Hedge Fund Sample Table

Greenlight Capital Management: Deep value long/short. Known for early 2000s activist shorts including Lehman Brothers, Allied Capital (subject of his book Fooling Some of the People All of the Time), and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters ; Founder background: David Einhorn; Worked at SC Fundamental Value after investment banking at DLJ; Cornell UG

Pershing Square Capital Management: Wide moat investing with a long history of high-profile activist campaigns including shorting MBIA and Herbalife and activism in Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Target, and Canadian Pacific Railway. ; Founder background: Bill Ackman; If you don’t know who Bill Ackman is, I am sorry you paid for this subscription. Founder education: Harvard UG, Harvard MBA

Starboard Value: Activist long/short investor known for aggressive campaigns focused on operational and governance improvements. Notably led the 2014 campaign against Darden Restaurants, replacing the entire board despite owning less than 10% of shares, driving a nearly 60% stock surge. ; Founder background: Jeffrey Smith; Started in M&A at SocGen, Analyst at LSG Advisors, VP at Fresh Juice (his dad’s company), co-founded Starboard at Ramius Capital. Spun off Starboard Value in 2011 after Cowen merged with Ramius; Wharton UG

J. Goldman & Co.; Style: Long/short, multi-manager proprietary trading firm.; Founder background: Jay Goldman; previously at Gruntal & Co. (known for alums like Steve Cohen, Steve Feinberg, and Carl Icahn), Arbitrage Securities Corporation, and Drexel Burnham Lambert; Wharton UG

Sculptor Capital: Multi-strategy including long/short equity, merger arb; previously known as Och-Ziff Capital Management ; Founder background: Daniel Och; worked for Robert Rubin at Goldman Sachs’s risk arbitrage desk in the 1980s, one of the “Rubin Cubs”; Wharton UG

Kingdon Capital Management; Style: Flagship strategy is long/short with a focus on earnings and price momentum. Also runs a healthcare-focused long/short strategy specializing in biotech and pharma.; Founder background: Mark Kingdon; previously at AT&T Pension Fund and Century Capital Associates; Columbia UG, Harvard MBA

Perceptive Advisors - Public and private healthcare across biotech, pharma, medical devices, and digital health. Four main products: Life Science Funds: Flagship long/short focused on US biotech, actively traded. The firm’s name reflects their philosophy of profiting by anticipating biotech outcomes versus market perception. Credit Opportunities: Debt-focused fund Venture Fund: Private investments Discovery Funds: Public/private crossover targeting mid-cap growth healthcare companies in US and Canada Also active in SPACs, taking several companies public. ; Founder background: Joseph Edelman; Born and raised in San Francisco, son of a Columbia biotech/biophysics professor. Started finance career as sell-side biotech analyst at Labe, Simpson & Co., then Prudential Securities. Joined buy-side at Paramount Capital (Aries Funds), then prop trading at First New York with $6M. Founded Perceptive in 1999 with $6M. By 2018, Life Science Fund returned 30% net annualized. Manages ~$8.5B as of 2024; billionaire. UC San Diego UG, NYU MBA

Holocene Advisors: Market-neutral long/short focused mostly on U.S. mid- to large-cap companies. Sector heads serve as PMs of their respective teams, while Brandon Haley oversees firmwide risk. Holocene also runs the Holocene Children’s Fund — a long-only book of high-quality, durable businesses with competitive advantages. ; Founder background: Brandon Haley; Head of Global Equities at Citadel, previously Consumer Sector Head at Tiger Cub hedge fund North Sound Capital; McGill University UG

Coatue Management - Please read our deep dive on Coatue and their investment philosophy

Nitorum Capital; Style: Long/short value. On the long side, targets high-quality companies with moats, strong cash flow, shareholder-aligned management, and conservative accounting. On the short side, focuses on companies with unsustainable profitability or growth, aggressive accounting, structural decline, or history of destroying shareholder value. Emphasis on accounting-based shorts in low-quality companies.; Founder background: Seth Rosen; former Senior PM at Eminence Capital and a Principal at Fusion Capital (the fund co-founded by Ricky Sandler and Wayne Cooperman, Leon Cooperman's son); Boston University UG, Columbia MBA

Northern Right Capital Management - Long/short value hedge fund with activism focusing on SMID-cap stocks with a long book of 15 to 20 core positions. The strategy centers around three idea buckets: mispricing, idiosyncratic secular growth opportunities including special situations, and high distribution yield equities.; Founder background: Matthew Drapkin; Before starting Northern Right, Matthew was Head of Research, Special Situations, and Private Equity at ENSO Capital in New York; he was also Senior VP of Corporate Development at MacAndrews & Forbes, the holding company owned by corporate raider Ronald Perelman; Princeton UG; Columbia J.D./MBA; (Matthew’s father, Donald Drapkin, was a protégé of Perelman and played a key role in the 1985 hostile takeover of Revlon; Donald left law firm Skadden in 1987 to work for Perelman and stayed for two decades)

ValueAct - Most well-known activist investor in the Bay Area, managing $10 billion as of early 2024. They made a name for themselves with major activist positions in Adobe and Microsoft. Current CIO Mason Morfit is a Princeton grad. We have a dedicated deep dive for this fund.

Makaira Partners - Long/short, wide moat growth with a concentrated portfolio. ; Founder background: Thomas Bancroft; GEICO experience working with Lou Simpson, managed GEICO’s $3.5 billion equity portfolio; University of Colorado Boulder UG.

Please refer to our Whale Rock deep dive

The Baupost Group; Baupost Deep dive

Alyeska Investment Group - Market-neutral. Sector portfolios run by each PM, constructed to be market-neutral, all rolled up into a firm-level risk model. They also have a risk arbitrage/event-driven team.; Anand Parekh, former global head of equities at Citadel. He holds a University of Michigan UG.

Run by Dev Kantesaria, Valley Forge is another wide-moat shop in Florida. He’s been on several investing podcasts and runs an ultra-concentrated hedge fund. His background is unique—he has an MD from Harvard Medical School and worked at McKinsey and in venture capital before launching Valley Forge. As of March 2025, 90% of the firm’s capital is in just four stocks. While they opportunistically short, they primarily run a long-only strategy. He holds a BS from MIT and a M.D. from Harvard.

The WindAcre Partnership - Founded in 2013, WindAcre Partnership is a long-only activist investment firm. The firm typically holds a concentrated portfolio of 10-20 positions, although it occasionally maintains fewer than 10.; The firm was founded by Snehal Amin, a former partner at TCI under Chris Hohn. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Stanford.; Similar to TCI, WindAcre is not hesitant to engage in activism. Notably, the firm attempted to block the take-private transaction of Nielsen by an Elliott Management private equity affiliate and Brookfield. WindAcre took a 9.6% stake in Nielsen and signaled plans to acquire more shares to prevent the buyout, arguing that Nielsen’s intrinsic value exceeded $40 per share—well above the proposed $28 per share buyout price.; Despite WindAcre's efforts, the acquisition proceeded, and although the firm’s stake grew to around 27% by August 2022, it either accepted the deal or was forced to tender shares. While WindAcre secured a premium exit, it did not achieve the desired valuation or successfully block the transaction.

Sora Investors; Style: Long/short market-neutral TMT; analysts use a coverage model similar to multi-manager platforms; Founder background: Karl Richter; PM at Citadel Global Equities (CGE), PM and Analyst at Susquehanna and SAC Capital; MIT UG