The Marriage of Venture Capital and Wealth Management...Inevitable

Good morning everyone.

I took the day off the blog yesterday. I’m in Big Sky Montana with Ellen visiting Max who has a few days off. Max is having a great summer working at Spanish Peaks. Yesterday he and a few members took me out for a round. The course and the surrounding property and mountains are spectacular. My golf… not so much.

Onwards…

Way back in 2005 and 2006 while I was still managing my hedge fund full time (and miserable), I was becoming fascinated with angel investing and venture capital. I was becoming friendly with Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures and about to start Wallstrip (which Fred was my first angel). I thought I saw an opportunity for Union Square to expand their business into founder Wealth Management. Union Square was doing such an incredible job picking winners and backing incredible founders I thought it made sense for them to close the loop on the money that had multiplied so it would not leave the firm. After all, Union Square was in the trust and relationship business and wealth management is the ultimate long term, highly profitable, trust and relationship business. Fred was just not interested in being in the wealth management part of the business and did not care that Goldman Sachs et all would swoop in to manage the money of the teams they backed once successful.

This week, A16z hired a CIO with the intention of managing the money of the entrepreneurs and companies it backs. Of course, I think this makes sense.

At Social Leverage I have long thought about rolling out wealth management services and imagine that one day soon we will do so. We will be announcing a couple more investments in the wealth management and RIA space very soon. If you think about it, the ultimate growth business to be in after 12 years of global easing and money printing is wealth management.

I can’t give away all our secrets and strategies but stay tuned.