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 plays guitar and drums on the worship team at his church in Connecticut, and dabbles in cooking, whisky, progressive rock and beating Ben at trivia.
Articles by Rusty:
Helicopter parenting produces kids whose ability to evaluate and take risks has been crippled. If we’re not careful, helicopter parenting from policy-makers will do the same to us as investors.
In which we are told that China is not the AI-powered dystopia we we were looking for, we encounter the “seen to” Fiat News tell in the wild, and we take a longer look at something over the better part of…an evening?
All the Fiat News that’s fit to scrutinize.
One of the Missionary’s most powerful tools is admiring the unsolvable problem – finding new ways of describing what’s wrong without an honest effort to actually fix it.
With apologies, add this to the list of things that you will now see everywhere.
In this Office Hours, Ben and Rusty dig into the transition of capital markets into political utilities – this time with a special focus on private markets.
Today’s Zeitgeist is about tweet nudges, massive law partner payouts, a big reason for massive law partner payouts, your closet, the people who want to sell you…rope, and more.
In this ET Pro In Focus note, we explore the Narrative structure of ESG and SRI investing. Our question: is it finally part of the Zeitgeist, or a trend that will continue to come and go?
Ben has already talked about the biggest and most important thing we can do in the face of the admissions bribery scandal.
But many remain convinced that this scandal is an inflection point, a change in the Zeitgeist. It isn’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be watching for our opportunity to weaken the influence of the Church of Credential.
First it’s a healthy reminder of the narrative strength of health care costs. Then it’s a brief education on the narratives of elite universities.
But mostly it’s Fiat News. Lots and lots of Fiat News.
Honestly, you could replace 90% of the daily news with a collection of Mitch Hedberg one-liners.
“People either love me or hate me … or they think I’m okay.”
Our modern addiction? Fiat News.
Today’s Zeitgeist is about winning when we’re losing, the polarizing power of hyperbole, more on SRI/ESG, a wonderful specimen of the Mad Creditor Letter and a less-wonderful specimen of the Obligatory Press Release.