Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio said the hedge fund’s performance after his leadership transition to a younger generation will be the ultimate marker of his success.

In an interview on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin, Dalio likened the handover to raising children.

“The joy that the ones who are older feel about the next generation and seeing them succeed, that’ll be my mark of my success,” he said. “If they succeed, it’s my success. If they don’t succeed, it’s my failure.”

Dalio, 74, left Bridgewater 18 months ago, ceding leadership of the world’s biggest hedge fund to a team that includes Chief Executive Officer Nir Bar Dea and co-Chief Investment Officers Bob Prince, Greg Jensen and Karen Karniol-Tambour.

Since then, Bar Dea has embarked on a restructuring, including shrinking the fund, cutting costs, firing longtime veterans, promoting other employees and tweaking a famously controversial culture that’s known for its “radical transparency.”

Bar Dea is also trying to snap a run of poor performance in the flagship Pure Alpha fund, which lost more than 4% over the past four years. That’s compared with a 24% gain for the PivotalPath global macro index. Last year the fund, known as Pure Alpha II, notched one of its worst annual declines since its 1991 inception, though it rebounded almost 16% in the first quarter.

Dalio said the firm has preserved elements of its distinctive culture, which he contends was a critical element of Bridgewater’s past success.

“Bob Prince, Greg Jensen, Nir, other people — all of those people are all part of that mission,” Dalio said. “And there was also part of a culture of, ‘Can we be radically truthful and can we be radically transparent? Could we trust each other? Could we go through all of that?’”

“A lot of planning” went into the leadership transition, Dalio said. He’s confident the team “can continue to pick up where I left off or where we left off together, and then go bring it to a higher level beyond me,” he added.

He continues to mentor the executives, calling brainstorming with them “a great pleasure.” But when it comes Bridgewater, he said, “It’s theirs.”

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.