Whitney Tilson

Whitney Richard Tilson (born November 1, 1966) is an American former hedge fund manager, author, and Democratic Party political activist. He was a candidate in the 2025 New York City mayoral Democratic primary.

Whitney Tilson was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Thomas and Susan Tilson. His great-grandfather was John Q. Tilson, a Republican politician from Connecticut who served in the House of Representatives for 22 years, including six years as House Majority Leader during the Coolidge and Hoover administrations.

Tilson's parents met when they were in the Peace Corps, teaching in the Philippines, and married three months later; as of 2015 they lived in Kenya, as did his sister. Tilson grew up for a few years in Tanzania and Nicaragua, where his parents served as educators in the Peace Corps. At age six, he participated in the Stanford marshmallow experiment, a psychological study that examined delayed gratification among children.

Tilson graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts in 1985. In 1989, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in government. In 1994, he earned an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School. He was named a Baker Scholar, a recognition awarded to the top 5% of the graduating class.

Tilson spent two years working as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) before business school. BCG agreed to defer his start date for six months so that he could help launch Teach for America.

Tilson then managed a hedge fund for 18 years. He followed the approach of investor Warren Buffett, investing in companies selling at a significant discount to intrinsic value, and also described himself as a disciple of value investing theorist Benjamin Graham. He founded and managed the hedge fund Kase Capital from 1999 to 2017, which in turn managed three value-oriented hedge funds and two mutual funds, as a value investor. As of February 2004, his hedge fund had returned 68% (53% after fees) since its start on January 1, 1999, compared with a 3% loss for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. The fund's assets peaked at over $200 million, and it closed in September 2017 after underperforming the S&P for a number of years.

In 2019, Tilson became an editor at Stansberry Research, an investment newsletter that has more than 100,000 paid subscribers. As of January 2025, he was the lead analyst^{[citation needed]} for the Stansberry Investment Advisory newsletter.

Tilson has authored or co-authored three books, More Mortgage Meltdown: 6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times (2009) with Glenn Tongue, The Art of Value Investing: How the World's Best Investors Beat the Market (2013) with John Heins, and The Art of Playing Defense: How to Get Ahead by Not Falling Behind (2021). He was also a contributing editor to Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (2023).