Speaker 1Our job as allocators is to find people who have a proven ability to capture inefficiencies in increasingly efficient markets. How do you disentangle that? How do you figure out what their ability is to find those inefficiencies? Do they have any expertise to start? But what's their edge? Is it a sourcing edge, an operational edge, a strategic edge? What are those things that allow someone to capture those inefficiencies? In our sector, many people build track records that are not statistically significant, not meaningful. You have a few early wins. You think you're smart. How do you find those people who are truly gifted in differentiating what they do? They see things in a different way, or they just have skills, capabilities that others
Speaker 2don't. I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. My guest on today's show is Lane McDonald, the Chief Investment Officer of SCS Financial, registered investment advisor on OCIO Platform, with approximately $46 billion in assets under management. Lane was a U.S. Olympic hockey player and Hobie Baker Award winner as the best player in college hockey in the late 80s. But his aspirations of following in his father's footsteps and playing in the NHL were derailed shortly thereafter by injuries. In the decades since, he spent a dozen years in private equity and the last 18 as an allocator at institutions ranging from the United States to the United States. In the decades since, he spent a dozen years in private equity and the last 18 as an allocator at institutions ranging from the Harvard Endowment to the Family Office for the Owners of Fidelity and now SCS. Our conversation traces Lane's path from the rink to investing and from dealmaker to allocator, examining what separates great investors from good ones. We discuss the importance of domain expertise, sector selection, alignment, and identification of a durable edge and structural alpha in increasingly efficient markets. We close with Lane's story. We close with Lane's outlook on private markets and the lessons from hockey, endowments, and family offices that inform the team-building platform at SCS. Before we get going, have you noticed that airline travel takes a lot longer these days? Security lines go on as far as the eye can see, and that's even with pre-check, clear, or the pre-check, clear combo. And flights seem to get delayed regularly for no apparent reason. Well, the next time you're in the air, you're in the air. Next time you have even an inkling of a delay, and long before you have to board, de-board, board again, and sit on the tarmac for an hour before you leave, might I suggest you fill that idle time with successive episodes of Capital Allocators? By the time your plane leaves, you'll have gotten through at least two or three amazing episodes and probably made friends with your equally frustrated neighbor in the seat next to you who may not have had the benefit of listening until you tell them to. Make a new friend. Make a new friend, productively pass the time, and find your way around the world smarter than you started. Thanks for spreading the word. Capital Allocators is brought to you by AlphaSense. Here's something for you. Most AI tools today are very good at sounding right. But can you actually trace it back to a filing, transcript, or specific passage that drove the answer? Or are you just trusting the confidence of the output? For allocators, that's not a minor concern. A missed filing, incorrect source, or context that gets lost somewhere in the retrieval chain aren't edge cases. They're how decisions go wrong. AlphaSense is the AI platform built specifically for this. They own the content, over 500 million curated documents from broker research and expert transcripts to filings and earnings calls. And they own the retrieval layer on top of it. That means every answer can link back to an exact, verifiable source. Because the answer is only as good as what's underneath it. And with AlphaSense, you know exactly what that is. See it for yourself. Try a free trial at alpha-sense.com slash capital. That's alpha-sense.com with a hyphen in the middle slash capital. Capital Allocators is also brought to you by Morningstar. In a sea of words. In a sea of data, you need to know what you can trust. Morningstar's data, analytics, and research helps bring clarity across public and private markets, connecting independent research and data into the tools and AI platforms you use every day. So insights are easier to spot and act on. Morningstar. Nothing in your way. Visit morningstar.com slash game on to learn more. Capital Allocators is also brought to you by Juniper Square. The operations partner trusted by the leading private market GPs. One theme that keeps coming up on the show is GPs that build the strongest and most durable relationships with LPs are the ones that have both strong returns and strong operations. AI raises the stakes on operations and having Juniper Square as your operations partner helps ensure your data is organized, accurate, and accessible so you can unlock operational alpha. That's why thousands of GPs trust Juniper Square. Learn more at junipersquare.com slash capital allocators. Please enjoy my conversation with Lane McDonald. Lane, thanks so much for doing this. My pleasure. Thanks, Ted. I want you to take me all the way back to your upbringing because I would love to hear where this all started on the ice.
Speaker 1My father was a professional hockey player. Played for the Red Wings with Gordie Howe back when there were only six teams. He played with the Kings. And most of his career were the Pittsburgh Penguins. I grew up as a rink rat. Skating before my dad's practices, skating after his practices with my brother. I didn't know it was any different than anyone else. He was my dad. Going to the rink was going to work with him.
Speaker 2What was that like with your dad as a professional hockey player before pro sports became the big celebrities they are today? Definitely different because
Speaker 1it was still a big deal. People treated my dad differently when he'd go somewhere. Everyone wanted to meet him. And particularly in his hometown of Nova Scotia, he was a celebrity. And even in Pittsburgh to some degree. It was at the point in time where they started to make enough money that he didn't need to do anything else. He did okay. These days it would be upper middle class. But with a little bit of celebrity around it. The experiences were what I remember. One day my brother and I were on pregame skate Saturday morning when we were allowed to go to the rink. We skated before the Penguins had their pregame skate before the other team came out. And this happened to be the Boston Bruins. We hopped out. My brother and I were ripping around and having fun. And all of a sudden one player on the other team comes out from the Boston Bruins. My dad comes out and is like, boys, get off the ice. The player on the other team comes over to where we're getting off the ice. It was Bobby Orr. And my dad says, hey, Bobby, I'm so sorry. And Bobby, as gracious and humble as he is, made a joke, which was, Lowell, don't worry about it. This will probably be the best competition I face all day. So you grew up in that environment and knowing those people, you don't know any different. When my dad retired, he went to school for 14 summers to get his undergraduate degree while he was playing in the NHL because he didn't have the benefit of playing college hockey. My parents moved into education. That was the transition to now being in a different environment. My father was an athletic director, coach, teacher. My mother was a school nurse, as a registered nurse. And we then moved to Milwaukee where my parents were at a school called University School of Milwaukee, private school. Their next step in their career became one about how to get my brother and me the best education. And we could. We spent the next, for me, six years, seventh grade through high school in Milwaukee. My parents were there for 20 plus years.
Speaker 2Where did you think hockey was going to take you?
Speaker 1Like every young kid, you hope that you're going to end up playing in the National Hockey League. In my case, I grew up around it. It wasn't so aspirational. What was really wonderful about it was that it was also demystified. That was certainly the goal. But I also saw all of the negatives that come with a career like that. My father had six major opportunities. He said, "I'm going to be a hockey player." He said, "I'm going to be a hockey player." Even then, my mother could pack everything we owned in two trunks, that if he got traded tomorrow, we were moving from Pittsburgh to wherever. There's wonderful things about that. And for kids, dream about doing it because it's what they see. There's also another side of that, which is, it's not the end-all be-all in terms of what your life is, about who you are. There's so much more that happens after hockey that it was wonderful to demystify that.
Speaker 2Take me through the highlights of your hockey career.
Speaker 1Oh, gosh. I've been hit by the lucky stick many times, Ted, including playing with you for the business school blades at HBS when I played in that one tournament with you. When I was playing in Pittsburgh as a kid, everyone expected you to be great. I remember hearing so often, "Those McDonald kids, they're not that good." So everyone expected. And then in high school, we went to a school in Milwaukee, a university school, where my dad was a coach. That was where you start to really lean into it. My brother and I loved hockey. We loved playing. We were fortunate enough to have great parents and supporters, but also a great teacher and coach and my dad about hockey and what really matters. My parents' philosophy was, you're going to use hockey to get the best education you can, not the other way around. To be able to accomplish what my father never could, coming from a small town in Canada, we had to go play juniors. I think it was my sophomore year in high school. The coach had brought me to a high school. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. I'm going to go play juniors." We went to a state tournament. Milwaukee hockey wasn't very good. Not many kids are going to go play college. It was a big deal. It was the state championship. My brother played great. I had a good game. Afterwards, the coach told my dad, I really don't think they're going to be able to play Division I hockey. Your bubble gets burst. But you have to keep working. You have to keep working. you have failures, you have setbacks, and you just keep working. Ultimately, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go to Harvard and play hockey there. I was recruited, assumed I was going to make the team, but you don't know how you really stack up. There's always those doubts in your head. The second week of practice, the coach puts me on a line with a guy named Scotty Fusco, who was a returning Olympian and All-American. It's a little bit like playing with Wayne Gretzky. If you're playing with Scotty Fusco, you've got a real edge. I ended up being someone who fit well on his line. I could skate with him. Hopefully, I could think with him. We ended up playing together for two years. As a freshman, I got an extraordinary opportunity to play with one of the best players in the country. That really then elevated me. Maybe there's a real potential here.
Speaker 2At what point in time did you decide the potential didn't have the NHL path?
Speaker 1I was drafted, playing in the Olympics. When I graduated, I had a number of head injuries, concussions. I almost had to stop during the season. I had to stop during the season. I had to stop during the Olympic year and leave the team because of concussions. I almost had to stop playing hockey at Harvard my senior year. Very few people knew about what was happening and what was going on. My parents and my brother were great about, you don't need to play. But I love the game. I love my teammates. During my senior year, when I was playing, it wasn't in the back of my mind. This is near the end. This could be it. When I graduated from college, I was fortunate to have the Hartford Whalers, which no longer exists, had my rights. They offered me a great contract. It was a four-year contract. I was a four-year contract. I was a signing bonus, guaranteed money, 700 grand. It's very hard to say no to 700 grand. Even if you get hurt, you still have that money. But back to the lessons about life, and there's more to life than playing hockey. It's really about your future. And particularly with concussions, you're playing a very dangerous game. Between doctors, coaches, Bill Cleary at Harvard, my parents, I understood that it wasn't worth it. That was where I changed focus. It took me a couple of years and a couple of years to figure it out because I did play for one year in Switzerland thinking it's a less physical style of play. I could play in one more Olympics. But that was the recognition that I shouldn't be playing hockey anymore.
Speaker 2So as you reflected back on your entire journey of hockey at that point in time, what were the most important lessons from the sport that you internalized both for your life and then in the future with your career?
Speaker 1Teamwork. There's nothing more important. You learn so much about leadership. It's a we, it's not an I. In how you lead. The teamwork piece to me is something that I've personified forever. It means so much more to have success as a team than individually. We all want to do well. We all want to contribute. Being part of a team and being willing to sacrifice as part of a team, so much of that has stayed with me in terms of what I've done in every part of life. That's the lesson that I'm so grateful for. Resilience for sure. You get knocked down, you need to get back up. Get hurt, you got to be tough. Rejection. But the teamwork piece is the most important.
Speaker 2In those couple of years where your hockey career was probably ending, how did you think about what you wanted to do that ended up landing you in the investing world? I had no idea.
Speaker 1You and me, liberal arts, education. My parents had done very different things. So there's no exposure going up. Finance ended up being something that I saw a lot of people in, particularly going to college, your friends, their parents. That was an eye-opening. So I started thinking about finance. I had no idea what that meant. But I had some nice mentors. People were like, if you want to get into business, investment banking is a good path. I remember getting a job at Roberts and Stevens and Company right after I stopped playing hockey in San Francisco. I didn't even know what an income statement, a balance sheet, or a cash flow statement was. I'm flying out to California. I was going to work in San Francisco office. And I'm reading an accounting book, trying to figure out how all this stuff works. You jump in the deep end of the pool and you figure it out. What I tell a lot of young professionals these days, none of this is rocket science. If you're smart, you're thoughtful, you're a good person, you work hard, there's a path. I was so intimidated and had some great colleagues who taught me modeling. You go in with humility. You hopefully are appreciative. It's amazing how much people will give and share with you. I had some great teachers at Roberts and Stevens.
Speaker 2What was your path after Roberts and Stevens?
Speaker 1I started a summer hockey camp with a good buddy of mine right after college. We built that camp and that was going on the side while I was working at Roberts and that business was running. We had camps in the corner. I went to see Natick the Vineyard and it was a great little business. We ended up selling that to US Sports Camps, which is Nike Sports Camps. That was going on the side. But after Robbie Stevens, I ended up going to Stanford for business school. Spent two years there, which was a great transition. During the summer, I was running our hockey camps, trying to get that to a point where we could hand it off to other people to run it for us. Then I wanted to get into private equity. Whether it was venture, whether it was bio, didn't know. Because I had started a business, I had a little bit of an entrepreneurial experience. It lent itself to bios. That led me in my second year to pursue that path. I thought about consulting and I thought about private equity. I ended up having the opportunity to go to private equity and I started to join a firm called Bank Boston Capital. I'm dating myself because every firm where I work no longer exists.
Speaker 2So you stayed in private equity for a long time. Love to hear the most important things you took out of your various experiences in private equity. 13 years as a GP, three different
Speaker 1private equity firms. Worked with great people. I learned so many lessons. I learned about domain expertise and how important it is to really understand sectors, both operationally and from an investment standpoint, to really understand the risks that you're taking when you're investing. I also learned about deal sourcing. I learned about the discipline that goes with sourcing deals, the relationship building that goes with that. I learned about sectors, so many sectors. I spent time in a manufacturing service distribution focused firm. I then shifted to a firm that focused on consumer, especially retail, education and healthcare. The last firm was media and telecom primarily. Very like retail. What are the real economics that drive a retail business? The four wall economics in terms of that really drive it in understanding that. Telecom, understanding data centers, understanding wireless. The exposure to all those different sectors, it was a circuitous route, but provided such a great foundation of knowing a little bit about a lot of different sectors and industries.
Speaker 2What aspects of being in private equity most resonated with you and your skillset?
Speaker 1I love to learn from other people, number one. But number two, I thought it combined the best of banking, because you get a little bit of banker, similar with consulting. You're a little bit of consultant with banking. Oh, by the way, you're also an investor because you're writing a check. And when you invest in smaller companies, you're also as close to being an entrepreneur as you could be. What business do you know where you can learn and combine all of those different aspects into a business that economically, when it works, is very rewarding?
Speaker 2At three different firms, what did you learn about what it takes for a GP to be successful?
Speaker 1One of the keys is domain expertise. I also learned that sector matters. The last firm where I worked was focusing on media and telecom. Media had been a great sector for many years, buying TV and radio stations. Monopolies, stick value, great assets. But when an industry that is facing a cyclical and secular decline, which was happening in the late 2000s, no matter how good an investor you are, it doesn't matter. I learned you got to be picking the right sectors, technology, healthcare, the importance of leaning into those sectors. I also learned that not every investor is a great investor. I certainly learned this more when I moved to the allocator side. There is a real bifurcation. It's very easy to be an investor. All you need is money. If the question is, you want to be a great investor? Now that's a real bifurcation. What led you
Speaker 2to pivot from the GP side to the LP side?
Speaker 1More happenstance, being lucky in terms of relationships. I was planning to stay in the GP side, but I worried about the firm where I was, great people, wonderful mentors, but was going to face these cyclical and secular declines. But I didn't believe there was a future. Our largest LP was Harvard Management Company. I went to tell the folks at HMC, who remain very good friends of mine, that I was going to leave and I'm going to stay involved with portfolio companies and send a couple of boards. They said, hey, would you ever think about joining us? We're going to rebuild the co-invest platform at Harvard. The Charles Bank team had spun out already. We think you'd be a good addition to the team. That pivoted me from, I'm a GP, I'm a GP, to then thinking about being an LP. The other piece for me in that situation, Ted, I received financial aid when I went to Harvard. The mission-based aspect of that spoke to me of being able to give back in some way while doing something. What did you find when
Speaker 2you got there that was different than what you might have expected?
Speaker 1I didn't realize when I got there how little I actually knew about private equity. You think you're a GP and you know so much, but you know so much about so little. You're so deep. When you get to Harvard Management Company and you have the benefit of the history of that whole private equity platform, then you have the ecosystem of LPs that you're spending time with. Then from a GP standpoint, I got to spend my six years at HMC meeting with the best managers in the world. Every single day, multiple times a day. Through that, you learn so much about where the bar is really to be great. That was the piece when I got to HMC, it was like how little I really knew about the sector versus what I learned while I was at
Speaker 2HMC. As you started to calibrate what you thought was really great from good, were there particular things before you develop your intuition and judgment that you hung your hat on. It was a signpost for you of something that had the potential to be really
Speaker 1great. We live in a world that's become, from an investment standpoint, very efficient. Do they have the expertise to start? What are those things that allow someone to capture those inefficiencies, not only on a historical basis, but on a prospective basis? People talk about modes. In the allocator world, it becomes who has that proven ability that something is unique and differentiated and can demonstrate that over and over again. In our sector, many people build track records that are not statistically significant. Not meaningful. Not meaningful. How do you find those people who are truly gifted and differentiated in what they do?
Speaker 2When you have a platform as powerful as Harvard's, how did you think about doing something different?
Speaker 1I really thought once I got to HMC, I was staying there. I was given an extraordinary opportunity. Then moved from the private equity side, which included the oil and gas and energy stuff, too, in the private equity realm. But to move to public equities, Jane Mandela was. The head of HMC, and she was a great mentor, gave me that opportunity. Then I had just gone back to run private equity. I love the platform. I love the access. I was learning every day. Also, finding a way to be a great partner, sitting on the LP side. How do you be a great partner to the GPs? To figure out how to build relationships that are enduring, and you can do many, many things with GPs. I thought I'd be there forever. And the phone rang. The first time the phone rang, I said no. The second time, I listened. Someone said, you should just take this meeting. With some real hesitation and reservation, because I love the mission, I love the platform, I love the focus on trying to generate the best risk-adjusted returns for the endowment. I love that that's true north. Now, there are flaws to the endowment model, but I never thought I was going to leave, and then it was just a unique and interesting opportunity.
Speaker 2What did you come to learn were ways that you, as an LP, could be a great partner to your GPs?
Speaker 1We're all biased. We're all biased by our own experiences. Being a GP was helpful. It could be as simple as, it's a GP who you really like, you want to be supportive. Looking at their marketing materials before they go out to raise their next fund. Being a confidant. Here's what I think you're doing well, here's what you're not doing well. Shooting straight and 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 have to 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 $5 million investor, it's hard to be meaningful. Fortunately, reputationally, in Dollar Wise or Harvard, we were able to craft relationships where we were the first seat in 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 to think about strategy, firm transition, next generation, which I think were important.
Speaker 2A 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 are.
Speaker 1There 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. But 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 48% 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, Highfields, Convexity, Charles Bank. Now you go from them being internal paying them that to them being external and paying them one and a half and 20 and pass on 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, that was an institutional push that happened at Harvard to eliminate all oil and gas investing. When you take a capital intensive sector where many people are running and not employing capital, that becomes a very attractive sector. The loss to Harvard by not investing in sector of oil and gas over the last eight, 10 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.
Speaker 2So we circle back, that phone call comes in. What was the phone call?
Speaker 1The 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 leading their family office. Which is for their family, but also probably 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.
Speaker 2So 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?
Speaker 1If you think about the endowment model, basically the asset management model is the endowment model. The classes were the same. Public equities, private equity, net resources, real estate. The expression was different 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 had 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.
Speaker 2What was the expression of those asset classes inside the office?
Speaker 1It was a very different street to what I did with Harvard, but very, very different.
Speaker 2What did you see as the strengths and drawbacks of investing directly across asset classes in a seat like that compared to Harvard portfolio of managers?
Speaker 1It comes back to where I kind of true north in terms of domain expertise. My view is be the best or partner with the 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 are that you have to be the best. 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 at things in different sectors, and you're taking risks you don't really understand. Many family offices who do direct, some of them do direct, some of them do direct. Some do it well. Some rely on less capable teams to do a direct investing. That's where you set yourself up to fail.
Speaker 2Now you have another seat where, by all intents and purposes, you could imagine you thought you were going to be there forever, too. What led you to end up coming over to SCS?
Speaker 1Back to my teamwork. That, to me, is so central. I've never been someone who felt like I have all the answers. In 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 with the most expertise on my team, I want them leaning in, helping to drive that. Often, always, the family has the outsized view on those things. In some cases, you may want to invest directly. But in many cases, you really want to partner.
Speaker 2When 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?
Speaker 1The opportunity to truly partner with leading investors. Playing hockey, I like to play with the best. It makes you a lot better. You 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, niche-y things. We're all victims of our past or beneficiaries of our past. Being in platforms like 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 5 or 10 million dollar opportunity comes up that's compelling, you still need to be able to do that. It was really around those things. The last piece, which is perhaps the most important piece, team. You need a great team. If you want to be a leading investor, and you want to try to do something that you are proud of, it helps to be surrounded by a great
Speaker 2team. As you came in to SCS, take a step back and talk about the history of the firm and where it was to the point where you joined a couple years ago. Like so many things in life, I could take zero credit for the
Speaker 1success of this firm, but I'm good at picking partners and teams. The firm had started over 20 years ago. Pete Mattoon, Tony Abbiati, Doug Ederle, great group of 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 high 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? You have three legs of the stool. You've got the scaffolding of family office. You've got the estate planning and wealth management and 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.
Speaker 2And what did you see as your role as you were coming in?
Speaker 1To take a platform that I liked and I was an investor before I became an employee. I worked on a number of investment candies. 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. Pierre Lockley built the private thing. He's done a great job building this private platform. Steve Perry runs Publix. 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 terms of partnering with other family offices that are only for the multi-billion 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 the learning I've had to help evolve it.
Speaker 2So we pull the thread on the investment side. How did you think about the building blocks of that allocation model and how you wanted to implement? This was my last chapter.
Speaker 1I 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 we are largely tax managed passive. I worked for the Johnson family, so I know active very well. I was lucky to lead the public markets team at HMC2. 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 beta is very attractive. I'd still believe there's alpha out there, but we're 70% tax managed passive. And if you can generate a hundred 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 that you get for free. The consistency of that is a foundational piece in public equities around the margin. Are there some gift 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, there you're active. You lean in, trying to find the alpha in the best managers in the world. Because what you get, as we all know for 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.
Speaker 2We're going to take a quick break in the action to tell you about Ridgeline, the investment management platform built for firms who are rethinking how work gets done. You're at your desk looking at a line graph of your firm's growth. The line is moving sideways, linear growth, and you know exactly why. You're constrained by your operational bandwidth that's been the same for so long, it just feels like the cost of doing business. Ridgeline is built to change that line's trajectory. To be the inflection point that takes your growth from incremental to accelerated with the team you already have in place. Ridgeline is the only AI native investment management platform that brings together the front, middle, and back office with one set of data and powerful AI agents that automate away operational drudgery. So your talent can shift from managing old technology to materializing new ideas. Ridgeline helps asset and wealth managers understand and improve their firm's growth. To see how your firm compares to 16,000 of your peers, visit ridgeline.ai slash trajectory. If you file for an ADV, your firm is already there. Then talk to Ridgeline about how you can do more with the team you already have. On the public side, so that 30% 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?
Speaker 1It'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. 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 trying to do. You're trying to do the right thing. 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 too, is really important.
Speaker 2On the private side, I'd love to pick your brain on co-investing. You started as a direct investor. You saw some of that as a rebuild at Harvard, infidelity. What works and what doesn't in a co-investment program, particularly private equity?
Speaker 1Foundationally, at Harvard, you had the benefit of all the history, all the co-investments that had been done within Harvard's history and across multi-asset classes. The track record was compelling. That led us to do a lot more work as we were rebuilding and lean into it. If you take the mean return in most vintage years from a Cambridge associate and you back out fee and carry, that's top quartile. I'd 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 quartile. That's the foundational piece number one. The math is working for you. Then you get into the selection within that. I have a 10-point checklist around co-investing. It starts with the GP, who the GP is, and is it 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 private equity firm is created equal? Some are truly gifted 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 true domain 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 than 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 through the tool of all these sectors, investing, you want to be aligned with smart people. It could be a great deal. If I'm not the expert, I'm insecure about not knowing what I don't know. 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.
Speaker 2What are some of the other more subtle points on your checklist? The structure is important.
Speaker 1The size of the deal is more subtle in the size of the opportunity. If you think back when co-investing became big in the late 2000s, all of a sudden it became anchored with a lot of big deals, big GPs doing big deals and 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 a smaller fund. Then it becomes manipulating that. What's a meaningful check to them and 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, micro cap funds. If you're going to try to pursue alpha in co-investing, that's where your co-investment should sit.
Speaker 2How do you think about the co-investment opportunity as a factor in underwriting a manager that you want to partner with. -
Speaker 1It is one of the gifts of co-investing. been a GP as well. I've seen so many GPs and how they 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 catalysts for outsized returns. That part of it is incredibly informative of getting in the trenches. The point of co-investing is not to re-underwrite 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 edge is.
Speaker 2How do you think through the chicken and egg of, do you use a co-investment opportunity to get to know the manager or do you have that relationship with the manager so that you can understand the better through the co-investment opportunity?
Speaker 1Now 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 we've been limited to the GP. We've broadened that aperture because you can see deals outside of your existing GP universe that it becomes too limiting. That being said, the bar is the same. It is a GP that you would love to partner with. In 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.
Speaker 2Both tax-efficient passive investing in the public markets and then 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 ways to do that. I'm wondering if there are other aspects of structural alpha that you've identified in your investing. Be a great LP.
Speaker 1Pick great managers. Not easy, but hopefully you do it really well. You can be top quartile. 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 dollar 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 bucks 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 emerging GPs don't need that. They can raise the money on their own. You don't want to have the adverse selection. 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.
Speaker 2Under the lens of partnering with the best, what are some of the things that you found that help you identify the best compared to someone that is good or maybe even great?
Speaker 1The math piece, which is statistically significant sample size. You better be doing this for a period of time and it's very hard to venture. There aren't many Mike Moritz's 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 within public markets. You're going to be an 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. At the end of the day, 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, it's a billion 250. Now you're underwriting something very different. Fishing 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're 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.
Speaker 2When you put that lens on how to organize the team to your operations here, I'd love to hear based on all of what you've seen in managers and the organizations you've worked with, how you thought about optimally organizing the investment effort at SCS. When I tell
Speaker 1a lot of the young men and women who I mentor, you need to think about your career like an 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 domain expertise and then not walk the walk. Domain 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 folks 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. Pattern recognition wise, when a new equity long short manager comes in, I want our team, who has seen every equity long short manager for the last 15 years, to be looking at that. Now we all need to evolve because things change, times change. You 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's 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.
Speaker 2When you have someone on your team that's the most knowledgeable about long short equity or venture capital, how do you bring in enough insight? So that it is a team and you're getting the best of the insights that everybody has, and not just that one person from marching orders say, yeah, they want that manager because they know the most and that's the manager should make in the portfolio.
Speaker 1It's 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 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 non-investment committee of one. Finding the environment where you can really encourage debate isn't important in making the best decisions.
Speaker 2Over the course of a week, month, quarter, whatever the right cadence is, how have you set up the team specifically and what meetings you have that lead from initial research on an opportunity to a decision?
Speaker 1The way our privates team works is that we have two meetings a week. There, the flow is so significant. Looking at funded sponsors, search funds, trying to canvas 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, the public's team meets once a week. From a process standpoint, that is where the flow happens. Oh, I 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 hard decisions about what GPs you're backing in the equity long short space, private space, co-investment space. The only way to do that is with a good meeting last week with so-and-so. They go on our list of 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 GP 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 Lacolet, 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. 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
Speaker 2things. When you have a team that sees a lot that they like, how do you roll it up into your portfolio?
Speaker 1It's 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, and not so much that you can't do small things. It 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 buyout, growth, 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.
Speaker 2Using the lens you mentioned earlier of the importance of sector getting the trends right, I'd love to ask you about your opinion of where we are in the private markets. How are you looking at the opportunity set in private equity today? I am still a private equity bull.
Speaker 1Inefficiencies continue to exist there that are much harder to find in the public markets. From a math standpoint, if you look back over any 10-year rolling period, privates have outperformed publics by 580 basis points. Over three-year rolling periods. 500 basis points. This last 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 fund 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 jaker standpoint and velocity of capital 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 alts 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 buyout 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, frankly, to continue to perform than on the buyout side.
Speaker 2As opposed to Harvard or Johnson Family Office, you come to SES, it's part of a business. The private wealth business has become really dynamic. I would just love to get your sense of how you think from a competitive perspective, both on the investment side and on the business side, where you fit in with the dynamics. It's been fascinating.
Speaker 1I 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 SES 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. Let's separate us for a moment where we do something very different from an investment standpoint. The broader market, in some ways, is similar to Fidelity. You start at the beginning of the year with a business that with just market growth on average, you're going to be up 4% to 5% per year, assuming fixed income is part of that equation. Maybe it's 5% or 6%. Your organic growth is just 5%, 6% before you do anything. There'll be corrections over long periods of time. Number two, you add clients. That's highly creative. 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, 60 private equity-backed, roll-ups in the RIA space. It's a great business. People have figured it out. Then the question becomes, within that morass, how do you differentiate?
Speaker 2How do you think about differentiating?
Speaker 1For 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, 0.3. There's multistrat in that. There's equity long short, but it's not particularly tax efficient. There's equity long short, but it's 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 hard to differentiate from an investment standpoint. You have to have good relationships and stick your 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.
Speaker 2When you put the whole package together, the investment side, the other two pieces of the stool, how do SCS's loyal clients describe SCS? They start with aligned.
Speaker 1It's the 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 love the conversation. I love the discussion. I love the leadership and ownership. I've seen that handled really well and 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, 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. If you want to have an enduring business, you evolve from being You better build a culture, a team, and a capability, but it starts with attracting and retaining the best talent, and that is by sharing more than you probably need to.
Speaker 2As you joined in an asset size that feels like it's within that sweet spot for what you found, how do you think about the growth of the business over the next bunch of years?
Speaker 1It's something our clients ask us about a lot and certainly very mindful of the growth because you want enough capital matter, but not so much you can't do the nimble, niche-y 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 check and do a great funded sponsor who came out of Summit 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 in someone, you'd write a check as an LP. If you write a bigger check. If you write a bigger check and can own a piece of the GP, you have the option to do that. You 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 access, but you need to balance those two. It's imperfect. We can rationalize everything. You need to be intellectually honest about that. There are trade-offs to getting bigger. Hopefully, we'll do it at a pace that is consistent with allowing us to make really good, efficient decisions. But if we're $200 billion in three years, that would be a shock to me.
Speaker 2In the time you've been here, what have been the biggest upside surprises and the biggest challenges that you might not have foreseen?
Speaker 1Biggest 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. I knew about the portfolio. I 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. It's important to 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.
Speaker 2Lane, before I let you go, I want to make sure I get a chance to ask you a couple of fun closing questions. Before we get to the closing questions, I want to make sure I get a chance to ask you a couple of questions. I want to tell you about one of our strategic investments. We've made a few and each are working on a product or service we think will be valuable to our community. One is Oldwell Labs or OWL. OWL is the very best software I've seen for allocators to find and track managers. And I've seen a lot of them. Trust me, it'll be worth the look. There's a link in the show notes so you can learn more. And here are those closing questions. What is your favorite hobby or activity outside of work and
Speaker 1family? I love working out because I love pushing myself. If my daughter and I are going for a bike ride, which we do every Sunday in the summer in the Cape, we're going for a bike ride. from where we live in West Fama to Woods Hole, and we time. All my kids are wired the same way. If I get on 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 and 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.
Speaker 2What was your first paid job and what'd you learn from it?
Speaker 1My first real paid job was caddying. My parents are from Nova Scotia, Canada, very small town. My dad loved to golf, so grew up golfing. They did a caddy program. This is like a public course. For tournaments, we'd all caddy. 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 caddied for him. I 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 instilled great values. I came away from that. He ended up giving me a good tip. I ended up staying connected with him and see him around the course thereafter. I 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
Speaker 2everybody. What's the best advice you've ever received?
Speaker 1My parents instilled in this and lived it. Education is the greatest gift you can give a child. That was number one. They lived it. My dad had a 14th summer. He gets an undergraduate degree. My mom was a registered nurse, did not have the opportunity to ever pursue a traditional education. They almost overvalued education, but viewed it as the greatest gift. Hence, when I had the opportunity to go to Harvard, they leaned in. The second thing was humility. One comment has always 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.
Speaker 2How's your life turned out differently from how you expected it to? I never thought I'd have a career in finance.
Speaker 1I 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.
Speaker 2Lane, last one. If the next five years are a chapter in your life, what's that chapter about?
Speaker 1Starts with the kids, as always. I've got two kids who are still playing college sports, one who's launched, but continuing for the next five years, I like 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 at 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 have 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. We've trying to enjoy that time on all fronts.
Speaker 2Elaine, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom across these incredible experiences you've had.
Speaker 1Ted, such a pleasure to be with you today.
Speaker 2Thank you. Thanks for listening to the show. If you like what you heard, hop on our website at CapitalAllocators.com, where you can access past shows, join our mailing list, and sign up for premium content. Have a good one, and see you next time.
Speaker 3All opinions expressed by Ted and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of capital allocators or their firms. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of capital allocators or podcast guests may maintain positions and securities discussed on this podcast. All investments include various risks, including loss of capital. This recording also contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the participants' current views with respect to certain current and future events. These forward-looking statements are and will be subject to many risks, which may cause future events to be materially different from those forward-looking statements or anything implied therein. Forward-looking statements that reference past trends or activities should not be taken as a representation that such trends or activities will necessarily continue in the future. Any forward-looking statement in this transcript are based upon information available to the participants on the date of this recording and are not expected to be updated or revised, even if experience or future changes.
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