Top Hedge Fund Investors: Stories, Strategies, and Advice

CHAPTER 12

A Better Way

Ted Seides, Co-Founder, Protégé Partners

 

 

 

In many ways Ted Seides represents both the past and the future of hedge fund investors. Having learned to invest under the tutelage of David Swensen, the legendary Yale University chief investment officer and author, Seides went on to co-found Protégé Partners and serves as senior managing director of investments. He has also contributed to the industry as an educator, writer, and bettor. Although he is relatively young—age 39 at publication time—his track record of expertise and accomplishment rival those of more senior investors.

He did not start out that way.

“I was fortunate to fall into something right out of college that suits me very well,” he says. Until entering Yale University, his limited exposure to investments consisted of having a real—not proverbial—uncle in the business and watching the scrolling ticker on the Financial News Network (the precursor to cable channel CNBC) with his father. Taking Swensen’s portfolio management course in his junior year at Yale eventually led Seides to begin his career at the Yale University Investments Office in 1992.

Prior to co-founding and launching Protégé (a multibillion-dollar alternative investment firm that invests in and seeds small and specialized hedge funds) in 2002, Seides gained experience in a variety of investment disciplines. From 2000 to 2001, he was a senior associate at J.H. Whitney & Company, working on hedge fund seed investing and conducting ...