[REPLAY] Collette Chilton – Humility and Loyalty at Williams College (EP.174)

Bullish:

• $VC - Williams College endowment has a strong venture capital portfolio with long-standing relationships that have performed exceptionally well. The 6% target allocation has grown to 16% purely from performance, with distributions expected from successful exits.

  • “Our target allocation is 6%. Our current allocation is like three times that. And we haven't done anything differently. We have the same managers, and we commit the same amount of capital when a fund is raised. So we have terrific managers.”

    Collette·34:23

  • “The returns on the portfolio had been very good. So I started there in 1998. We're getting a lot of distributions off of our venture portfolio. I used to make the joke that Lucent was really a pension fund with a little bit of technology on the side, which is what drove the earnings of the company for that whole time.”

    Collette·11:50
• $PE - Williams has exceptional private equity relationships dating back to early funds from CD&R and Madison Dearborn, built through alumni networks. The private portfolios have delivered strong long-term performance.

  • “Joe Rice's good friend was John Canning. So we were in, like, the earliest CD and R and Madison Dearborn funds, and that was true, like, across the board in every asset class, just, like, something special because of those incredible alumni volunteers who put the portfolio together.”

    Collette·16:09

  • “So we're lucky to be in these amazing partnerships, and we really value them. And they our private portfolios have done really well over long periods of time.”

    Collette·37:21