How to Think Like a CIO: Strategy, Structure, and Staying Power
A Swimming with Allocators Episode
This week on Swimming with Allocators, Earnest and Alexa welcome Brian O’Neil, a four-decade CIO veteran who built and stewarded one of the most respected institutional portfolios in the country. Brian doesn’t sugarcoat the state of venture: too much capital chasing too few outcomes, private companies staying private far longer than the model assumes, and the brutal math of finding a top-quartile fund. The thread emerging managers should sit with is his framing of patience and selection - allocators who win across cycles treat venture as a relationship business with a long memory, not a discrete bet. He also gets practical on AI, personalized medicine, and what it actually takes for an emerging GP to earn a meeting with an institutional CIO.