When you partner or exit your family business, make sure you pick the right partner.

[40:08]

"Andy, I would just say if you are looking to partner or exit your family business, make sure you pick the right partner. Capital isn't everything. Uh your corporate culture, your legacy, how you're going to be treated through the hold period with your partner is is uh extremely important."

[10:05]

"Um in 3 and 1/2 years we uh were able to double EADA. This was a deal we did with no debt because the selling family uh was adverse to debt. Um so on a deal with no debt we were able to triple topline revenue"

[22:58]

"I grew up in a family business understanding the pitfalls the downfalls and the upside of family businesses. Uh trying to maintain that culture and and uh be able to expand what that culture can do in a more professional sustainable uh growth oriented model"

Full transcript

Great. So, I'd like to um introduce this panel and uh just go down the line with one or two minutes of uh background on each of you. And uh Jonathan, why don't you start us out? Thanks, Richard. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jonathan Bergman.

I'm the president of TAG Associates. We're an eight billion dollar multif family office. We're about 36 years old. We're one of the pioneers of the multif family office space. We I'm the president. I work with clients.

I also oversee our private equity and private debt portfolios. Uh at TAG, roughly onethird of our investment base is in alternative investments. And I probably have the distinction of having the shortest commute here since I just walked across the street. Great. Thank you, Jonathan. Thomas Thomas H, managing member of Aspen Tree Advisory.

Aspen Tree Advisory is a multif family office based here in New York City. Also a partner in a fundless sponsor venture capital cooperative called IDI Group. I serve on the board of directors of a cannabis company called Pure Cali and serve on the advisory board of one of the largest New York stock exchangebased trading businesses uh called America's Executions. And that's me.

Great. Christina. Hi, my name is I There's a button on the side. Okay. Thank you. Hi, my name is Christina Campabadal.

I'm from Barcelona, Spain. I create my own multif family office in Spain and I'm managing director in life invest management. It's an American family office uh here in in New York and my expertise is in a family's ultra high network clients from Latin America. Great. Thank you, Paul. Hi, Paul Kang.

Our family uh started out in consumer products and uh we've branched out to hotels and retail and we have an insurance company and some other things mostly in Korea and Japan but we do have some operations around the world. Great. Uh Andy Andy and Anoay um have a family office and also a private equity fund that invests in lower middle market consumer products and consumer services. Great.

So uh I want to go through some quick case studies now. Uh with each of you. Maybe we'll start with you Jonathan down here at the end. Just real quick uh one to two minute stories or you know three minutes maximum just so we can get through a lot of questions on this panel. Take some from the audience in a couple minutes.

Well, that sounds better. Um but if we could just do a quick case study on an investment you've made recently, uh how you sourced it, structured it, or any lesson you learned from doing it, I think it might be helpful to to many in the room. Sure. Well, I'll um I'll do two, but I'll still meet your time requirements.

Um, one one was a recent success and that was through we we were one of the pioneers and founding members of a private debt group in New York and uh because of that relationship uh they've offered us co-investment opportunities in everything they do no fees no carry and uh they bought a uh the first and second lean debt of a an NHL hockey team. Now we would never invest in the equity of a sports team. U typically it's, you know, it it's it while it can be lucrative, it tends to be more about uh cocktail parties and and power and, you know, being being on TV. U but the the economics on this deal were were quite impressive.

Um and there was a game plan knowing that the team would either uh succeed financially rapidly or the team would be forced to sell. Um and there was a massive exit fee uh for the debt holders upon sale. So the sooner they sold the better it was for us. So we made an investment um a couple of years ago and in less than two years uh we earned 1.4 times our money uh 20% net IRRa and again it's debt so it's first and second lean debt.

So, we were very very comfortable in that and we uh we actually rooted for the hockey team for a few minutes and no longer need to. Um that's that's one deal and that just closed recently. Uh another deal that we closed this week. Um and there was on the previous panel someone mentioned is it a trend or is it a fad?

Well, we spend a lot of time thinking through new ideas. Is it a trend or is it a fad? Uh the most recent investment we made is co-investment uh in the largest uh US pea protein provider that's yellow peas uh and that is the chief ingredient in beyond meat and uh they also supply to to Nestle and Vega and other plant-based protein providers. So, we spent a lot of time figuring out is is the shift to plant-based protein, is that just a fat at the moment or is this really taking off?

And ultimately, we concluded that it's really taking off. And we uh along with one of the largest um one of the largest food manufacturers in the world invested in this company. Uh again, we're closing this week and um we actually sourced it from a client. A client of ours sourced this deal and uh introduced us to it and we did a tremendous amount of diligence uh and we're really excited about it and we've been celebrating by eating uh uh Beyond Sausage and Beyond Meats and Impossible Ververs.

Great. Thanks, Jonathan. Uh Thomas, what about yourself? So, I'll talk about two. So as I mentioned IDI group is a fundless sponsor venture capital cooperative six founding partners about six affiliate partners in the group. So what we do as a collective is we identify venture stage companies where we go in invest in these companies make our commitment and then find friends and family to syndicate portions of that deal out to.

Um one very interesting company that we recently invested in is a company called Ebie. Um empowered by you. It was founded by Sophia Vagara. Um, it's a subscription-based women's underwear company with a micro finance component. Um, empowering women in other countries to start businesses. Um, that's a company where we definitely bet on the jockey.

Um, and so far um, it has been a very very very good relationship, good working relationship. Another company is a company called Snapback, which is a hot and cold compression wearables technology. Um, it had a $23 million pre- money. We went in for seven. Um, and our exit is probably 2 to four years there and it'll be to one of the likely brands.

Um, yeah, you know, so that said, I think both of those companies we got in very early. We have conviction in the management teams. We have conviction in the companies and um the ill liquidity premium in those cases are very much worth it. Great. Christina, I will speak about just uh one investment. Uh it's very special because it's um it's a fund and North American fund is about uh cancer research.

Erh the National Foundation of Cancer here in US uh is helping to found uh to this fund uh some startups that invest in uh in um investigation and different kind of cancer. Um and we invest there and you know what I learned that uh you can make money and save lives and help people too. So that's why great thank you uh Paul you know I think Richard makes a great point that we we as investors have to be pretty proactive in terms of sourcing transactions and uh one of the speakers earlier was talking about looking for you know deacorns and everything else. Um, but you know, I think if you were not one of the I think I don't know, four or five people that that uh Zuckerberg knew at at Harvard when he asked for to raise money initially or if you weren't a Stanford, you know, professor, you didn't get to invest in Google.

And so, you know, I I think that it does make sense to really do a proactive effort. In terms of of of my example, we do a lot of borrowing funds, but uh one of the things that we do like is biotech and um so we actually created a couple of joint ventures with a couple of research institutes in the US and and have started to invest alongside them and there's one where we started out I think we made a $2 million investment. We're up to about 70 now and uh we think that we'll be able to take this thing public for over a billion dollars later on this year. So So that that was a great story for us.

Great Andy. Um yeah, in our first fund we invested in a experiential entertainment business. We felt that it was a great platform. We thought we could add um more diversity into it. Uh we have a very strong ESG component in our fund and in our investment thesis. So we implemented some of our ESG focuses to this.

We brought in a new management team professionalized uh the group were able to do um a few partnerships with uh the likes of Universal Studios, Nickelodeon. Uh we did a small tuckin acquisition and bought the license rights to Sesame Street Live touring. Um in 3 and 1/2 years we uh were able to double EADA. This was a deal we did with no debt because the selling family uh was adverse to debt.

Um so on a deal with no debt we were able to triple topline revenue uh double eva and three and a half years and sold the business to Cir to Sole for about 2.3 times the money in a little bit less than four years. Great. So, I want to make sure uh that since you guys took the time to come here and speak on stage that you leave with some deal flow that fits what you guys are looking to allocate to right now. So, in five words or less, what's the most valuable piece of deal flow or type of investment that you're looking to source?

May maybe we can start with you Andy and work our way down towards Jonathan here. Yeah, we invest only in family businesses or Hispanic focused businesses here within the United States in the consumer products or consumer service segments. Great, Paul. So we're 80% in funds in all different classes. Then we do real estate, biotech and some uh uh private equity especially in the consumer space.

Christina we invest in uh real estate in US um in technology in classic cars and something uh we are fans that we are looking all the time over the world. Okay, Thomas, private equity, uh, private companies, real estate, um, private debt and credit, and, um, I would say anything that has an impact component to it, that is a phenomenal investment standing alone from it being an impact deal. Uh, Jonathan, well, I'll adhere to your five-word limit. Thank you.

Um niche inefficient industry but understandable. Great. And you mentioned uh overseeing the debt area on top of being, you know, president uh of TAG. So, can you explain just a little bit your thoughts on debt in terms of uh where you're allocating? There's many ways to get exposure, debt exposure, and I know you guys have the sophistication uh you know, one of the more more sophisticated shops in the Northeast that it's a multi-billion dollar family office.

So, how do you think about that within your investment committee and team and where do you actually invest your energy into finding the best within that part of the market that you want exposure in? Right? So, we love private debt. Unfortunately, the secret is out and we like it a lot less. Um, you know, we we've been investors in private debt for for a number of years.

Uh we you know it was a a natural transition away from fixed income markets as as rates had come down and covenants had gotten too loose. We went for really private private deals initially with funds in niche strategies, differentiated strategies, not not middle, you know, not middle market lending to private equity funds because that is just too competitive. Um so we went further and further uh away from the center of the fairway. Um and we've had great success.

But when every fund that we invested in five, six years ago came back to market and said, you know, would you like to double or triple your investment amount commitment amount? We we said no. Um the market is just the market is too competitive right now. There's too many people uh lending with insufficient covenants, um insufficient um guard rails, and they're lending too cheaply.

Um, so what we've done in the last couple of years, and I highlighted it with the with the hockey team, is we're just doing specific deals. Um, we're we don't want to lend into into this environment broadly. We're only looking for unique differentiated deals. Uh, where we think we've got strong collateral, tight covenants, and high high yields.

So, I know you went niche in efficient. I know you go direct to some debt deals to negotiate great terms and you have full transparency on the actual deal, but what do you guys talk about internally that's exciting, super inefficient, and you'd want to get that flow from the event room here today? That's that's super specific. You think?

You know, I I I don't I don't know what it is, but I can tell you, you know, we just did the P protein deal. Uh we invested in a you know we we like we like funds that are 250 million you know not huge not not tiny but where you know we can be a meaningful investor and they're operating typically in a less efficient market. So uh one deal we did re one fund we did recently was a UK-based fund private equity fund that's a publicto private strategy. So in in the face of Brexit not many people are allocating dollars or pounds rather uh to the UK and we just did and we're meaningful investor and the UK small cap market is the most inefficient market in the developed world.

Um and we so we really like the dynamics there. We like the rule of law in Britain. Um so um and these these companies the public companies are trading at like you know 10-year lows. Uh you can't really say that about many developed markets. So we love the opportunity to go in there and um and buy these companies, take them private, fix them up a little bit in a traditional lower middle market strategy and then sell them to private equity firms later.

Great. And uh Paul, for family offices and private investors here in the room, what's your number one piece of advice for proactively going after deal flow and sourcing as you called it, you know, boring fund managers in the marketplace? You've spoken at several of our events um and have been doing this for a while. So what's what's a piece of advice you could lend to them in the audience who are who would like to take action on your advice?

So, one of the key things we try to do is, you know, to be diligent in terms of of of the deal flow that that we do get and and and as I've spoken uh as Richard has mentioned in the past is that, you know, when people like us come to these things, you have a few um uh few, you know, opportunities to reach out to us and whether it's your elevator pitch when we might meet in the hallway, you know, what's on your business card, um you know the what you say hopefully briefly in your email and hopefully an impactful presentation. They're all pieces of of I think uh things that make an impression and uh and we certainly try to be very diligent in in in looking at every email that comes across our desk and and uh and try not to be too biased in terms of of dismissing things. But it it does help us if you can help us with the with the steps in the process.

Great. And uh Thomas, you brought up impact investing. Uh sometimes people put the impact label on just about anything. You know, they're buying an apartment building, charging 10K, you know, putting 10K renovation on it, charging more for rent the next quarter, and they say, "Oh, we're improving the lives of the tenants because it's a nicer building now."

Um to things that really make a drastic improvement in someone's life, you know, uh whether it's access to water, etc. So for you uh in terms of how you approach the space and how much of a problem and how how much that just kind of muddies the water on your ability to actually source impact investments. Can you comment both on that and just the feeling that like impact investments gets talked about a lot everywhere especially in the media and sometimes at conferences but only a percentage of family offices really look for impact investments. So for those here in the room, if you have any advice on, you know, other ways to connect with families who want uh impact investments, I think that might be helpful.

Sure. So, first I could talk about, you know, someone that I'm relatively close to um you know, who went out and put repurposed jet engines on barges in areas of Africa that did not have electricity. Um I think that's a genuine, you know, impact investment. You could talk about Ebie micro finance com micro finance component empowering women to start businesses in other countries.

Um you can talk about an opportunity zone investment fund of two that I was active in uh the only LP investment in this opportunity zone fund of two Puerto Rico only after hurricane Maria. So I urge everyone to look at impact I don't want to say impact second but I think the deal has to make sense without it being impactentric right so I of course it's a better investment and it makes everyone feel good and everyone talks about impact investments but I think impact's a very hot word and you have to drill down with those jockeyies that are running that investment and really understand what impact they're making, why they're making that impact, and what their ultimate goal and mission is. If it is impact first and investing second, probably a pass for us. Anyone else want to comment on impact investing before I move on to the next question?

Yeah, for me, I think uh that the key is uh look for innovation, sustainability, and honest people or honest managers, right? Great. Yeah, I think uh sometimes if you try to use it as a marketing spin, it just kind of backfires and takes away from the credibility of the project uh potentially. So, I think it's good to be careful on that.

We're going to open it up for questions here in just a minute and we have uh one or two microphones to bring to people in the audience. If you want to start raising your hand now, we can weave through the audience and get a mic in your hands by the time that we take the question. Feel free to raise your hand and we'll start doing that. Um, I'd like to go down the line just like with a quick um kind of one-s sentence answer if we can.

Uh maybe starting with you Andy on what's most important when you're looking at a company or a potential team that's behind an investment or an organization uh in terms of long track record whether it's a unique niche strategy how long you've known the manager in terms of like seen them grow over a couple years or or many years ideally or uh or another factor that I know all of those things are important and like 30 things need to be lined up to even really take a serious meeting with someone probably but uh what do you pay attention to first that is most critical within your team and really clears out most people you find uh that approach you to um you know seek your your partnership in capital. Yeah. So when we invest in business obviously all those things are important the team whether we need to replace the team um or supplement the team uh I would say what's most important is a pathway to success and how we can help them achieve that right I'm an operator so I grew up operating businesses my partners in the fund are more traditional private equity people um but uh as long as we can uh you know pencil out a two and a half times return and a path way to that with our ability to help uh achieve that goal more efficiently, more quickly and sustainably.

Uh that's kind of what we look for. So it sounds like you have capabilities to help improve the team. Obviously uh usually in consumer space there's help with getting distribution. That's usually a big part of the success, but can you speak just for uh one minute about that unique ability in case there's a consumer products company here that maybe could use the expertise even more than the capital that you could bring to the table?

Yeah. And and we're much less about needs of capital than needs of of help or desire for help or succession planning. Um but yeah, I I grew up running a consumer products business uh called Koya Foods, largest Hispanic food company in the country. Uh helped uh bring that company national. Helped uh develop uh the evolution of how we went to market uh getting into the general market from specifically the Hispanic market and uh all those connections we have and the the teams I've known uh throughout the country uh from my past 25 30 years in the industry uh helps us implement those strategies and um achieve the goals we're we're looking to get.

Great. Yeah, makes sense. I think it uh that that comment you made is really one of the more important comments I think on stage today that it is about the expertise more than the capital because it might seem stressful during a capital raise to find the capital provider but at the macro sense of it when you look at the industry there's lots of capital all over the place and the entrepreneur will give better terms or they want to close the deal with the person who's going to take them to the $und00 million a year in revenue or take them to the exit uh etc. So I many times that's what drives who actually gets the better terms and who gets the next meeting.

Um and I would also say respect for corporate culture. Like I said we mainly invest in his spent in family businesses. I grew up in a family business understanding the pitfalls the downfalls and the upside of family businesses. Uh trying to maintain that culture and and uh be able to expand what that culture can do in a more professional sustainable uh growth oriented model is extremely important to me and the legacy of what that family will have long after we all exit together.

Sure, it makes sense. I think a lot of uh family business owners are scared of being wartonized by people that went to schools uh that are very famous and wellknown and with a team of lawyers or 12 people that all went to Harvard or Wharton and the 72page legal agreement. They don't really understand all the terms and they're afraid of what they mean. So, they just back away and just uh don't want to work with any investors that come in like that because they think it's a a vulture approach potentially.

Um Paul, in your case, you say you look at boring fund managers. In my mind that means boringly stable, been around a long time. Um, you know, what are you looking for first? Is it that really long track record? Is it stability of returns or is it a niche play but somehow they've been around for a long time already or so a while ago one of the things we did of course was to take a look at what happened to them during the crisis and that would teach us something about how um you know how how their strategy really kind of got through those tough times.

Uh but I think as as many of you know, you know, if you always have top quartortile managers, you'll do okay in pretty much any environment, but that's not always easy to do. Um we certainly believe that especially these days, beta is driving returns more than alpha. And um and if if I might mention that, you know, we think one of the biggest bubbles right now is the shift from you know, public to private assets. And uh 5 6 years ago I would have been in this room and everyone would have been rah rahrh let's invest in real estate and everything else.

Uh two years ago you started to hear people talk about well you know we may go into a real estate asset but we need to make sure we've got the leases and we've got the ability to refinance our debt and and those kinds of things. And so you know you are seeing some adjustments in the marketplace and um our two cents is that going forward you need to take a look at your liquidity more and more and uh whether it's even things like you know do you have exit scenarios or provisions when you go out there and buy a company. Uh do you have the ability to to refinance things? Uh what portion of your assets are in cash because we have to admit we are more in cash than we probably have ever been and um and [snorts] so you know I I I would leave you with that.

Sure. Uh Christina, what's the number one thing you look for? We look always for uh exclusive and unique investments because sometimes it's not a long uh long history of the fun is not always the the best choice. You know, it's uh some startups that are amazing in on technology here in New York that they started like two years ago and [clears throat] it's something great to invest.

So I think that should be invest in something that you never see before you know it's something special and the people who is uh close to this deal is uh intelligent mar and have something sure okay uh Thomas what's the number one thing so I'm going to regurgitate a lot of things that everyone else on the panel has said but I think culture is very important built a big portion of my career at first republic bank and investment management. If anyone knows the firm, they know they have a very strong culture and that does not always translate when you try to grow a business and the partners that you invest in, especially in the private company world, you know, sitting down and really having a heart-to-heart with those people to say, "What are your plans for growth? What are your plans for growth within management? Who are you going to be to us as a partner?"

Um, and how can we help you grow your business? Because ultimately if we help them grow their business they are going to be more successful but if everyone's not speaking the same language um that could become a challenge and then separately I would also say diligence great and uh Jonathan I'm pretty familiar with some of how the large multif family offices work and it becomes pretty institutional with 162 checkpoints and you know a big team of analysts and you know look for usually looking for so much of a track record so much an AUM so I would imagine that a lot of the very fundamental things knock out a lot of people, but uh what's something you could share with the room on what matters the most and moves the needle? Um either on the negative side or what helps get someone in the door that might be an exception to some of those rules, right? Well, you know, that question is a loaded question.

You know, it's like asking which of my children do I like best. Um really depends on the day. Which one? [laughter] Yeah. Um but you know notwithstanding every checkpoint you know we you know I think Paul said this you know we we think you know we are very late cycle obviously um and you know beta has been the play for the last 10 years you know we're thinking more about alpha we're thinking more about idiosyncratic returns so that's pushing us more toward direct deals co-investments and then in uh funds in niche in niche spaces smaller funds and niche oriented funds where you know we can do a firsttime fund but that is you know there's there's you know 3x the diligence compared to a fund two fund three but we really want to be operating in categories that you know not everyone has has invested in thus far.

So, we loved private debt 5, six, seven years ago, like it less now. You know, we invested in cannabis a handful of years ago, like, you know, not as much now. Um, so we we're really looking to where the puck is going. Uh, to use the hockey reference because that was a successful deal for us. Um, and we so we we want to be in something that hasn't been picked over and not where everyone else has gone.

And and in fact just you know family offices have an advantage even though we are somewhat fairly institutional. We do have maybe not 162 but we have many checkpoints. Um family offices have an have an opportunity and an advantage that institutions don't have because they can do a fund one because they can invest in cannabis which is federally illegal. You know in other categories we can we we can we have an advantage.

We don't have an advantage on total dollars compared to a pension plan, but we have an advantage on nimleness and we have an advantage on um breath. Great. Thank you. Uh the number one thing that that my clients are often looking for is some sort of arbitrage. You know, they're taking a deal that produces enough profit that they can bring in a high net worth investor and just pay them a debt note with collateral and the investor feels safe and they get to keep the upside when they know that the asset's going to serve that debt note fine.

Uh they have more equity at the end of the day doing deals as a co-GP instead of always as an LP. Um like Andy said, doing a deal where you have strategic value, so you're getting a better valuation and the CEO knows that. It's not that they're ignorant, but they're giving you that valuation because they want you to say yes, buy 5% and be on their board. Uh taking a company public from being private is a form of arbitrage.

Buying a company on a multiple of IBIDA and then you sell it uh to private equity, add a 10 times IBIDA instead of buying them at three to four and stacking two or three on top of each other. Or buying a company in multiple of IBIDA and selling it on a multiple of revenue to a big strategic who's gobbling up companies once they get big enough or just buying you know a single family home and turning it into Airbnb is another form of arbitrage that's looking for some form of arbitrage you know I guess summarizes the whole investment industry but family offices want to feel smart and actually be smart and defend themselves against what's happening uh in the greater marketplace obviously so that's one key thing we're always looking for um any questions from the audience yes we got one in the middle there. Um Allan, do you have a microphone you could take back there? Oh, Charlie's coming up to the middle.

If you can raise your hand again, sir, if you can Here we go. I was just wondering uh how far down the investment chain uh does the high or high income uh funds look for, your funds look for? Does it go down to the seed level? Does it go down only to the secondary uh equity level? I know Jonathan talked about sometimes getting in very early and having that capability at least.

I think that's what you're asking, right? Can you come in on an A round or a seed round on a deal or a fund? Does anyone want to comment on that? Well, we're not typically going to do an A through C in a portfolio company. What what I was alluding to earlier was a firsttime fund. And if it's a first-time fund, it's going to be a tremendous amount more diligence and and and more examination than if it was fund three, at least on the operational standpoint.

I mean, we'll do early stage things. One one thing that um I'm not sure US investors do as much of, but you know, if you go to China, um if somebody finds a great industry, I don't know, let's say it's tofu making in Beijing and there may be 10 great companies in that space, a Chinese VC may invest in eight of them and say, "Hey, we don't know which one's going to be the winner, but we like the space. We're going to invest in a bunch of them and uh and we have to admit in things like biotech, you know, when it's imuninocology, we don't really know who the real winner is going to be. So, we may invest in several of them just just because we like the space.

Okay. And then for for us, and I'll speak on behalf of IDI, not Aspentry. Um and this is not choosing managers, but it's choosing companies. When we we look at a company that's very early stage that needs our help in from from a capital standpoint, we look at the same thing we would look at from a younger alpha generating manager.

You know, a spinout story, prior success, the company they're associated with. So, for example, you know, Snapback, the CEO prior to uh running Snapback, he was a relatively high level individual at Adidas, right? So, so I think it's important to understand what their backstory is and what their prior successes were and that gives us conviction in investing in those companies and individuals earlier on. Great.

Thank you. I think we had one or two more questions. Yes, up front. Thanks. Thank you. Sorry.

Thank you. Following the manifestations last Friday and Greta Tunberg's appeal to uh the UN and and world leaders the other day. Do you expect to see more investments profitable in sustainable technologies? So the question was do you expect to see more investments in sustainable technologies like energy sustainable energy technologies? No comments on that one. I mean um Personally, I think that there is always going to be more investments in in energy, sustainable energy technologies.

I mean, we're seeing that with GM saying they're not going to manufacture anymore, you know, gasoline engine cars, uh, coming up real soon. So, I think that that speaks to it. You know, FPL is putting in throughout Florida massive solar fields and we know of a family doing a ton of work in solar field installation and investment right now. So, I see it from my perspective far more than I see let's have a formal impact investment program.

I see the energy efficiency investments growing. Uh, another question. Yeah. Hi. Uh, what's the interest uh of any of you guys in healthcare specifically nonsecure uh account receivables or resettlement funding particularly in New York? Any interest in healthcare?

Am I clear or Yeah. So, so we could talk offline. Um, I've been relatively active in the factor-based advance space. Um, not necessarily on receivables um, advance, but more on the merchant service advance space. So, we we could talk after the panel. Back along the wall.

Yes. Yeah. Just one quick question. I think uh, three or four of y'all said real estate interest. Can you give us a little bit more specifics so that you don't get bombarded? You know, is there a type of, you know, is it commercial, residential, industrial, uh, office, that kind of thing?

And are y'all more focused on um, acquisitions or new construction, those type of things? That way you don't get bombarded with stuff you're not interested in. Yeah. And we only have maybe, um, 30 seconds per person. So, just maybe asset type, uh, you know, and what what type of uh, property, what type of real estate, if anyone wants to comment on that.

Uh for us it's it's it's we're steering out of the gateway cities, so probably smaller cities. Uh looking at multif family, student housing, um mixed [snorts] juice properties. We're looking at some interesting kind of redevelopments of of uh usual malls. Um so a little bit of variety there. We are looking always in a small not a small cities because cities like uh Dallas and Denver are not small but I mean it's not like uh uh New York or Miami and and normally are residential.

We have a lot of exposure to multif family value ad southeast. So, um I would say not as much. Um longer term commercial, uh mixed use, um in unique markets with operators that have skin in the game. Great. Uh maybe time for uh these two or three quick questions here. I think she's on your team, Jo.

Is that right? Great. Okay. I thought you get How about you two over there? And then uh Sure. We have one behind you and then we'll make sure to get your question, too.

Um, in a low rate environment, are you looking at cash flows in the deals or just looking for, you know, the multiple expansion? Yes, we're it depends on the deal. I mean, I love cash flow. My clients love cash flow, you know. Um, it just the market is very efficient and there's so much capital wash in the world that every every everything or many things get priced, right?

But yeah, we're looking for yield and then if if or we're looking for growth. You know, my on my P protein deal, I'm not going to get a scent until they sell. Um on another deal we we did recently, we're getting paid almost on day one. I would only add to that that we would actually go to the extent of recapitalizing to take out as much money as possible because we know that we can put money back in if we have to, but uh we may as well try to take you out as much as possible going along the way.

Great. Um, we all know that connected autonomous vehicles are the future. Uh, in order for those vehicles to operate on our roads, they require digital roadside infrastructure. Ontario teachers pension plan announced a joint venture with Alphabet uh Google's Alphabet a week and a half ago about uh investing in roadside infrastructure. I haven't heard anybody talk about uh the importance of digital roadside infrastructure and I'm just wondering if you guys are hearing about it at all.

I do know it came up with a super summit last year and I think at the SFO summit in Q1 this year but um yeah I didn't hear it earlier uh as well during the event but I might have missed it. Uh does anyone want to comment on that trend or any investments they're doing related to that? No. One thing I would say is that's a prime example of an area that I'm not too familiar with.

Um I would love to hear more, but once again um I think anyone feeding us information has to have the patience to continue to do that until we have conviction in the space. Um so any updates would be great and I think that connects to uh one thing I found is helpful to many many people who are looking for an investor um is to find people who have already had exits in the space already allocating to the space and you can do so by having someone do data research for you or looking at old Inc 500 lists or who's on the boards of publicly traded companies uh etc and build up that list of 3 to 500 people who already know your space very well so you don't have to educate them on it even though a partition part of your investor base might be people you have to educate over time. Um, if you spend 80% of your energy on ones you don't have to educate as much, then usually it really helps and they add more strategic value.

Um, I want to give uh the panelists a chance just for 30 seconds or less. Anything you really wanted to get across in the panel? I know we didn't get to all the questions here. Um, but just real quick, any last ideas that any of you would like to share with the audience that's for investors or people raising capital here today?

Not all at once. Andy, I would just say if you are looking to partner or exit your family business, make sure you pick the right partner. Capital isn't everything. Uh your corporate culture, your legacy, how you're going to be treated through the hold period with your partner is is uh extremely important. Obviously, the price is important, but you should uh make sure that the culture and and and your partner is is probably just as important, if not more important, right?

I think it's a great point. The team can be more important than price. Sometimes a structure is more important than price, too. A more aligned structure or a fair structure on a waterfall can mean a lot more than getting a top dollar valuation. Christina. Yeah.

Um, now maybe it's a moment to say uh that I'm looking for a registered investment advisor here in US to buy uh the 51% of the firm. So if someone knows uh uh RIA that they have uh 1 billion under management just please let me know. Great. Thank you. Uh any last comments otherwise uh before we uh break I have just uh one minute of things I have to run through real quick.

We then have uh the sponsor for the cocktails is gonna come come up for literally two minutes uh to share one thing with you and then we're going to break for cocktail networking in just two minutes. But I'd like the discussion panelist to stay here so there's not a mob and a lot of networking going on while we're trying to to talk here. The last comment I wanted to make is that related to the arbitrage comments I made is that I think if family offices can focus on what they're excellent at, there's not a lot of competition for but there's lots of demand. Then if you can focus most of your energy on that uh sub area, then things go better.

Um, we're going to be getting a few video testimonials today. Charlie's going to be up here at 5:00 p.m. Just about 10 minutes um to take a few of those. If you've been a client or been with us and gotten some deals done or had a great time in the community, then please let him know. We're recording five or 10 of those here.

Jennifer can help you with a walkthrough of the portal. If you're a new member, make sure you do that because there's a lot of benefits of being a member besides coming to one of the 32 events we're going to have over the next 14 months here. Uh, one of those benefits is a capital raising audit. So, every 3 months we'll analyze your pitch deck, website, all your materials, and give you feedback on what we would consider changing if we were in your spot.

You might not agree with half of it, but I'm sure there's going to be a couple ideas that are going to get the wheels turning or things that are reminding you uh of things you know you need to get fixed up. If you want to see the performanceonly work we do on the direct investment side with family offices, we don't do wealth management, but that's at centaillionaires.com. Uh if you want to speak at one of our future events, see Vanessa or Ellie. Uh if you have questions about pitch decks.com, that's Andress.

Uh we've got the sponsors and we have cocktails outside there. I'd encourage you to just take one lap around the sponsor room. Make sure there's not someone there that you could do business with or work with from the event today. We appreciate that support and that's why we're able to do these events right in Midtown uh and not at a more remote location with worse food.

So, we definitely appreciate uh the support of the sponsors and all the speakers that took their time to be up here today. As I mentioned earlier, none of the speakers are paid to come up here as a keynote speaker. They're here because they want to get deals done. They want to source deals, source managers, learn from each other, and have better deal flow.

That's why they all say what their investor mandates are on stage. And uh Ellen, if you don't mind coming up to have the video uh switch over, Charlie. Um Paula Sanders is gonna come up real quick now. Uh her firm is the cocktail sponsor uh for this afternoon. And we know that coming to these events is all about making connections to get deals done.

Uh so I'm glad all of you stuck around for the whole day. And I want to make sure that you know that we have on October 15th the family office fundamentals workshop in Miami. October 29th, we're going to be in Dallas for the Real Estate Private Investor Summit. Similar format of this, but about half the size and very focused on real estate, obviously.

November 12th, we're at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore for family office fundamentals. And in the 10,000 person family office super summit, uh is on the island of Kiscane, which is 10 minutes from downtown Miami, uh at the Ritz Carlton on the 16th and 17th of December. All those dates are on family offices.com. Um, but let's have uh Paula come up and then when she's done, she's gonna release you to the cocktails and networking.

So, thanks for your attention for just the next two minutes here. Thank you so much for the introduction, Richard, and thank you for having us today as your event sponsor. As he said, my name is Paula Sanders and I'm the VP of membership at Insignia. And since we have such little time with you guys up here on the stage and it's been great to meet a lot of you today and we're looking forward to meeting the rest of you during the event.

I'm just going to let my video do the talking because it really tells you all about Insignia. So I want to introduce you all to Insignia and have you start saying yes to impossible. Oh, hey. Hey. And I'm sure you all have a lot of questions and that's exactly why we do that. So, please feel free to come ask me anything about Insignia.

I brought along some of my incredible teammates. They're in the back over there to your left. Please come see us. Have an amazing time. It's time to let loose. Have some cocktails.

Cheers to you all. Have a great night. Thank you everyone.