The Tiger Cub Culture

During 1980, Julian Robertson Jr. founded The Tiger Management Group with the financial support of his family friends and colleagues. He started his company with $8.8 million and his hard work and luck helped his firm become one of the top listed companies in the world. At one point, The Tiger Management Group oversaw $22 billion and delivered annual returns in excess of 30 percent. After a run of bad luck, the fund closed for good during 2000.

Background

While at Tiger, Robertson built rack squad of so-called “Tiger Cub” stock picking protégées. When closed Tiger for good during 2000, these Tiger Cub traders he trained went on to found many of the world’s largest and most successful hedge funds. Robertson helped start the careers of a number of his Cubs, providing seed capital or early investment money to about 40 hedge funds.

Today, Tiger Cubs manage over 50 of the world’s top hedge funds, including Stephen Mandal’s Lone Pine, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking, Rob Citrone’s Discovery Capital Management, Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management and Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital.

Now in their fourth generation, Tiger Cub funds manage around $155 billion, and the group is growing in complexity. Divided by generation,  Tiger Management is the first generation; a Tiger Cub, the second generation group of funds; Tiger Grand Cubs, the third generation; and Tiger Seeds, the fourth generation of the strategy.

The Tiger Cub Culture

And the managers all tend to follow the same strategy, long/short equity laid down by Robertson at Tiger Management. “The first thing is, is the management decent and honest?” Robertson said in the interview. “A lot of people don’t really care about that.  The way to look into that is to do some diligence.” Then Robertson outlined his second factor.  “Competitiveness.  Is he a competitor?”

You can learn more about Tiger cubs by checking out a case study on Alibaba.

Leave a Comment