Rusty Guinn

Rusty Guinn

Co-Founder and CEO

Rusty Guinn is co-Founder and CEO of Second Foundation Partners, LLC, and has been a contributing author to Epsilon Theory since 2017.

Before Ben and Rusty established Second Foundation, Rusty served in a variety of investment roles in several organizations. He managed and operated a $10+ billion investment business, led investment strategy for the second largest wealth management franchise in Houston, and sat on the management committee of the 6th largest public pension fund in the United States.

Most recently, Rusty was Executive Vice President over the retail and institutional asset management businesses at Salient Partners in Houston, Texas. There he oversaw the 5-year restructuring and transition of Salient’s $10 billion money management business from legacy fund-of-funds products to a dedicated real assets franchise.

He previously served as Director of Strategic Partnerships and Opportunistic Investments at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, a $12 billion portfolio spanning public and private investments. Rusty also served as a portfolio manager for TRS’s externally managed global macro hedge fund and long-only equity portfolios. He led diligence, process development and the allocation of billions of dollars across a wide range of indirect and principal investments.

Rusty’s career also includes roles with de Guardiola Advisors, an investment bank serving the asset management industry, and Asset Management Finance, a specialized private equity investor in asset management companies.

He is a graduate of the Wharton School, and lives on a farm in Fairfield, Connecticut with wife Pam and sons Winston and Harry. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Houston Youth Symphony, and with Pam has been a long-time supporter and founding Friend of the Houston Shakespeare Festival. He also serves as a member of the Easton Volunteer Fire Company in Easton, Connecticut. Rusty spends his free time smoking meat, working his apple orchard, enjoying whisky, badly butchering progressive rock drumming and jeopardizing long-term relationships through high-stakes board games.

Articles by Rusty:

Chapter 2: What is Story?

By Rusty Guinn | December 2, 2024 | 9 Comments

There are a lot of ways to define a “story.”

But to understand how story interacts with human consciousness requires us to be more specific.

Chapter 1: Overhearing Ourselves

By Rusty Guinn | November 26, 2024 | 9 Comments

Shakespeare invented the human by inventing a device which spoke the language of consciousness:

Story.

Introduction: David Bowie’s Alien

By Rusty Guinn | November 26, 2024 | 9 Comments

David Bowie was right.

Social networks aren’t a tool. They are an alien force that transforms human consciousness.

I, Nazgûl

By Rusty Guinn | November 3, 2024 | 10 Comments

Being clear-eyed and full-hearted doesn’t mean being passive, weak, or silent.

It means resisting every effort to supplant our autonomy of mind with symbols of identity, no matter the source.

Apocalypse Always

By Rusty Guinn | October 25, 2024 | 10 Comments

Extreme language during election season isn’t anything new.

But this time it really is different. Our response must be different, too.

The Open Window

By Rusty Guinn | October 21, 2024 | 30 Comments

Creating two tightly bounded political extremes is NOT opening the Overton Window.

It just adds a second, equally closed window behind which all of our worst ideas can and will fester.

Manufactured Consensus

By Rusty Guinn | October 8, 2024 | 17 Comments

The more we believe the lie that social networks democratize Narrative formation, the more systematically we make ourselves part of their manufactured consensus.

Metametastasis

By Rusty Guinn | August 13, 2024 | 13 Comments

We are all concerned about how Gen AI may untether us from reality.

We are not nearly concerned enough about how media will have the ability to do the same through mature social networks.

The Weird Thing

By Rusty Guinn | July 31, 2024 | 24 Comments

The weirdest thing about this “weird” campaign is how convinced some are that it represents a thoroughly directed, planned, systematic propaganda effort.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. Not any more, anyway.

We Are Losing Our Minds

By Rusty Guinn | July 30, 2024 | 28 Comments

Your brain evolved to perceive symbols.

Symbols evolved to be perceived by your brain.

Human society is evolving around a technology which exposes our brains to a barrage of seductive symbols.

And it’s making us lose our minds.