Supporting Vanderbilt's Mission
Vanderbilt seeks exceptional investment managers with a sound investment philosophy and a passion for supporting the university's mission. Our team actively searches for partners focused on establishing long-term relationships and building sustainable organizations. As an endowment, we do not overreact to short-term market volatility. Vanderbilt was one of the earliest institutional investors in venture capital, and several of our key relationships date back nearly 50 years.
In addition to being a long-term source of capital for our managers, Vanderbilt is a value-added partner as well. We believe that the breadth of the portfolio and our experience over many decades results in us being a trusted advisor and facile with best practices to assist our managers
Your hard work and returns contribute to the success of a leading university renowned for cutting-edge research and nationally-acclaimed liberal arts and graduate education across disciplines. The endowment also helps replace all need-based undergraduate student loans by funding scholarships through the Opportunity Vanderbilt initiative. The endowment is instrumental in funding professorships, athletics, buildings, and research.
Investing Against the Grain
No prescribed set of fund characteristics is necessary for Vanderbilt to partner with a manager. For Vanderbilt, there is no such thing as a fund being too small or new. We are discerning and have a rigorous due diligence process, but we are not afraid to be the first institutional investor in a fund or to put managers in business. We believe that being an early investor in firms with smaller asset bases affords the best chance for long-term outperforming returns. It is core to what we do.
We believe superior opportunities rarely will find us, instead, we must seek them out. We have an active sourcing process for small, unique, and unscalable opportunities, and we also balance smaller opportunistic managers with larger manager opportunities. With a robust risk-management process we can preserve capital while generating the opportunity for strong long-term returns.