A new investment club for family offices soft-launched this week, and the person behind it is a mystery to almost everyone.
On Tuesday, Mr. Family Office, an anonymous account on X that posts about family offices and related topics, sent subscribers to his affiliated newsletters an invitation to apply to the MrFO Investor Community. The new community will be a “curated, trusted group of 50 family offices with access to high-quality, off-market opportunities,” and they can expect to “often get early looks at standout deals: from breakout founders to established companies like OpenAI, xAI, SpaceX,” the email said.
The application form asks for some general information (name, email, the office they work for) and to select from lists the asset classes they invest in through funds; the types of direct real estate investments they make; what private credit strategies they are invested in; and if they invest in art, cars, watches or digital currencies.
Offices with at least $100 million in assets under management are eligible, and if accepted, there is no cost to be a member.
“The interest has been phenomenal and we reached the quota within hours of launch,” Mr. Family Office wrote in another newsletter Friday afternoon.
Many social media accounts with unknown owners and posters become popular because their anonymity is freeing. They can share information, opinions, and memes without consequences.
An early example was GSElevator, a Twitter account started in 2011 that appeared to reveal uncensored comments overheard at Goldman Sachs and insider perspectives. Today, anon profiles of this genre are prominent. On X, there’s Wealth Management Guy, Pvtcreditguy, High Yield Harry, Arfur Rock, StripMallGuy and Car Dealership Guy, just to name a handful of finance-focused and -adjacent ones. Accounts like them exist for every industry (Estée Laundry recently returned to Instagram after a two-year hiatus).
Leveraging a social media following to earn money has become a natural progression for millions of people today, including those with anonymous accounts.
Last year, Litquidity was posting sometimes bawdy memes for 800,000 followers on Instagram when its owner, Hank Medina, shared his identity with the Financial Times ahead of an impending Business Insider story that he said would dox him. But well before his unmasking, Medina, a former investment banker and private-equity investor, was already working on Liquidity full-time and had turned it into a profitable portfolio of businesses and investments, he told the FT. Through Litquidity, he’s now angel investing, scouting on behalf of Bain Capital Ventures, and “co-investing alongside tier 1 VCs,” while also running a recruiting business and selling merchandise.
Medina’s anonymity didn’t prevent him from monetizing his following, and revealing his identity doesn’t appear to have harmed that effort.
For Mr. Family Office, who has more than 50,000 followers on X and over 4,000 on LinkedIn, the progression from social media experiment, to newsletters and then launching an investment community, is a natural evolution.
Modus agreed that Mr. Family Office could remain anonymous, allowing him to speak more freely about the investor community and brand. His identity is known to Modus.
Mr. Family Office has worked in a family business and office for over 20 years. The office is aware of his endeavors, but for the sake of their privacy, he wants to remain an enigma to the public. A small group of colleagues, as well as other family offices and professionals, know who he is. This also allows him to “speak more candidly about the family-office world” online.
The anonymity might cause some offices to pause before applying to a new investment community. But if they don’t already know Mr. Family Office, the secret is shared when they become a member.
Other investment groups, such as SFO Alliance and 3i, have worked to professionalize club deals for family offices by being transparent about their owners, operators, and deal sourcing and due diligence processes. Mr. Family Office said he’s familiar with and admires those organizations and plans to do the same.
“We will be fully transparent about the source of the deals, and in the future, if sponsorship is involved,” he said. “The value of the offering to the community will be in the deals themselves rather than the administration or ownership of the community.”
Investor communities also tout their scale in terms of members and the investing itself. The Mr. Family Office group was initially limited to 50 offices because it’s a pilot project.
“We want to start small to gauge interest, understand how members engage, and assess the quality of the deals we can present to the community…so a small controlled start with a focus on the needs of the members is the right way to kick things off,” he said. If the pilot goes well, the plan is to expand the group in the future. That could mean partnering with existing investment networks, with which Mr. Family Office is already in talks.
There are different ways to make money facilitating club deals. What Mr. Family Office will do hasn’t been determined yet. Eventually, sponsors might have to pay to include deals in newsletters or to pitch them in calls. “An alternative model is used by 3i, who run a fantastic investor community based on paid membership. We don’t expect our deal volume to be anywhere near what 3i provides, so it would not be an appropriate model for us,” he said.
Mr. Family Office says the brand is not under any pressure to grow or monetize. There are two core contributors, and 10 other people who write and share ideas, as well as some additional administrative and marketing support. All the contributors have full-time jobs, and it hasn’t raised any capital. “We are enjoying the organic growth and the ability to focus on our members without external pressure for monetization,” he said.
The company generates revenue from advertising and partnerships, which mostly covers its operating costs.
Like other media brands, there might come a day when some or all the contributors quit their day jobs and are employed by the brand.
“In the future, there is undoubtedly an opportunity to build out a profitable business, but for the moment, the greatest benefit is coming from new connections and new friends in the family office world,” Mr. Family Office said.
He added: “One of our mantras is lead with value. If you deliver value to your community, opportunities will follow, often in unexpected ways.”
How to vet family office software vendors in the age of AI (free guide)
Nearly every software vendor now claims to be “AI-powered”.
But while most family offices are keen to invest in AI, they’re struggling to apply it in their own operations (here's why).
And how do you separate marketing and buzzwords from real software of the future?
We’ve created a practical, no-nonsense guide to help you vet high-promise vendors in the AI era.
Happy to continue the talk on LinkedIn.
Ken Gamskjaer
CEO and Co-founder, Aleta
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Other Stuff
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