Early career

After graduating from Harvard Business School, Tarrant joined Berkeley Asset Management in Berkeley, California, as vice president, co-managing the Sequoia Fund, one of the first fund of hedge funds in the United States.^[3][4] He went on to manage assets for private family fortunes, including Sidney Kimmel (film producer and founder of the Jones Apparel Group).^[5] For the Thurn und Taxis family of Germany, he managed their marketable securities hedge fund portfolio and investments in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe.^[4][5]

In 1996, Tarrant founded Altvest, the first Web-based directory of hedge funds and managers.^[6][7] InvestorForce purchased it in 2000,^[8][9] and it was made a division of investment research firm Morningstar in 2006.^[6][10]

Protégé Partners

Tarrant served from 1998 to 2002 on the board of directors of The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF), an investment advisory firm for charitable foundations, and advised TIFF on building its first hedge fund of funds.^[3] In 2001, Tarrant was introduced to Ted Seides by TIFF founder David Salem, which led to the formation of Protégé Partners. Based in Manhattan, Protégé specializes in seeding and early stage investing in hedge funds.^[3][5][11] Tarrant initially served as chief investment officer and chief executive officer, with Seides as president.^[12][13] Seides took over as co-CIO in 2011 until leaving the firm in 2015, at which point Tarrant resumed his role as sole CIO.^[13] The University of Texas and the New Jersey pension system were early investors with Protégé.^[11] As of 2016, Protégé manages $1.6 billion.^[14] In 2017, he moved into the role of chairman.^[15]

Tarrant is featured in Gregory Zuckerman's 2009 nonfiction book The Greatest Trade Ever, about John Paulson's use of credit default swaps to bet against the US subprime mortgage bubble. Tarrant and Paulson were discussing issues with the housing market as far back as 2004. Tarrant was the lead investor in Paulson's new fund, putting in $60 million on behalf of Protégé clients in 2006 (out of a total of $147 million Paulson would raise).^[16]

Buffett bet

In early 2008, Warren Buffett bet Protégé Partners that over a 10-year period, the S&P 500 Index would outperform a portfolio of hedge funds.^[13] For the bet, done through the Long Now Foundation, Protégé built an index of five funds that invest in hedge funds, placing its bet on the average returns of those funds after all fees. Buffett bet on a low-cost S&P 500 index fund sold by Vanguard. Each side put up $320,000, with the money used to buy a US Treasury bond that would be worth $1 million at the conclusion of the bet, on December 31, 2017. The $1 million will be donated to the winner’s choice of charity.^[12][17] In 2012, after the bonds appreciated faster than expected and interest rates fell, the two sides agreed to buy 11,200 Berkshire Hathaway B shares, which at the end of 2017 were worth $2.22 million. Buffett won the bet, and that amount was donated to Girls Inc. of Omaha.^[18][19]

Digital currency

Tarrant was one of the backers of the MIT Media Lab's Bitcoin Developer Fund. It provides financial support for the three bitcoin developers working for the Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative, which was launched in 2015 to explore issues involved in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.^[20] In 2016, Tarrant invested in Polychain Capital, then the world's largest cryptocurrency hedge fund, cashing out at the end of 2017.^[21] He was an investor in early iterations of quantitative hedge fund investing, including Renaissance Technologies.^[7][22][23]

MOV37

Around 2016, Tarrant began focusing on machine learning and data science, exploring hedge funds built on concepts of artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing, and digital currencies.^[7][22] In 2017, he began building a directory for this new wave of modern technology-driven funds, which he termed Autonomous Learning Investment Strategies (ALIS).^[7]

He founded MOV37 in 2017, an autonomous learning and data analysis firm which invests in emerging hedge funds. ALIS managers create a fully autonomous system that uses unstructured non-financial data, data science, record-low processing and storage costs, and machine learning that is constantly learning and improving based on incremental data.^[24][25]

Documentary films

Tarrant was a founding partner in the production company Candescent Films, which was started in 2010 to produce and finance documentary films exploring social issues.^[26][27] With Candescent, Tarrant was an executive producer on films including Sons of the Clouds, narrated by Javier Bardem, which premiered at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival and won the 2013 Goya Award for Best Documentary Film;^[28] The Queen of Versailles,^[29] which won the 2012 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Directing Award for Documentary;^[30] Who Is Dayani Cristal? starring Gael García Bernal, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival;^[31] and Trophy, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by CNN Films and The Orchard.^[27]

Prior to his work with Candescent, Tarrant executive produced the 2007 documentary The Third Wave, based on a book written by Alison Thompson about her work aiding Sri Lankan survivors of the 2004 Asian tsunami.^[32] Tarrant and Bill Ackman executive produced the 2010 documentary Smash His Camera, about the life and career of paparazzi photographer Ron Galella. Directed by Leon Gast, it won the US Directing Award: Documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was later picked up by Magnolia Pictures and HBO.^[33][34]