Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry

For this year's annual review, our CEO Hank and I cover investment trends across private and public markets and top-of-mind issues for allocators. We then discuss highlights of the podcast and our efforts to improve discoverability of great episodes, outstanding asset management fintech products, and Capital Allocators University.

With the Year in Review, we also kick off our countdown of the most popular episodes of 2025. We'll drop two this week and the top three next week.

Wishing you a relaxing, enjoyable, and very happy holiday!

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

We're counting down the top 5 episodes of 2025. Coming in at #5, is Adrian Meli from Eagle Capital. It's a fun, nuanced exploration of applying the most sophisticated tools of hedge fund investing to long only public equities.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

We're counting down the top 5 episodes of 2025. At #4, it's Alex Sacerdote from Whale Rock Capital. Alex is a passionate TMT investor who describes how he finds companies ascending their S-curve of adoption.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Matthew Dicks is a bestselling author, award-winning storyteller, and consultant on storytelling to Fortune 500 companies, including four of the Mag 7, and nonprofits, including Yale, Harvard, and the FBI. His bestselling books, Storyworthy and its business companion, Stories Sell, are my favorite books on storytelling. Matt spent a decade as a manager at McDonalds, twenty years as a wedding DJ, and will retire this year after 27 years as a middle school teacher. He's written six fiction and three non-fiction books in total and won a record 62 MOTH StorySLAM competitions and nine GrandSLAM championships.

Our conversation starts where it should – with Matt telling a story. We then go through his process of finding great stories, constructing the beginning, end, and path along the way, enhancing elements, and giving presentations.

Matt has gifts for both storytelling and teaching, and that combination offers incredible lessons to apply storytelling in our work. After his retirement in June, Matt will be more available to help others tell impactful stories. You can find him at matthewdicks.com or storyworthy.com.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Josh Wolfe and Brett McGurk are Partners at Lux Capital, a $5 billion venture capital firm that specializes in emerging science and technology companies that turn sci-fi into sci-fact. Josh co-founded Lux and is a repeat past guest on the show. His first appearance from 2018 discusses his story, including phrases: 'chips in shoulders put chips in pockets,' 'failure comes from a failure to imagine failure,' and 'directional arrows of progress.'

Brett joined Lux last year, following a 20-year career in public service where he advised four U.S. presidents and helped shape national security strategy across the Middle East.

Our conversation kicks off with Josh's state of the venture industry and Lux's positioning within it. Brett then describes his background, sovereign ambitions, and geopolitical risks. We discuss directional arrows of progress across AI, cap-ex maintenance, biology, defense systems, and space.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Josh Wolfe is the co-founder of Lux Capital, a $1.5 billion venture capital firm formed to support scientists and entrepreneurs who pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles of our time. Josh's innovative thought process across his activities offers frameworks and insights applicable across the spectrum of investing. Our conversation covers Josh's early passion for science and finance, building a competitive advantage in venture capital from scratch, sourcing ideas, conducting due diligence, making investment decisions, constructing portfolios, making exits, learning from mistakes, navigating a challenging private equity environment, posting on Twitter, active vs. passive management, dinner table conversation, and life lessons. Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing list Access Transcript with Premium Membership Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

This Sponsored Insight features Robert Boucai and James Broyer. They are the Co-Founders of Newbrook Capital Properties, a multifamily real estate investment platform built to generate optimal long-duration, tax-efficient income. Robert is also the Founder of Newbrook Capital Advisors, a hedge fund he launched twenty years ago that today manages $1 billion across long-short and long-only strategies. He was born with sensorineural hearing loss and today serves on the Board of the Hearing Health Foundation, which is dedicated to preventing and finding cures for hearing loss.

Our conversation covers Robert's path from real estate to hedge fund investing and back to real estate. We discuss the real estate strategy he designed with James, including alignment, market and asset selection, property improvement, and supply-demand drivers to create durable rental growth. We close with risks, synergies with Newbrook's public equity business, and plans to scale the real estate platform.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

John Khoury is the Founder and Managing Partner of Long Pond Capital, a hedge fund that specializes in publicly traded real estate securities. After 15 years in the business, Long Pond is one of the few remaining firms in the niche. Long Pond recently launched an active ETF, ticker: LPRE, which invests in the most attractively priced stocks from Long Pond's list of the highest-quality real estate businesses.

Our conversation covers John's path into public real estate investing, changes in the investable universe, and the impact of passive flows and pod shops on the sector. We turn to Long Pond's investment process, focused on identifying and exploiting asymmetry, and cover John's perspectives on the major real estate sub-sectors. We close with a discussion of Long Pond's new actively managed ETF.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Our continuing exploration of the intersection of private wealth and alternatives takes us to Future Standard, one of the largest distribution platforms bringing the wealth channel exposure to the middle markets.

Michael Kelly is Co-President and Chief Investment Officer of Future Standard, a $90 billion alternative asset manager focused on private middle-market strategies for the wealth channel. Michael has been in the alternatives industry for three decades, starting as an analyst under Lee Cooperman and Julian Robertson, helping build FrontPoint Partners, which began the institutionalization of hedge funds, serving as CEO of ORIX USA, where he led the acquisition of $250 billion global asset manager Robeco, and for the last decade turning to the democratization of alternatives.

Our conversation covers Michael's path from working in hedge funds to building alternative asset businesses, including lessons about incentives, leadership, and culture. We then discuss his pivot from the institutional market to the wealth channel, and the growth from a single strategy at Franklin Square with $12 billion in assets to a full suite of strategies under the rebranded Future Standard with $90 billion across private credit, private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and multi-asset investing. Michael also shares his views on performance expectations and what the flood of new capital means for the institutional market.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

This Sponsored Insight features Daniel Mahr, Head of MDT, the $26 billion quantitative equity investing group at Federated Hermes that oversees a suite of actively managed mutual funds, ETFs, collective investment trusts, and separately managed accounts. Dan joined the firm in 2002 as a junior analyst and took over leadership of the team six years later, guiding its evolution through vast changes in data, computing power, and investment methodology. Our conversation traces Dan's path from flipping IPOs as a college student to running machine learning models across global equity markets. We discuss the development of MDT's decision tree framework — a "glass box" approach to stock selection that blends transparency with sophistication — and how the team balances analytical rigor with human judgment. Dan explains lessons from two decades of modeling markets, including the challenges of overfitting and underfitting data, and MDT's steadfast focus on analytical edge, rather than informational edge.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)