OPERS laughed Vivek Ramaswamy's anti-woke business partner out of the room
Would you believe the anti-woke business partner of notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy was leagues out of his depth in a room of seasoned investment professionals?
Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy lives in a state dumb enough to elect him on a platform of vague statements and empty platitudes.
If that scenario were to become reality in November, Ramaswamy could reshape state government in his image.
That doesn’t bode well given his track record with Strive, the anti-woke, anti-ESG asset manager, which he co-founded in early 2022 with fellow St. Xavier alumnus, Anson Frericks.
From Mark Williams of the Columbus Dispatch in June 2022:
“The mission of the company is to restore the voice of the everyday citizen,” said Ramaswamy, who co-founded the company with Anson Frericks this year.
Strive argues that Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street, which control more than $20 trillion in assets, practice what’s called stakeholder capitalism in that they use client funds to advance what he calls ideologies that some don’t like, such as fighting climate change and ensuring representation for women and minorities on corporate boards.
Ramaswamy’s fellow sweaty technocrats, Peter Thiel and Bill Ackman, backed the firm that, unsurprisingly, took a little over a year to be sued by two former employees who claimed that their bosses found securities laws to be utter woke nonsense, too.
But you have to hand it to Ramaswamy and Frericks: Painting financial behemoths like BlackRock as “woke” because it doesn’t blacklist money-making opportunities in environmental, social justice, or governance arenas is such an audacious lie that you almost have to respect it.
It’s the kind of gambit that can play among Republican audiences. But it would appear that an anti-woke investment firm tasked with restoring the “voice” to the “everyday citizen” is harder than giving a quote to a local reporter.
We know this thanks to emails obtained by The Rooster, which show Strive co-founder Anson Frericks floundering in an attempt to secure a lucrative contract through backchannel influence with the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, the 11th-largest public pension in the United States.
The saga began in March 2023, when Anson and Strive CEO Matt Cole met with Kelly Gebert, a since-deceased former OPERS Real Estate portfolio manager.
Gebert seems to have walked away impressed with the duo, and Ferericks immediately pushed for a follow-up meeting:
The meeting on or around March 7 appears to have gone well for Frericks, as the two met once again on April 4.
Frericks, in the first sign he was out of his depth, asked Gebert for “any strong real estate fund pitch decks,” in hopes of stealing the successful work from other entities for his personal gain.
Gebert missed the flashing warning signs and supplied Frericks with “two pitch decks from opportunistic funds” and promised to make further introductions to other portfolio managers.
Three months later—almost seemingly working on a commission for Strive—Gebert emailed Frericks to alert him to the Oklahoma Public Employees System being ripe for a non-woke opportunity after it received a legislative mandate to divest from firms that boycotted fossil fuels.
Seven months later, in Feb. 2024, Gebert would manage to get Strive’s foot in the door with OPERS.
Tony Tanner, the Lead Portfolio Manager for Private Equity, asked Lewis Tracy, a since-retired OPERS portfolio manager, if he’d be interested in joining a venture capital meeting as a “favor” to Gebert.
Frericks, for his part, appears to have represented “Athletic Capital,” a Delaware-based LLC with a Cincinnati address that he also owns, in the meeting.
“[Gebert] owes you big time,” Tracy responded three minutes later. “Extraordinary waste of time.”
The hits against Feriricks' ineptitude didn’t stop there, either.
Four minutes later, then-Senior Investment Analyst R.J. Visser stated that Ferericks needed “coaching/mentorship” before observing the potential for a colleague to work as an advisor.
“Great point, R.J.,” said Investment Analyst Paul Conner. “Potential first client for the still unnamed Lewis Tracy consulting practice.”
That set the stage for the most brutal takedown of all, again from Visser: “[Frericks] is leagues away from where his competition is … not sure how humble he is, but this is par for the course for the type of people that don’t work in private equity but think they can raise a fund any day of the week.”
You might think that would be the end of Strive Capital. After all, it’s probably a bad sign for a firm’s future if its co-founder embarrasses himself in front of influential, knowledgeable investors who took the meeting as a favor to their colleague.
But that wasn’t the case!
Three months later, we learned that the Texas Employees Retirement System (TERS) pulled an $100 million investment with Strive Asset Management after only “a few” months.
From Renzo Downey of The Texas Tribune in April 2024:
In 2023, the Texas Employees Retirement System (ERS) invested $100 million with Strive Asset Management but reversed that spending only a few months later. The Conservative Accountability Association, directed by Brian Colas, a former top staffer to U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, wants to know why Texas abruptly dropped the fund.
Colas and the Conservative Accountability Association usually go after left-leaning initiatives, but this marks their first look at what, on its face, is a conservative-leaning initiative.
“You would expect these investments to last for years,” Colas told The Blast, noting such investments often last five years. The system pulling the full amount so quickly “struck us as out of the ordinary.”
Ramaswamy didn’t declare his dead-end presidential campaign on Feb. 23, 2023. He would ultimately suspend the campaign less than a year later, on Jan. 15, 2024.
In Sept. 2023, Quartz ran an article about Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign “helping” his anti-woke, anti-ESG capital firm.
The article did little more than regurgitate a press release from Strive in which CEO Matt Cole claimed that the firm had passed “over $1 billion in assets in less than a year from its founding.” (Certainly a big number, if true!)
Strive moved from Columbus to Dallas in November 2024.
Three months later, Ramaswamy declared his Republican gubernatorial candidacy.
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