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Is your hedge fund making the most of its initial in-person meetings with family office investors? Are you productively using that face time with them? Are you communicating what they’re looking to glean from that initial meeting with you? And is your marketing collateral effectively communicating what they and their investment committee colleagues need to know in order to understand and buy into how you invest?
Discussions with family office investment committee members over the years has shed light on the subjective, non-data issues family offices are looking into at their initial in-person meetings, and beyond, when they are evaluating alternative strategies portfolio managers and their investment processes.
There are five points I’ve found that family office investment committee members have said they looked to learn about when conducting their first in-person meeting with an alternative strategies portfolio manager: pinpointing the investment edge that has made the fund successful, understanding and buying into the investment philosophy and process, gauging why the performance is repeatable, understanding in what market environments the strategy is expected to outperform and underperform, and judging how enthusiastic the portfolio manager seems to be about the strategy he or she is running.
The top three reasons these investors said they rejected allocating to a manager who had acceptable performance, AUM size, track record length and Ops & Admin structure were that the manager did not give enough transparency into the investment process; the investment process seemed to lack a solid risk management methodology; or comfort factor could not be established for the firm’s culture or the quality of staff.
Implications for hedge fund marketers
When family office investors grant alternative strategies portfolio managers an initial in-person meeting they nearly always have seen a firm’s data beforehand. So, as these survey results reinforce, there are two important goals the investor has. The family office wants to get an initial understanding of how the money management firm generated its returns. Also, the family office is looking to make that subjective judgment call as to whether it is willing to dedicate additional time — beyond this first meeting — to conduct further due diligence on the portfolio manager and the firm. This is why face-to-face meetings are so valuable to investors, and why the impression the hedge fund gives at this first meeting will end up being its last if it hasn’t prepared well enough.
The challenge you have is to effectively educate family office investment committee members on how you think, especially in the crucial, initial in-person meeting. Additionally, you need marketing collateral that communicates in writing the verbal explanation you gave about how you invest. This is both to remind the person you met with what you told them, and to enable other investment committee members who did not meet you to learn about your investment process and what separates you from the pack.
Also important is that the vast number of sophisticated investors I’ve spoken with have stated that the flip chart pitch books hedge funds provide do not supply all of the information they need to understand and buy into how the managers invest. It would be wise to reevaluate your communications marketing strategy to take this into account.
At my firm, we intentionally craft an additional marketing tool for our clients: a brochure format document to address in detail the investment beliefs and investment process that a hedge fund follows. This covers in writing the very storyline that family office investors — and investment consultants and gatekeepers, plan sponsors and RIAs, for that matter — are looking to learn and evaluate in their due diligence when it comes to the subjective, non-data issues about your strategy.
Prepare for your future introductory sales meetings and cap intro presentations with these points in mind and you will improve your chances for attracting the interest of family office investors and differentiating yourself from your competitors.
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© 2025 Frumerman & Nemeth Inc.
Bruce Frumerman is CEO of Frumerman & Nemeth Inc., a 37-year-old financial communications and sales marketing consultancy that helps financial services firms create brand identities for their organizations and develop and implement effective new marketing strategies and programs. Frumerman & Nemeth’s work has helped money management firm clients attract over $7 billion in new assets, yet they are not third-party marketers.
Frumerman & Nemeth is internationally recognized for its work in crafting for clients the beyond-the-numbers story of how they invest — content that investment committees actually discuss, debate and vote on behind closed doors when considering firms on a short list for potential investment. Importantly, this is required due diligence content that cannot be communicated in pitchbook format.
Frumerman & Nemeth’s work also includes providing strategic consulting on product and strategy-specific branding, crafting the required strategy-specific content detail and designing and producing the marketing tools needed to make it through the two-month to two-year institutional selling cycle. Clients also employ Frumerman & Nemeth to help promote the intellectual acumen of management — helping them get speaking opportunities, write and give speeches as panelists or stand-alone speakers at industry conferences, and through media relations marketing services.
Mr. Frumerman can be reached at info@frumerman.com, or by visiting www.frumerman.com.