Family Offices

Hey everyone,

I have read through a lot of great content on here about Family Offices. I recently came across an opportunity in the space and was hoping to ask some more specific questions. 
 

  1. Given the investment criteria seems to be much more broad than PE or Private Credit (where my experience lies) does a Family Office make hires across all asset classes? Obviously it depends on where there interest lies but just trying to get a sense if my background in one area would be viewed negatively. 
  2. What is the typical team structure? Maybe a principal and then a couple junior resources doing the grunt work?

  3.  What would a day look like for a junior team member?

  4. What are some good questions to ask during an interview / screening process to get comfortable with the firm?

  5. What does compensation look like?

 

For #4, here's what would really blow my socks off, other than a single associate ever developing a personality:

  • How do you determine when to exit? Is it codified and adhered to 100% of the time?
  • What do you do that the rest of the industry doesn't? 
  • Everything else not being equal, would you rather have +$10B to AUM now or in 10 years?

For #2, my experience has been that it's very tight-knit. You wear many hats, and you're usually in the trenches along with your rainmaker. In that case, you would be primarily hired for personality/fit, than current skillset. As long as you're coachable, motivated, and have an IQ over 70, you can be taught to do pretty much anything. 

Inb4 another 5 associates catch whiff and get pissy someone actually thinks they're not demi-Gods. 

P.S Having an accounting skillset is invaluable here, nonetheless.

 
Most Helpful

Long Incompetence

  • How do you determine when to exit? Is it codified and adhered to 100% of the time?

This is a great question, but it's so great that you run the risk of watching the interviewer's brain short-circuit and then they get pissy with you as a result. My experience is that most true family offices (I'm calling that where the family or families have some level of involvement, as opposed to a fully-professionalized single-LP private equity firm) have no idea how to think about exits. Especially when part of their "differentiation" is that they're "patient capital with a long investment horizon," that question would likely hit them square between the eyes.

You could probably do the same with the investment process. Who makes up the investment committee? When is their approval needed to move forward in a process, and what do they need to see to grant that approval? Some committees need a fully-baked memo before they're willing to cut an LOI, others are happy to give informal "hallway" approval to run with something right up until it's time to close and fund. I would say that a lot of family offices don't have this process explicitly defined.

"Son, life is hard. But it's harder if you're stupid." - my dad
 

Thanks for the response. When a family office is started, what is the hiring process typically? Just wondering if it’s formal recruiting process through a headhunter or word of mouth. Also wondering how big the full team would be. 

 

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