacturing millions of these. This is a one-by-one approach. And so we have to figure out a way to make it more efficient, less costly, but I'm confident we'll do that.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cell therapy is very exciting. You basically take a patient's cells out. You infuse them and put them back in the patient's body to fight the cancer. And we've had remarkable results, particularly in types of blood cancer. But now we are starting to see the promise to work on solid tumors using this approach. And it comes down to the industrial complex around these because you have to manufacture these cells for each individual patient.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an incredibly exciting time to be a healthcare investor. Science has gotten to the point where we are understanding biology and how to target areas that we hadn't known for decades. And we're seeing some incredible results. We've made some breakthroughs in Alzheimer's disease. We've made some breakthroughs in obesity and in diabetes, in cancer. And so to be a healthcare investor right now is probably the best time that I've seen in the last 20 years.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, energy was one of those sectors that we didn't initially launch with. And the reason why was because there was a lot of correlation among the companies within energy. And with all that's gone on in the world, including clean energy, there's been a lot more dispersion among energy companies and have allowed us to, first of all, find a great analyst covering those names, but also to run a high idiosyncratic portfolio. So that's why we entered the sector.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A good question. It's all one fund that provides diversified access to all of our subsector portfolios. Part of the challenge for sector specific funds over the past decade is the higher volatility and lower sharp associated with that approach”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are four subsectors currently under technology? There are four subsectors currently under healthcare. And we break them up biotech, services, pharma, semiconductors. We have a Japanese tech PM. We have a Japanese consumer PM. We have a consumer health and wellness PM. These are all very specialized subsectors.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So far, it has not impacted us because the partnership model has been an attractive component to candidates looking at Woodline and also the sole coverage is an important component. When you are looking at a platform and you join another multi-manager, you're one of two, three, four, six, eight, 20 teams covering the same stocks. And it's more of a mercenary type of approach. At Woodline, we only have one software PM. That's Elliot Wilson. You know, we only have one medical device PM. That's Chris Hawkins. They are the key people.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's correct. And it really aligns incentives with our employees and our LPs so that we're all driving for the same goal”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was one of the most important questions to answer when setting up the firm. We believed that establishing a partnership model, more akin to what you would find with a private equity shop. The best approach. And we're called woodline partners for a reason. The partnership structure, coupled with our sole coverage model, has allowed us to compete effectively for talent.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we're very fortunate to spend our days building relationships with some of the world's leading executives. And these executives have a full plate of managing complex businesses. And so we're appreciative of the time that they spend with us and the members of the Woodline team. We have a responsibility to create a mutually beneficial engagement. And so we need to be well prepared, ask thoughtful questions, and hopefully find ways to add value in terms of what we're seeing across the industry. And then in return, we get to have a front row seat of what these companies are doing and where they're going.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Usually they have the greatest complexity And the greatest disruption and therefore there's a larger spread between winners and losers. And that's what's required to have a portfolio where the performance is really driven by our relative stock picking.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The primary driver in deciding where to invest is great talent. That's what we look at first. The secondary component is that we look for subsectors that have the most disruption, innovation, and stock specific idiosyncratic volatility.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So each of the portfolios are running a high idiosyncratic ball portfolio. On their own, and it all feeds up into the master fund, which creates A great product, but we also monitor that from a top level, both Carl and Matt and myself will meet weekly and look daily at our exposures and make any adjustments so that we continue to make sure that we are completely neutral to any macro factors.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we offer investors and uncorrelated diversified return stream. Investors can expect us to be up or down 1% a month. And our VAL is around 5% annually.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The reason why it exists is because of our 20 individually constructed subsector portfolios that feed up into a master fund. And the end result of that is over a thousand unique positions.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's why we have a specialist structure. So instead of having a healthcare PM or a tech PM, we have a semiconductor's PM. We have a medical device PM just focusing on those 50 to 70 names within those subsectors and then structuring portfolios within those subsectors. So you have to be a specialist to take this approach.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so in addition to beta, there's many factors that are moving stocks outside of what is idiosyncratic to a particular company. In fact, you can model these factors and their influence on stocks. So momentum, value, growth, short interest. And like other macro cross currents, we don't have a unique advantage in predicting these factors, so we hedge them out.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really comes down to our portfolio construction. We hedge out not just market beta, but any factors that we can't predict. We focus solely on what is predictable and we construct portfolios around that so that we don't succumb to factors that are moving the market on a day in and day out basis. That's the key differentiation.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We each have a different focus, but we all have the same bottoms up fundamental research process. The teams spend the majority of their time on research and learning about the companies that they cover. Each team covers a small group on average of about 50 to 70 names so they can understand them better. And they come up with unique insights on those stocks in their universe that may not be appreciated by the market. And then structure portfolios around those ideas.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say we spend about 75% of our time on our existing portfolios that we're running and the remainder of our time managing others and thinking about the business strategically”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's correct. So 13 p.m., including Carl and myself. We also have very seasoned analysts running portfolios, some not. These are people truly the best at what they do. And what we mean by play or coach is that Carl and I didn't want to just take the traditional chief investment officer role of management. We wanted to invest. And so Carl and I actually run individual portfolios within Woodline. So Carl runs a semiconductor portfolio. Myself and my team led by Anish Kapoor and Brian Schmidt run a biopharma portfolio. And we spend most of our days on those portfolios.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. Yeah, that structure was thought out so that we could focus on investing rather than having to spend all of our days managing people.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We get that question a lot, and we tell investors that both Carl and I spend more time now as co-CIOs of Woodline actually investing in our portfolios than we did at Citadel, which is an amazing stat.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We set up a co-CIO model to deal with that various issue so that we could attract the best talent, leverage the skills and capabilities of Carl and myself, allowing us to have more time both to invest. And we also set up a management structure of Matt, Carl, and myself where every decision is made with a two-thirds vote. And that allows us to really delineate our duties to where we see fit and has provided us the ability to manage a very complex infrastructure.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We believe our senior team should have many years of experience perfecting their craft. There's a gentleman named Anders Erickson. He's done great work on mastery. And he says that expert performance requires intense and deliberate practice for at least 10 years. RPMs have 18 years of experience.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we structured woodline to enable our world-class decision makers to operate at their very best. And there's a few key elements to that. One is we have a deep specialist approach. So where our teams are experts in the stocks that they cover. We also have a sole coverage model. So that means one person or one team is responsible for their group of names. No overlap. Our teams are also small and autonomous such that they can make decisions because we believe that people closest to the ground can make the best portfolio management decisions. And since I mentioned Bezos earlier, he has a great quote. He says great teams should be small enough such that you can feed all of them with two pizzas. That's a good concept.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we ended up presenting to just him. And suffice to say, we walked away empty-handed But fortunately Couple weeks later, two partners came to the table and anchored our launch and like that we were in business.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we were like, okay, this is it. This is our chance. One gentleman comes in, he sits down. We waited a few minutes. We then asked where everyone else was. And he said he was the only one coming. Everyone else was busy.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did, but we had trouble finding investors in the beginning And we had a lot of people on board who left great jobs, who were relying on us to get funding. Little bit of pressure. Yeah. And, you know, it's a different kind of pressure when you're now responsible for so many people. And so we eventually made the decision to fly to the Middle East to meet with a large investor hoping they would partner with us. And on the flight over, I remember waking up in the middle of the night. I looked up, the whole plane was dark, except for one light on in the back of Coach. And that was our COO, Matt Hooker, cranking away. To say we were prepared for that meeting is an understatement. So we get all the way over there. They brought us into this huge auditorium to present to their team.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it was so inspiring. Obviously, Amazon is a different scale, but I will say I asked myself a similar question, which is, do I want to go on this journey even if I never get to where I'm going?”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, when he's 80 years old, what decision is he going to regret less? And he chose Amazon, which worked out very well for him.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whole process was exciting, difficult, scary, wonderful, all of those things. And leaving a successful career and starting your own business makes no sense on paper. The chance of failure is so high, and it was a bad decision financially initially So we had to make a choice between comfort and creation. And I remember reading Jeff Bezos' bio at the time. And it talks about how Jeff was working at D. Shaw. The mid 90s, and he had a great job, and he had an idea to start an internet company. So he goes to David Shaw and he tells him about his idea. David Shaw says, Jeff, this is a great idea for someone who doesn't already have a great job. You know, why don't you take the weekend to think about it? So Jeff went home and he applied what he coined as the regret minimization theory”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so woodline was founded by myself, Carl Craker, our co chief investment officer, Matt Hooker, our chief operating officer, and then a group of us who worked together for many years. And we studied the industry leaders of the past 20 years, and we believed that we could iterate and improve on those learnings and create a durable investment firm that would thrive in the future. And our vision was to create an investment partnership like you'd find with a Wellington or a capital group. With the risk management expertise of Citadel wrapped in a specialist structure at Woodline.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was. My partners and I were incredibly fortunate to grow up at Citadel. It was there that we learned a unique and differentiated approach to portfolio construction and invest in where the output was an uncorrelated alpha return stream.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, during my time at Millennium as my appreciation for proper portfolio construction started to grow, I had heard that Citadel was a pioneer in this type of investing. So in 2010, when they were looking for someone to start their healthcare team in San Francisco, I jumped at the opportunity. Citadel didn't jump as quickly as I did. That was an 11-month interview process. Yeah, including in all day what you would consider FBI-like interview where they dig through every piece of your background. It was very intense. But fortunately, Ken Griffin took a shot on me in what turned out to be a life-changing opportunity to build a business. And by the way, everything that I had heard on the outside about the quality of people at Citadel and the investment process that they employ, it was all true.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And when I joined, I frankly didn't appreciate the power of that type of investing. And then the fall of 2008 came. And I learned the power of that type of investing. And to the credit of the portfolio manager that I was working with, Josh Fisher, we were actually up that year.”
2023-12-14 · Masters in Business · Mike Rockefeller on Launching a New Hedge Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source