Boutique Week™: storytelling & fresh perspectives
Every year in May, my firm hosts what we call Havener Capital’s Boutique Week™.
It’s an opportunity for investors to uncover hidden investment talent, niche asset classes, and, above all, fresh and candid perspective on financial markets. This year, 9 niche boutique asset management firms joined me in a series of live calls to discuss topics like value investing, global hedged equity, natural resources/commodities, and more. Thousands of investors attended.
We didn’t go page by page through a pitch book. We didn’t spend hours on performance or numbers. We told stories. Asked questions. Put ourselves in the shoes of investors, talking about solutions to problems we face. Uncovering opportunities, figuring out how to harness them.
We were getting ready for Boutique Week™ when one of the firm’s founders told me he didn’t want to tell his story. This is how the convo went…
Founder: I don't want to tell my story.
Me: Why?
Founder: It was so long ago. No one cares.
Me: Yes they do.
Founder: What should I say?
Me: What happened on your journey, why you left your high profile job to take a crazy entrepreneurial leap and hang your own shingle. Talk about the amazing people who inspired you.
Founder: Talk about my passion for macro as a monetarist who studied under Nobel Prize winning professors at the University of Chicago?
Me: Yes and…
Founder: and my 12 years as the Chief Global Investment Strategist at Merrill Lynch where I advised some of the world's top institutional investors and financial advisors? It was the best job on the planet at the time.
Me: Yes and…
Founder: and my experience meeting and working with Roy Neuberger, an investment legend, who walked to his office every day into his late 90's to do what he loved?
Me: Yes and…
Founder: and how that inspired me to start my own firm, to do what I love, with people I respect, to build something different, to serve like-minded investors and invest my money alongside theirs?
Me: Yeah kinda like that.
Founder: Okay. I'll tell my story.
He told his story. His story mattered and your story matters too.
Hope you’ll join us next year.
