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Six months into launching your fund and already feeling like you're making every mistake in the book?

You're in good company. That's exactly how the founder who wrote in is feeling. And honestly, year one can do that to a person.

The chaos is real. The second-guessing is real. The wondering-if-anyone-will-ever-take-you-seriously is very, very real.

In this Story Snack, Stacy Havener tackles the fear that tends to sit underneath all of it:

"I'm too early to be taken seriously."

It's not irrational. It's just not the whole story. And if you believe it too hard for too long, it might be the thing that keeps you invisible when you could be building real conversations.

Listen in to hear:

The year-one myth Stacy calls BS on: “don’t market until you have 3 years of track + $100M–$200M AUM”
Why year one gets derailed more by business decisions than investment decisions (products, partners, hires, marketing choices)
Who you should be talking to early (innovators + early adopters) and why they don’t play by the “come back later” rules

This is Story Snacks, a bite-sized, jam-packed series for fund managers who are ready to master strategic storytelling in under 20 minutes a week

TRANSCRIPT

Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: Craving more knowledge, but don't always have time to sit down for a five-course meal? Take a quick snack break with Story Snacks, bite-sized content to feed your funnel. Each short episode features Stacey digging into one question. This series has her talking stories, sales, and so much more. Oh, yeah.

[00:00:20] It's time for Story Snacks.

[00:00:25] Wouldn't it be cool if you could diversify your investor base and add some non-US investors? Europe could be fun, or Latin America, maybe Antarctica. Hey, icebergs aren't really my jam, but you never know. You've only got one problem. How the heck do you do that? Fair question, but maybe this is a who not how thing.

[00:00:48] Meet my friends at GemCap. Not only do they handle all the back office stuff, the how, they'll also solve the who in your distribution conundrum. They [00:01:00] have an incredible network of distribution partners who can help you sell the thing once you've built the thing. And GemCap won't just help you launch globally, they'll tell you where to go and maybe more importantly, where not to go, saving you time, money, and annoying headaches.

[00:01:17] Want to find out if your investment firm is ready to go global? Visit billiondollarbackstory.com/gemcap, G-E-M-C-A-P. We've created a quick quiz that'll help you figure out if you're ready to expand beyond the US, and side note, it's pretty fun too. Get your firm in front of the right investors in the right places with GemCap.

[00:01:44] Take the quiz and get more info at billiondollarbackstory.com/gemcap, G-E-M-C-A-P.

[00:01:57] Great question came [00:02:00] in to the podcast team, and it's a raw one, my friends. This one's got some, some vulnerability baked into it, and I really appreciate this person sending it in. So let's unpack it in a snack. Uh, "I'm six months into launching my fund, and I feel like I'm making every mistake in the book."

[00:02:21] Hmm. Yeah, I feel seen. Um, "What's the single biggest mistake you see first-time founders make in year one that I need to avoid?" Again, super honest, great question. There are a lot of things that we could talk about here because there are a lot of pitfalls. I don't even wanna say mistakes, but just pitfalls on the journey, especially in the early days of the journey, that can derail you.

[00:02:47] More often than not, and this is actually true any year, not just in year one, more often than not, the things that derail a boutique or an emerging manager [00:03:00] are not investment related at all. They're actually business related. And I think this comes from the idea that we haven't been entrepreneurs before, typically.

[00:03:15] We start a business because we're really good at a craft, and that craft is investing, but we've never been an entrepreneur. Maybe we worked at a big shop and, like, all the stuff, so to speak, was taken care of by loads of other people who knew how to do those things. And now we're sitting in a seat where, like, we did it because we're good at a craft, but we gotta figure out all the other stuff that goes into running a business.

[00:03:42] And I'm not just talking about, like, keeping the lights on and does the printer have paper and that kind of stuff. Like, that's child's play. I'm talking about big decisions on what products to launch, who to partner with, who to hire and when, what target [00:04:00] market to focus on. How are you gonna do your marketing?

[00:04:02] Are you gonna hire an expensive salesperson? Are you gonna get a third-party marketer? Are you gonna do it yourself? It's like, when you really stop to think about all the things and mental load that a founder is carrying, there are a lot of big decisions that can put you on a path that may or may not be the most successful one.

[00:04:23] So I think in general, those business entrepreneur bigger picture decisions typically can derail a fund manager, and that's really at any, in any year. But I wanna talk about something, it's not really a mistake. Again, it's more of a pitfall, but I think it's something I see often in year one, and I want to encourage you not to fall into this.

[00:04:52] And it's that we buy the l- I was gonna say the load of crap. It's not a load of crap, it's just unfortunately not [00:05:00] entirely true. We buy into this idea that you need three years of track and 100 million, 200 million, pick your AUM number, before anyone will take us seriously. So we start our new firm, and guess what we do?

[00:05:16] Nada. We don't market, we don't really, like, tell anyone. We just sort of, like, set up the shop, start punching stuff into our Bloomberg and building our portfolio because we've been told to wait. I disagree with that with a lot of passion, because in my career, I have seen firms raise really good money in year one.

[00:05:43] Really good money. And there's a reason And there, well, there's a couple reasons. The first is, if it's year one and you're being brave and you understand the Rogers adoption curve, and you're targeting innovators and early adopters who like you, by [00:06:00] the way, they don't have those rules that we just talked about.

[00:06:03] That's not how they play. They are happy to have the conversation with you. If we go to them and we tell our story, "I was here, I ran $2 billion, and it was awesome, and it was a great place, but here's what, you know, philosophically, there was a break, and I decided I need to set up my own shop because I wanted to do something different."

[00:06:26] And you explain what that different is. And you have no money except your own, and you got no track record. I don't wanna say that they're buying hope, 'cause they're, they're, they are buying hope a little bit, and that's a little bit of that early stage type of investing, generally speaking. But it's calculated hope.

[00:06:44] They are listening to you and what you're building. They are processing the risk/reward of that. They are determining if they believe not just in your ability as an investor, but in your ability as an entrepreneur. And the fact that you don't have [00:07:00] numbers actually helps. Because let's say you waited to have that conversation, and you waited until you had two years, and the two years are complete shit.

[00:07:13] But maybe it's even like it makes sense because value's been, like, getting smashed and you're a value investor, and so it's just blowing up in your face. But nevertheless, the numbers are shit. Now they have data that they can analyze. They're kinda like, "Oh no, I don't wanna catch a falling knife. This sounds like bad news bears.

[00:07:33] I'm outta here." Whereas if you are really looking for people who believe in you and your philosophy and your process and what you're building, if you get to them when you start, then they become more partners than clients, if that makes sense. And they're ride or... N- I mean, I don't know if they're ride or die, but they're definitely ride with you, right?

[00:07:54] Through some good times and some bad times, and hopefully more good than bad. So I think it's not [00:08:00] the biggest mistake, but the danger is to not market and not get out there and have conversations when you start because somebody told you along the way that you need three years of track and X dollars in your fund, and I'm just here to call BS on that.

[00:08:19] Get out there. Tell your story. Find those early adopters. Tap your founders network. Do not sit and wait. I hope that helps. Let's be real. No one wakes up and says, "I can't wait to build some operational infrastructure today." You're here to manage money, to build something that lights you up, not chase down reports across five systems and 15 service providers.

[00:08:43] That's where Ultimus Fund Solutions comes in. They're your ops dream team, consolidating all your middle and back office chaos into one clean, scalable setup. Registered funds, private funds, SMAs, all [00:09:00] integrated. One team, one tech platform, one rock solid source of data. But here's the real differentiator: service.

[00:09:10] I know that fund in a box sounds convenient. It's also a box. Know what you can't put in a box? A human who picks up the phone when you call and need help, real life people who know your name and your fund, and they care about getting it right. Ultimus was built on people doing business with people. You get institutional strength combined with boutique level service without getting stuck in a phone tree of doom.

[00:09:38] If you're ready to simplify, scale, and start working with a team that feels like an extension of yours, check out billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus. That's U-L-T-I-M-U-S. You've got the investment strategy, the vision, the track record. Now it's time to upgrade the engine behind it all with [00:10:00] Ultimus. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

[00:10:10] The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products, or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate, and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm.

[00:10:30] Managers' appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacy Havener or Havener Capital Partners

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