Viking Global, Tiger Global, Coatue, etc..

Would be great to get any info on these HFs and similar ones. Have read a little on WSO about them but if anyone has any info to share on these would be greatly appreciated. Especially with regards to recruiting to them right out of an IB analyst program.

 

They almost universally pluck from PE/ those who did the "golden path" (i.e. GM/MS/JPM > MF PE > H/S/W). Turnover at these places is extremely low, so there are few seats ever available, and they can have their pick of the litter. Usually, if you have a multi-manager HF name (Citadel, Millennium, P72, etc.) on your resume they won't even look at you. Don't expect to go there from IB.

 

These "prestige" or "tier" questions are pretty stupid, IMO, because they're almost entirely subjective and opinion based, and only start arguments...

That said, broadly speaking, all of the Tiger Cubs & related funds are viewed as being at the top of the HF food chain. Saying Viking isn't a top choice implies those people even have a choice at these places. Again, there are very few seats, and assuming one is fortunate enough to even get an offer, let alone multiple to have a "choice", it's usually taken graciously.

 
Funniest

Definitely not great culture. You don’t go to these places for the culture. For culture you can go to Tokyo or maybe Brooklyn. You go work at these places for comp and the possibility of starting your own fund. 

You go because these place have a low Julian number (a term I made up) which I define similarly as the Erdos number in mathematics. Among hedge funds, having a holy lineage matters a great deal since skill can’t be measured with a meaningful t-stat (since excess return is small in proportion to variance of idiosyncratic returns). Much of this holy blood is passed from PM to analyst and it is this holy Tiger blood that the finance world worships. If you’d like to start a fund, a Julian number of 1 (you worked for Julian directly) allows it to be on the order of low-$10Bs in size given your closeness to the Divine. If your Julian number is 2 (you worked for someone that worked for Julian), it can be on the order of mid-$1Bs in size. If you work for one of these funds you’ll have a Julian of 3, which (given the relation I am describing) is much better than a Julian of 4 because you are closer to the divine. As you can see, the Tiger blood is diluted by an order of magnitude for each 1 increment in Julian number; this is why it pays to work for the best and fuck the rest.  

 

I guess your reading comprehension skills need work, since you clearly missed the qualifier of "usually."

It is extremely uncommon, given the general philosphies and styles of investing from MM platforms vs. traditional L/S couldn't be more opposite. The skillset overlap is very minimal, and once you have a MM name on your resume you are typically viewed as a quarter to quarter EPS predictor guy vs. an investor by the Tiger Cubs. It happens, but very infrequently.

 
Associate 1 in CorpDev:
They almost universally pluck from PE/ those who did the "golden path" (i.e. GM/MS/JPM > MF PE > H/S/W). Turnover at these places is extremely low, so there are few seats ever available, and they can have their pick of the litter. Usually, if you have a multi-manager HF name (Citadel, Millennium, P72, etc.) on your resume they won't even look at you. Don't expect to go there from IB.

LOL. I've never heard Coatue and low turnover ever mentioned together

 

Basically everything in this thread is inaccurate.

Good analysts at MMs are certainly able to get lateral interviews at Tiger Cubs and so are junior bankers at some of them. Aside from that, Tiger Cubs tend to hire more PE people whereas MMs tend to hire more sell-side research folks. The main reason is because sell-side research tends to me somewhat more market driven and sector-specialized whereas PE tends to more long term focused.

 

Depends on the tiger cub. This is a branding question and so it is a real phenomenon even if it is seemingly irrational. 

a friend of mine interviewed at tiger global and made it to the interview with Chase. He previously worked at a multi manager. Chase apparently said “oh, we interview people like that now?” 
 

a lot of these funds want to brand themselves as being long term thinkers. if they hire a lot of multi manager people that would harm that brand positioning / marketing story. it’s fair to say you must be a far above average candidate if you are coming from a multi manager, though it is definitely possible. That said, it would be really stupid to hurt your brand positioning for a “better” analyst. It’s probably near impossible to observe skill through an interview (it’s hard to observe if you have perfect information and years of data) whereas brands are a very real, tangible thing. Why would you give up a sure thing for something that isn’t real?

 

Not a prayer unless you're among the top ranked analysts in a particular coverage.

 

I've heard that Tiger cubs largely all use a psychometric test and get grilled by a psychologist, which apparently started with Julian at Tiger. Would be curious to hear how the test was, how hard it was, etc.

Array
 
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They have exceptional performance. but this is primarily explained by sector / factor exposure rather than stock selection. Institutional investors love to dismiss retail investor performance as primarily explained by "stonk factor" outperformance; if they think this, why do they not dismiss long tech/short retail-driven outperformance that we see with "elite" hedge funds? Factor hedged / hedged to relevant sector indices, these funds are not clear outperformers for the last 5 years. These funds make it look like they outperform through a variety of parlor tricks like showing cumulative lifetime returns, showing incorrect benchmarks and using cherry-picked dates to assess drawdowns. the prestige of these funds is explained primarily by sociological factors, not performance. 

it's important to remember that not long ago people accepted that their monarchs had divine inspiration that granted them legitimate authority. this wasn't even that long ago! this divinity was passed from generation to generation - from father to son. today, i think a similar mindset explains the large assets controlled by tiger funds; divine inspiration is passed from PM to analyst. it is divine tiger blood and a certain mythology accepted on wall street that helps grant authority over assets, not skill.

That said, in the early years many of these funds did quite well. This is because it is easy to outperform when your AUM is small. These funds like to show their cumulative lifetime returns since it allows them to make it seem like their strategy still works on large AUMs (maybe it does, but it isn't obviously difference from chance imo). 

I do not mean to be too harsh. some of these funds probably could have non-negative skill but it’s hard to say. 

 

Expected comp is a bit of a difficult concept in HFs (particularly if you're looking for a "standard" number) because of the variability in bonus year-to-year. Base ranges from $125-200k ($150k is most standard, $200k unusual but wouldn't be surprised if it happens at the higher-comp / sweatier places like Coatue / D1). Bonus can probably range anywhere from <100%-200%+ on base, it's just a function of individual performance, fund performance, etc. and the latter can obviously be highly variable in any given year

 

Hedge fund comp at places like this is pretty standard imo. The whole idea that your performance as a junior affects your comp isn’t true at a lot of places. People think that because it fits into the whole mythology that this is a meritocratic industry where only the smartest reap the rewards etc etc. there’s exceptions to what I’m saying for sure; I do think if you kill it you’ll be rewarded a lot at places like Viking and Tiger Global. 

At most elite hedge funds, you will get paid what an equivalent person at a top PE fund will make if you are pre-MBA out of banking. I worked at a grand cub and made $350K first year and $400K second year which I think is equivalent to like top bucket upper middle market PE comp. from a comp standpoint, this is an excellent deal because your work is also much more interesting. I assume I wasn’t necessarily paid atypically high since I’m pretty eccentric/awkward which prob offsets me being good at my job. 

 

Thanks a lot! And do you know if the venture arms of these Tiger Cubs have the same work/life balance and comp structure or would it be more in-line with VCs?

 

For most of the names mentioned (Coatue, D1, Tiger Global) their private markets side is more mid-late stage growth equity than what I'd consider VC for the most part, although I'm sure they do deals that are exceptions. I don't have as great insight into the private side, but my sense is that there isn't a significant difference in comp or work-life balance between the two groups

 
Controversial

People are still on the tiger tip? Most Tigers = closet beta that do sellside quality work and claim they are "long-term" which is why most of them have shut down and lost to the multimanager funds. This thread is full of either first year bankers or college kids that are clearly not commercial.

Chase talking sht about platforms is hilarious. Old money kid who grew up knowing Julian, who seeded him with like $25mm at 25. Guy literally had / has every connection to be successful in the business and has literally had it easier than anyone. With that kind of capital it hasn't been particularly difficult to be levered long fang post-08 and still most of them have underperformed. What a joke.

 

why is it that the same investors who shat on growth funds for investing in tech over the past decade since tech was obviously "overvalued" without actually understanding the unit economics or out year earnings potential of the businesses are now downplaying those same investors after they have succeeded because "FANG was so obvious at the time!" the goal in this business is to make money, not make money once you adjust out every factor. As druckenmiller said "if something needs to be hedged, you shouldn't have a position in it."

The investing world is big. it is is supposed to be fun. it's awesome because there are many ways to make money. maybe you catch inflections in credit card data and trade it pre-Q before others (xyz pod). maybe you identify the next NFLX and size it up (tiger cub/growth fund). maybe you find a cyclical recovery play that is priced as a cheap call option relative to the upswing and make 10x on it (xyz value fund). maybe you own MA MCO TDG and make 15% a year despite being "boring" (large cap growth LOs). you are not better or smarter because you do one vs. the other. if you have been in this business long enough you will realize there are many ways to make (and lose) money. You can respect warren buffet, peter lynch, leon black, ken griffin, and james simons at the same time without saying one is inherently better/worse than the other. 

 

No this doesn’t make sense. the world has changed recently. 

you can buy their factor exposure as a product for less than 2 and 20 now. So if you believed in the theses of these funds, you’d be better of buying long internet from a product sold by black rock. These products didn’t exist when the fund managers you listed were around. The reality is these products are basically just better.

Jim simons actually beats the market and so escapes the criticisms in making. Not fair to include St. Simons here.

Long ago in the days of yore hedge funds were actually a growing industry...can you believe that? This was the days when the fund managers you mention actually beat the market. But hedge funds are no longer a growing industry. Why? 
 

you can think what you think but why do you think LPs are slowing taking money away from funds like this? Maybe you should apply the tiger fund lens on the tiger funds themselves. Do you think they are talking to their customers? Have you talked to your customer? If you’ve ever talked to LPs you’ll hear them reject the arguments you’re making and say roughly what I’m saying. I know I sound cynical, but my views are based on just talking to friends that work at fund of funds and pension funds. It’s honestly those conversations that led me to change the direction of my career. LP folk all talk in terms of factor exposure and idiosyncratic returns. It’s a major change in the way value proposition is measured. People today have a full right to be skeptical because the “prestige” funds that pay bank do not seem to be the ones that are listening to their customer and giving them the product they want. 

 

Sad but probably true. I don’t actually know the numbers but would guess that most of these elite Tiger Cubs have long run Sharpes less than 1 and majority coming from beta 

 

In the market now, there is a clear understanding of the big tech companies

I have been thinking about this point recently and really more broadly other tech/SaaS companies. It feels like basically everyone in the private and public markets has started to understand the value in these highly scalabe software companies and the way they can develop products to monetize in the future. From what I can tell, this has translated into high multiples across the board. Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint made the point that now public markets multiples are greater than private market multiples (a change from when tech IPOs used to get hammered). Does this mean that tech investing would not be as lucrative in past years going forward? I am trying to get some thoughts on the subject with people more familiar with markets.

 

OP here. How can you say this is not "accurate" when you're basing your post off your "impression"? Spend a few years in the biz and come back to me. This is just based on my experience working at funds you've heard of and having relationships across the street. This is based on experience not your assumption that I have a chip on my shoulder and that I work at a pod. The business has evolved to be more sophisticated. Like others have mentioned, LPs care these days about alpha, factors, etc. The old school net long hedge fund glory days are over. It just is what it is.

And no, people don't pay GS because they destroy value. They are on the *sell-side* and so their comp is based on sales. This is the buy-side my friend where there's a more direct link from creating value to payout.

 

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