Mike Kelly joins Brandon Sedloff to share the journey that took him from a first-generation college student in Queens to co-President and Chief Investment Officer of Future Standard, an $88 billion alternative investment manager. He reflects on the formative experiences that shaped his investing philosophy, from cold-calling Lee Cooperman for an internship to working at Tiger Management and helping build FrontPoint. The conversation traces the evolution of alternatives from family offices and endowments to the private wealth channel, and how Future Standard has positioned itself at the center of that shift by building both distribution infrastructure and in-house investment capabilities.
They discuss:
- How Mike broke into hedge funds by cold-calling Lee Cooperman and what he learned at Omega and Tiger Management
- The historical arc of alternatives from the endowment model to today’s private wealth opportunity
- The evolution of Franklin Square into Future Standard and the shift from packaging and distribution to internally managed strategies
- Why the middle market offers structural advantages across private credit, private equity, and real assets
- The case for rethinking 60 40 portfolios in a more inflationary, deglobalized macro regime
Links:
Future Standard - https://www.futurestandard.com/
Mike on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-kelly-9b32166/
Brandon on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bsedloff/
Juniper Square - https://www.junipersquare.com/
Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:03:16) - Mike Kelly's career journey
(00:04:21) - Early influences and education
(00:06:43) - Breaking into the investment world
(00:19:47) - Joining Future Standard
(00:20:12) - Evolution of Future Standard
(00:22:45) - Distribution and internal management
(00:25:17) - Infrastructure and operations
(00:27:57) - The commitment of investment management
(00:28:52) - Future Standard's focus areas
(00:32:06) - Evergreen structures in investment
(00:39:13) - The new economic regime
(00:50:10) - The future of asset management
(00:54:35) - Conclusion and final thoughts
