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Steve Drobny

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2022-05-05
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2022-05-05
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  1. “Thanks, Paul. It's an honor to be interviewed by you, who I think are alleged in the investment space and someone I really look up to.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Endowments. You and I have joked about this. People think endowments are the smart money, and I disagree. I think endowments are often run by committee and of dozens smart people in the room that are paid a lot of money, that give money to the obvious stuff. And committees kind of push people towards that direction. That's why I think you've always been interesting is that you've a little bit more of an out-of-the-box thinker with your art background and your finance background versus coming up through traditional channels and make bold decisions versus committee-driven decisions. So I think that's really the argument that you and I have had. But again, we don't have many endowment clients. We have a couple, and those are the ones that we think are smart, and that's great.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “There was this group in Malibu that take kids with disabilities and handicap surfing, and it gives their families a day of joy in what's normally probably like just a very difficult day-to-day existence. Take these kids on surfboards and try to inspire them. And some of my friends from the neighborhood took over this philanthropy and they wanted to do an event. And I said, well, we'll underwrite the event and we'll put you guys on stage and we'll try to raise you money. And there's still some pictures online from that. It was an incredible day.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “say if you don't have women of minority on your board, we're not going to invest. And so there's a huge trend there and they are helping to facilitate that trend, which we think is a great trend. We've had village health works in the past, which is a village health works is a friend of mine who built a women's hospital in Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world, and he's providing free healthcare in a country where healthcare is incredibly expensive. And so it's things like that that we bring these different worlds together.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Technology bets, their founder bets. Can this founder really make it happen? And we do the same thing in philanthropy. We come across people that we think are incredible and generally great philanthropists don't know how to raise money. Bad philanthropists know how to raise money because it just becomes like a fundraising machine that goes towards admin and more fundraising versus the actual philanthropy. So we find someone that we think is really good that doesn't know how to raise money but are on to something interesting. We bring them into our event, put them on stage and put them in front of a room that generally there's trillions of dollars in the room. We throw these events and they tend to strike a nerve with a certain number of people and raise capital and we try to continue to be supportive of them on an ongoing basis. And so we've had, for example, this year we had him for her, which is a group that focuses on women board members, which if you read the press, there's a shortage of women on boards and you have certain groups, I think, like BlackRock that's...”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “But when we put together our events and we will put together who the speaker is going to be, it's really a good part of an investment process for us as we think about what's important in the world and where is it going and then who are the people that are doing it and how do we get to them and then offer them a platform. And so you mentioned the women focused on ESG and emerging markets. Everyone's thinking about ESG right now. How do you do it, especially in public markets? It's really hard to do in public markets because when you look at these ESG ETFs, they're full of Amazon and Google and things that aren't really ESG. And so the way she focuses on it in her framework for emerging markets was really fascinating. Similarly, I think our core value is identifying high quality people and bringing them into our ecosystem, whether it's my team like Marco and Way or Ben on the venture side or it is our seeds, like identifying the next great macromanager or early stage technology bets are essentially founder bets.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So every one of your conferences that I've been to, you always have a philanthropy that you support your very philanthropic. So tell us a little bit about what your core interests are in philanthropy and if we were adding money to some case, what do you think is crucial?”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Of thing that takes down governments, we saw it with in the Middle East and food inflation is what causes revolutions and politicians want to by nature want to keep their seats and stop revolution. And so this is a critically important part of government thinking going forward.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Well, it's funny, Elon Musk does not get credit for this or claim credit for this, and I don't know why he doesn't get credit for this, but he's like one of the biggest eco-warriors out there. I mean, if you think about Tesla and what he's done with electric cars and getting off fossil fuels, it's just incredible. Like he built the world's most valuable car company and has forced every other car company to build electric cars. So that is amazing. It's electric vehicles. It is food tech. And so being less dependent on fish and animal stocks, it is energy like fusion and nuclear where you don't have to depend on pumping dinosaur bones out of the ground and burning them and warming up the atmosphere to power your lights at your house. It's all these things. And like the Russia-Ukraine stuff has really brought up the dependency of Europe on Russian energy as well as Russia and Ukrainian foodstocks and food inflation and inflation is really”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And so give us an example of an early stage private company that would be interesting for an investor. I think the thing in Ukraine with the infrastructure of Europe was depending on Russia. And so that is going to change. All of a sudden, nuclear is green. But give us an example of some early stage technologies that might be interesting for climate.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “And governments are going to throw tons of money at sustainability and climate as their citizens are going to start to revolt about climate issues. You mentioned Malibu, where I live. In 2018, we had a massive wildfire that burned 10% of the homes in town. And you've seen the wildfires in California and Australia and all over the world that are making people push their politicians in a certain direction, which is going to be spending money on sustainability. You talked about your daughter. My sister lives in Alaska, and she's a marine biologist as well. And she's also a dog musher and does the Ididerod. So in her 20 years in Alaska, she has seen climate change firsthand, and she's seen it in the fish stocks and the fish life, as well as just the climate. And all you have to look at is the average temperature of the earth for the last 50 years. Just look at that chart if you want to be scared.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “I mean, we think climate sustainability is the next big decade long trend. And this is kind of a confluence of Marco and our strategy team having a view, our clients signing up for net zero 2050 and saying, hey guys, we've signed up for this thing. We don't know how to do it. Can you help us figure it out? Climate had a big moment 20 years ago with Vina Kosla and Klein are investing in a bunch of climate strategies and none of them worked. So then that world was bombed out and uninvestable for 20 years. We think now is the time to invest in early stage private technologies and climate sustainability because it has shifted from like I care about the environment. I don't want to have straws. I don't want to see life caught in fishing nets to government level concerns like China, US, Europe have to focus on being self-sustaining from an energy standpoint. We're going through deglobalization and it's every man for himself right now.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Try to host our events where the world's going to be hot next. And in 2014, if you remember, we did it in Miami. And Miami got completely bombed out after 2008, 2009 to 16, 17 were like really dark years for South Florida. But in 2014, 2015, 2016, we did the Miami events there and really caught the upswing of Miami. And then we moved it to LA, where we thought Silicon Valley was getting too expensive. The traffic was horrible, the quality of life was declining, and people were going to start moving to LA, which they did. And so we did a couple of events here in LA. And then we were planning around 2020 to do Austin. We thought Austin was the next hotspot. COVID kind of shut our events piece of our business down for a couple years. And then we just did it a month ago in Austin. And it's incredible how much that has blown up that city in terms of people, technology, hedge funds.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “It's really quality of life. And there's just tons of great people here, too. I think LA is the new London in the sense that London used to be the place where the global jet set got together because the non-Domes were there and it was just a global place. But Brexit has kind of killed that. And LA kind of has taken up the mantle in that respect that there's just constantly people coming through, interim people coming through LA. People love it here.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “It's always been quality of life. I mean, I worked in finance and banking in New York and London and Singapore and other places. And LA just has an incredible quality of life, incredible weather, incredible climate, mountains, ocean, et cetera. I think people have recognized that started moving here and COVID, again, has accelerated everything. And so when people could work from home, they said, when I work from home in Greenwich or Palo Alto, I'll go do it down in LA or Malibu. And I know a lot of people that I came down here and did the work from home thing, rented a house and hung out for a couple months and said, oh my God, this is incredible. I'm staying and have moved there. And then they bring their friends and their friends see it. And so that's the trend that's happened. But you've also seen a lot of people leaving California going to Austin and Miami because of taxes and cost of living. So, you know, the world's constantly in flux. You got to keep your finger on your pulse. You got to constantly be traveling, constantly be talking to people to figure out where things are going. But as far as LA goes,”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “and on the geography part you were very early in putting your stakes down in LA, particularly in Malibu, which is now like an echo center of smart people in the investment world. When you did it, the Center for Alternative Investing was in New York and Silicon Valley, but now, as you say, it's everywhere and LA has become a really hotbed for entrepreneurship. I think a lot of that has to do with you and some of the smart people around there and also with content that's coming out of some of the studios. Peter Thiel left Silicon Valley to come to LA. Why is everyone going to LA? Is it the good surfing or is it the network of people that are coming there?”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Well, I think every country will be disrupted by technology, and that is going to continue and not going to change. The question really is just about multiples and valuations and do they go up or down at this point, at the late stage. In the early stage, which is where we play, things are constantly being disrupted by technology. And in Latin America, this is just an example of just being on the field and trades coming to you. So we're out there investing in early stage fintech, and all of a sudden there is just a deluge of opportunities coming at us from Latin America. COVID has changed a lot of things. Technology used to be in San Francisco, Silicon Valley. And now, I think Sam Altman from my combinator said the next Silicon Valley is everywhere. And I think COVID has accelerated that trend. So you've seen a lot of talented entrepreneurs who were originally from Latin America who moved to San Francisco or New York, all moving home to do startups, because now there's capital that you can fund businesses. And that's an important.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “In them because they're the experts. In fintech, we're going after existing pools of profit and revenue that are being disrupted by technology. And by the way, the thesis behind FinTech is that in every country in the world, financial services is generally somewhere between 10 to 20 percent of market cap and GDP. And so if you can disrupt that, that's a big piece of profits and revenues to go after and build good businesses on.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “We're investing in the equity of businesses that are going after pre-existing revenue and profit pools like banking insurance, et cetera. Crypto, blockchain, we think is much more of a technology play where the deep technologists understand this the best. And crypto blockchain is either going to work and be adopted by the world or not. So right now I hear the word constantly. We're in the early innings, but crypto's been going on since 2008 now, so we're 14 years into it. And there still isn't really a core use case other than speculation and capital raising. There's no businesses that use the blockchain other than coins that people bet on. And the good businesses have been the exchanges, Coinbase FTX, Binance, et cetera, that facilitate this trading. And so we know a lot of great people in crypto, a lot of smart people that are core technologists have been in the space for a long time, and we point our clients to them and say you shouldn't invest.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, and you invest across insurance payments, you invest across the whole thing, but you're not doing things in blockchain or crypto, right? Because that's an area that you're going to leave for other people?”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “As venture capital firms have gotten over capitalized and raised tons of money, and fintech has become a word that everybody has heard now, and it's become a hot space. All these VCs are competing to lead deals, take board seats, and get their percentage share that they need to ownership of a company and then protect that. Where we're sitting here saying, well, we just want to invest in the best companies and put as much capital to work as we can and partner with VCs and not be their competitor, but be their partner. And we're now in 150 or so companies. We throw one of the best fintech events in the world that's going to be soon in Santa Barbara. And we just get to see all these opportunities. And generally get into the deals we want to get into versus we have a very high hit rate. And we're just seen as like a little bit of a Switzerland in the fintech space. We're not anybody's enemy, not anybody's competitor. And that allows us to play where we want to play.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Seen what was happening in Silicon Valley, seeing what's happening in technology, we thought there's a real opportunity to get involved in technology here, but not in traditional tech, not in consumer, not in social, not in gaming, things that we don't really understand. We thought there was a huge trend coming in FinTech. And so in 2015, we set up a vehicle to invest in financial technology startups because we were new to the VC landscape. We did not lead. We did not take board seats. We just co-invested. And that's been just an amazing thing that has persisted where”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, so as we discussed, we throw an annual macro conference with kind of a who's who in the institutional investor space, macro CIOs, real estate venture politicians, academics, athletes, artists, an eclectic group of 100 or so people get together once or twice a year and we talk about where the world's going. We've been doing that.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So let's move to private investments. Your firm has launched small venture funds primarily in the fintech area, both in the US and Latin America, and your early investor. You don't usually take lead or board seats. Can you tell us a little bit about your strategy and why FinTech of all sectors that you focus parallel to the macro strategies?”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Driven by your inputs, which I think macromanaged us discussed provide the best forward looking inputs to that process. That is real money 4.0. Real money 3.0, the Yale model was great in a declining bond invol in interest rate environment. Inflation environment. And the question now is, have we seen the bottom of inflation in rates? And if we have that model, it's probably not going to be so great going forward.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Well, first of all, Davis Winson was a genius, identifying, partnering with managers in running diverside pool of capital when he did back in the late 90s. The problem with it today, as we discussed, is that most of the investments are equity allocations. And so you're basically getting a levered S&P position. I think that, and by the way, that's been great up until three months ago. So from 2016, when I made that presentation to Nancy Zagethi's conference to three months ago, I look like an idiot. And I am an idiot. I don't know anything. Nobody knows anything, but I really don't know anything. I just partner with really smart people and hope that that wins the day. But the idea is that if you're running a large pool of capital, your job is to decide what your beta allocations are, whether it's equities, bonds, real estate cash, that kind of stuff. And how you decide that the information in those weightings is”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “That's amazing. Before we leave the macro side, I want to talk, but in 2016, I invited you to an endowment conference, and you did a presentation on portfolio management 4.0 for endowments, where 3.0 is David Swenson's the Yale model, and then prior to that it was 60-40 and all that. In that discussion, you underline the fact that macros should be an institutional portfolios as an important asset class. So are you still married to portfolio management 4.0? What has changed since then in some ways? Everyone follows the Yale model and we're lemmings and we all do the same thing. I love talking to you because you're so out of the box sometimes and I think that has benefited the portfolios that I have run. So what's your thought on the endowment management 4.0, 5.0? Where are we?”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Without traveling, it was very difficult. And so we are increasingly serving as a bridge to our clients who need onshore intelligence and information and access.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Is no better way to get Intel from allocating to managers and communicating with them. And if you want to understand what's going on in China, you've got to be invested there. So we have an office there and we have a team there in China. And I think what's interesting is that post COVID, it's become all that more important. First of all, Wei was there in Wuhan in 2019 when COVID started and was reporting back to our clients. Similarly, some of these latest trends with education and social reform we've been communicating very closely with our clients. But most large pools of capital, most investors have not been to China since 2019. I'm sure you're included. When are you going to go there again? Probably not for another year, two or three. And so you either just don't do China, which is fine. Rockefeller, you can decide that with two to three billion dollars. But if you have $100 billion, $200 billion in assets, you can't ignore it. And to do it yourself,”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “A piece of the firm that's important, and I think understanding China is incredibly important for global investors. So our network or our client base are generally triple-digit billion pools of capital that have assets all over the world. And for them to ignore China would be just stupid. You could ignore Russia because their economy is smaller than the size of Texas. But China is somewhere between 15 to 25% of global GDP, depending on how you count and what numbers you believe. And it is also and has been one of the fastest growing areas of the world. And so having an understanding of China, whether you invest there or not is incredibly important to how you invest. Wei and I have worked together for over a decade and we put together an office and team there years ago and started investing in onshore Chinese hedge fund managers about three, four years ago at the request of our clients who are looking to get more insight and information in terms of what's going on in China.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “When I looked at who we wanted to lead our strategy unit and I looked at the world of financial thinkers out there, most of them were monetary policy based, Fed-focused. I think the Fed's going to cut rates by 25 BIPS and the Bank of England's going to do this and currency is going to do that. And I didn't want that, especially in a zero rates world. And the zero rates world, I thought we were shifting to a place where really it's fiscal and geopolitics that matter, especially after 2016 when you had Brexit and Trump. I think the world really changed and Marco came on board and has just crushed it for our clients and our seeds and our network.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Value on top of returns, and you get more clients and more assets. It's that simple. So they perfected it. We're doing our own version of it where Marco and our strategy team provide information on where the world's going, what we're seeing, what we're hearing through reports, through phone calls, through on-site visits, and then through our events where we gather a couple times a year somewhere cool. Marco is a rock star. Marco's been on this podcast with Ted Cites. So you should listen to that. But Marco's incredible. He's an incredible brain. He has not come up through traditional channels. He's self-taught, but he focuses on geopolitics. And there's a few good geopolitical thinkers out there.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “So we view asset management, investment management as a consulting business, right? So you have the buyers who are the asset owners and all of us who provide investment returns, but we think that on top of investment returns, you should provide information, whether it's through what you're doing in private capital, hedge funds, macros. Everyone should be an open book with their investors. We sit on top of a lot of information from our clients, managers, network, et cetera, that I wanted to put in one place. So we created this strategy unit and brought Marco on board several years ago to be the point person for our clients. If you think about who has perfected this, Bridgewater's perfected this. They have the Bridgewater Daily, which is for most institutional investors a required daily reading. They spend a lot of money, a lot of energy, a lot of people to do that. And as a result, voila, they have the world's largest hedge fund. So you treat your clients well, you look after them, you provide”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “With more behind that, if they do well, from a syndicate of large pools of capital around the world that are looking for the next grade manager but don't have the time, resources, or energy, or it's just not worth their time given the size of capital they're running to do it. But when if it works, they already have a deal with us to add significantly and make these managers a core position for them. And in the meantime, they get all the information rolled up to them from what macro managers were thinking, which can be really helpful when you're running a big pool as we discussed.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Here's your pool of capital, here's your infrastructure, here's your technology, here's your accounting, don't run your own fund will make you pretty much an equivalent economic deal to do it under my umbrella. The problem with that is that you're not building value. You're not building your own business. You're not creating value. You can get stopped out and be fired tomorrow or someone else has a problem in the firm and capital is reduced for whatever reason. But that said, starting your own fund today is incredibly hard with people compliance, capital, PB agreements, all this kind of stuff that is table stakes requires a significant chunk of capital. So running around with your hat out raising fives and tens from your rich uncle doesn't really work anymore, which is how Stan and George and Paul and all these guys started. I mean, some of these funds started with $7 million with $12 million with nothing, but you can't do that anymore. So we start managers with several hundred million dollars.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “First of all, I think the macromanagers you have in your portfolio are important for CIOs to help you inform your whole portfolio, right? So you at Rockefeller run a macro fund. Ontario teachers runs a macro fund. Sovereign wealth funds run macro funds. They need to deploy capital where the world's going. And if you call your typical investment manager that you allocate capital to, if you call your private equity manager, they love private equity. If you call the real estate manager, they love real estate right now. They loved it in 07. They loved it in 09. They loved it in 2019. They loved it today. So they don't really provide you much information. A macro manager who is looking at the world from the standpoint of where is it going from today is going to give you some insights into how you deploy your capital. Now, the hedge fund world has gotten a lot tougher over the last decade, getting capitals a lot tougher, starting to fund is a lot tougher. The rise of platforms, the big change from 2005 to today is the rise of platforms where if you're going to launch a fund, your alternative is someone at a large platform say,”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “And you've been seeding and finding new emerging macromanagers as well as advising large pensions and large institutional funds on macro, it's hard to find the next standruck and miller or George Soros or whoever how do you identify the next great macro manager? What do you look for?”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Funds, most of them would be equity, growth equity, tech equity, equity long short, which is really equity long, and venture strategies, private equity, real estate, they're all equity strategies. And so if you look at your portfolio, you're going to be long S&P, basically. So macro provides a diversifier. And if it's not working, great. The rest of your portfolio is working. But when the rest of your portfolio is not working, like Q1 of this year, macromanagers generally usually will be there to bail you out.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Well, I think macro is really hard for people to understand or wrap their heads around because there are no rules in macro, there are no restrictions, there are no limitations, and because it's unlimited in that sense, investors just want to ignore it because they can understand it. There's very few endowments, foundations that invest in it. You're unique among them. And macro has its moments where it's working in times where it's not working, just like any other investment category. It's had a tough run for the last several years because equities were going straight up. You got to think of macro really in a portfolio context as a diversifier. If you're running a big pool of capital right now, what are your diversifiers? Bonds aren't a diversifier anymore. There's not many short sellers left. You mentioned Jim Chainas, who's a legend and incredible, but there are not many short sellers left. It's very hard to find diversifying strategies anymore. If you're in hedge.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Endowments and foundations have been slow to embrace macro strategies, but global macro goes through periods of underperformance and everyone throws it out the window. Right now it's doing really well because there's this disruption in commodity markets rates, FX, the yield curve. And so you started in 2005, you wrote your book Inside the House of Money and you interviewed people like Scott Bessant, Jim Rogers, Jim Leitner. And then you followed that up in 2021 with a new house of money and that Jim Cheno's Kyle Bass. So what's changed in global macro between those two books?”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Of the point. We think that the real gems of the investment world are found in the cracks in between what everyone's doing. So you'll never find us doing multifamily housing. You won't find us doing LBO private equity. You'll find us in the weird corners of the world. But working with super smart large pools of capital that understand they can't be everywhere all the time and do everything. And so we work very closely with our clients in a very collaborative consultative in the tent type of approach. Onshore China early stage venture capital investing in fintech and climate. But we've really focused on the clients most in human capital and relationships is kind of number one for us. It's why we host our annual macro and venture events that you've been to, small, unique, high level.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Paula, thanks for doing this. I'm a little bit media shy, press shy. I like to focus on my clients and our investments rather than myself. And as you know from coming to our events, I'm never on stage. I never talk. And so this is quasi-uncomfortable for me, but I'm excited to do it with you because I'm a huge fan of yours. And so it's a real honor to be here with you, Paula. So Clocktire Group is an alternative asset management platform that offers bespoke products to our clients. We looked to identify investment opportunities that are difficult to source, access, monitor, or understand. We start with the top-down framework from our macro core, and we have a relationship-based investing style. That's the core of what we do. And I'll explain that a little bit later. We employ a go anywhere, do anything attitude. We're in Santa Monica. We're not in New York. We're not in San Francisco. We're not in London. We're not like other people. We're kind of wacky. We don't dress right. We don't look right. We don't act right.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Steve, it's great to see you. I know a lot of people are not familiar with you because you're sort of a hidden gem. So I thought we could start with the elevator pitch of your background and what the clock tower group is.”

    2022-05-05 · Capital Allocators · Steve Drobny – Where the World is Going at Clocktower Group (Manager Meeting, 30) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source