Ignite LP: Process Beats Prediction in Investing with John McArthur | Ep225

Imagine spending decades inside the most buttoned-up corners of finance… then quietly deciding the real edge lives somewhere less liquid, less obvious, and way more misunderstood.

John McArthur is the Senior Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Krillogy, where he helps steward billions across public and private markets. Before that, he cut his teeth at firms like Morgan Stanley, and before that, he was a Division I quarterback, which explains a lot about how he thinks under pressure. Today, he sits at the intersection of wealth management, private markets, and long-horizon thinking, right as the old playbooks start to crack.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

00:01 Origin Story and Early Career

01:55 From D1 Quarterback to CIO

03:10 What Krillogy Does

05:05 Scaling Through People and Culture

06:40 Early Move into Private Markets

09:10 Defining Private Markets

11:30 How the Ultra-Wealthy Allocate Capital

14:00 Access and Innovation in Private Markets

17:05 Fund-of-Funds and Diversification Logic

20:10 Liquidity and Time Horizon Management

23:05 Portfolio Allocation to Private Markets

26:10 Diversification and Dispersion in Venture

29:05 Public Market Return Expectations

32:00 Building Durable Portfolios

35:13 Transition to Rapid Fire

Along the way, John makes a contrarian case that doing nothing is still a decision, that risk is often mispriced because people hate illiquidity more than loss, and that the future of wealth management looks a lot more like architecture than stock picking.

Quotes worth sitting with:

“Doing nothing is a decision. It’s just not always the right one.”

“If you don’t have enough shots on goal in private markets, the probabilities just don’t work.”

John started his career calling plays on the field and ended up calling them across portfolios. Different arenas, same lesson, discipline beats adrenaline, process beats ego, and the long game always knows who’s bluffing.

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