One of the best known was Jack Meyer, who had left Harvard in 2005 after racking up a stellar record over 15 years. Meyer, like Mindich, recently lost out on Harvard’s business. Even before Narvekar’s arrival, Harvard redeemed its holdings in Meyer’s Boston-based Convexity Capital Management, according to people familiar with the decision.

For Sale

At the same time, Harvard is trying to sell about $2.5 billion in private equity, real estate and venture-capital funds. It is also looking to prune its $4 billion of timberland and other natural resource holdings, which are owned directly.

Harvard has already started liquidating its internally run portfolio of stock-and-bond hedge funds that was supervised by managing director Rene Canezin, a former Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers high-yield bond trader.

Narvekar is still trying to pick some Harvard-related winners. He is committing $400 million to TPRV Capital, a hedge fund formed by two departing endowment managers,  Graig Fantuzzi and Michele Toscani, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg News.

The endowment’s new CEO is also looking to strike a deal with its top-performing real-estate team, led by Managing Director Dan Cummings, to manage money outside the fund, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Crimson Connections

In the early aughts, Mindich looked to be just the kind of connection Harvard needed to exploit. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 1988 with a degree in economics and then took a job at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where he had interned as a student. There, he worked on the famed risk arbitrage desk of another Harvard grad, Robert Rubin, who later became U.S. Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton.

In 1994, at age 27, Mindich became the youngest person ever named a Goldman partner. Mindich was then tapped for a prestigious post on the board of Harvard Management Co., which oversees the endowment from offices overlooking Boston Harbor. In 2004, when he started his own company, he resigned his board seat because the endowment decided to invest in his startup, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Harvard’s initial stake helped Mindich raise $3.5 billion in 2004, the biggest hedge fund startup ever at the time. Its early investment performance helped the fund grow to $14 billion in 2011. That year, however, losses prompted investors to start redeeming their money.