Meticulous. Venerable. Influential.
These are just a few of the words that those who know Ian Gragtmans and Min Suh say have characterized the founders of Steady Capital on their multi-decade commercial real estate (CRE) odyssey. With a comprehensive depth of knowledge in the North American industrial, multi-family, land assembly, value-add, and redevelopment real estate markets, Ian and Min (founders) understand the complexities they involve and how to execute the strategies critical to creating very healthy returns for their investors.
Their strategic foresight and meticulous execution, especially evident in industrial and multi-family projects, have created a consistent track record of positive outcomes on capital invested, including avoiding the impacts of the recent interest hikes and the ramifications that followed.
A Visionary Approach: The Genesis of Steady Capital
Steady Capital is at the heart of their vision and drive; a venture designed to harness the dynamic shifts in CRE and uncover generational investment opportunities. They launched Steady Capital amidst seismic changes in interest rates and market conditions, positioning it as an agile entity, free from legacy constraints and with the agility and speed to capitalize on U.S.-based institutional-class real estate strategies.
At the core of Steady Capital lies a meticulous examination of real estate dynamics. This analysis carefully scrutinizes macroeconomic environments, business cycle directions, and local market conditions in ways that clarify and accelerate the ability to identify and act on investment opportunities.
A Strategic Partnership: The Family Office List
The founders have always understood the vital role that strategic partnerships play when it comes to their robust deal flow and achieving superior risk-adjusted returns. Their strategic utilization of the Family Office List (FOL) platform uniquely positioned Steady Capital to forge substantive partnerships with intelligent investors, including co-general partners (Co-GPs) sourced through FOL.
By leveraging the platform’s aggregation of like-minded investor information, Steady Capital optimizes its capital stack with partners who share a keen insight and solid moral grounding in investment practices, ultimately strengthening its position in the market.
A Forward-Thinking Venture: Projects That Matter
Yet another distinctive aspect of Steady Capital is the spearheading of projects that are ambitious and reflect its strategic market positioning. In Miami, Florida, Steady Capital is invested in a significant multifamily development adjacent to the Jackson Health District, which will deliver 380 units catering to the burgeoning demand in one of the nation’s largest health districts.
In Columbia, South Carolina, a new venture aims to build upwards of 385 multifamily units, capitalizing on the regional economic boom fueled by multinational investments in the region, such as that of Volkswagen Group Projects like these, as well as in-the-works ventures in New York City and Texas that include a mix of commercial and residential properties, highlight Steady Capital’s proactive approach to investing in high-growth areas.
A Distinctive Perspective: Seeing Challenge as Opportunity
While some would approach the recent volatility in the capital landscape with hesitance and apprehension, Steady Capital sees the challenges as a breeding ground for massive opportunities. Moving forward by embracing the turmoil, Steady Capital is capitalizing on the current and massive transfer of wealth from weakened hands to those of strength and resilience.
By utilizing selective investment approaches focusing on high-potential properties in strategically identified locations, Steady Capital can maximize its returns while minimizing risk. This approach, coupled with the anticipation of a continuing wealth transfer represents generational opportunities to skilled investors and delineates a bright trajectory for the future when it comes to navigating market uncertainties.
A Confident Future: There’s No Substitute for Experience
When it comes to navigating markets through adversity, experience is paramount. Decades of experience dating back to the early ’90s provide the necessary guidance and execution prowess to take advantage of market uncertainties.
Perseverance, integrity, and relationship-building form the ethos at Steady Capital and stand at the core of its strategies, enabling it to adeptly navigate the cycles of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that hinder others. This uniquely positions the founders to explore the burgeoning opportunities with a clean slate unburdened by past investments and a sharp eye on the horizon.
Insightful Leadership: The Essence of Innovation and Resilience
Steady Capital’s activity and investments in the CRE market epitomize the essence of strategic innovation and resilience and provide insightful leadership grounded in decades of experience. A forward-looking vision has positioned Steady Capital as a pivotal player that’s poised for continued growth and success.
As the firm actively seeks out intelligent investors to join its prosperity and commitment to navigating the complexities of the market with agility and integrity, Ian and Min are there to guide and will continue to be regarded as a beacon of stability and potential in the fluctuating real estate landscape.
With a three-pronged approach focused on real estate, agriculture, and Africa’s booming tech sector, Verdant Frontiers works to create sustainable, life-changing jobs while generating compelling investment returns.
Verdant Frontiers recently turned to Family Office List to help expand its fundraising base and improve fundraising efficiency.
Successful Outcomes
- Improving fundraising efficiency by allowing Verdant to target investors who have expressed interest in its offerings
- Establishing stronger and more significant partner relationships to expand Verdant’s reach to family offices
“We have investment opportunities where investors don’t have to choose between making a life-changing impact and getting financial returns. A lot of people see those as mutually exclusive … we think that the best investments in the best businesses are both.”
Scott Friesen, Founder and CEO of Verdant Frontiers
The Client: Verdant Frontiers
Verdant Frontiers aims to become the Berkshire Hathaway of Africa, with three areas of focus: real estate, agriculture, and technology
Verdant Frontiers began its work in Africa after the U.S. Embassy identified a pressing need for high-security African housing from both a seismic and a safety perspective. Within just a few years, Verdant Frontiers filled this gap by developing a 90-unit compound in Kenya and a 112-unit compound in Ethiopia.
Verdant Frontiers also has acquired two 1000+ acre citrus and avocado farms with a goal of building a portfolio of commercial farms in Africa growing citrus, avocado, and nuts. Over the next decade, Verdant Frontiers hopes to create 30,000 orchard jobs and grow this portfolio to a $1 billion value.
Finally, Verdant Frontiers has deployed a three-prong approach to participate in Africa’s expanding FinTech industry.
- Operating a FinTech venture capital fund
- Operating a startup studio to develop technology to fill gaps in the market
- Acquiring a financial institution to create a middle-class mortgage market
This multifaceted model allows Verdant Frontiers to fully immerse itself in the African industry, creating jobs and generating value for investors.
The Challenge: Improving Efficiency While Continuing Expansion
After raising more than $140 million from investors, Verdant Frontiers found its fundraising and outreach processes were becoming more time-consuming.
And with the increased public interest in social impact investing, Verdant Frontiers knew that to move to the next level, it needed to streamline.
This meant targeting family offices instead of just individual investors to provide a broader distribution of opportunities and create new partner relationships.
The Solution: Joining the Family Office Ecosystem
Family Office List quickly connected Verdant Frontiers to other service partners that were already part of the Family Office List “ecosystem.” With one partner company regularly pitching to family offices, and another specializing in family office digital marketing, these connections have already laid the groundwork for tangible rewards.
One unique benefit Verdant Frontiers quickly realized was that Family Office List’s data allowed the company to shift from “cold pitching” to marketing its unique investments to those who have expressed interest.
According to Scott Friesen, Co-Founder at Verdant Frontiers, “the prospecting comes through our network of relationships, but you just never know, what’s a good fit? Who is interested in investing in Africa? And so, being able to filter the list [of family offices] and have people that have a stated interest in investing in a particular region is really helpful.”
Verdant Frontiers also appreciated getting a detailed list of contacts within each family office. Not only did Family Office List provide Verdant Frontiers with basic office demographics like assets under management and focus areas, but it also allowed the company to review family office contacts to see whether any existing connection points were available. This information helped Verdant Frontiers create relationships with these offices more organically—a good starting point for a long-lasting partnership.
While Verdant Frontiers partnered with Family Office List only recently, its founders remain confident that the relationships they’re building now will help them push their innovative company into the next frontier of social impact investing.
In Summary
Verdant Frontiers reached out to Family Office List with a unique problem—it had raised capital from so many individual investors that its outreach process was becoming less and less efficient. By working with Family Office List, Verdant Frontiers was able to target more family offices and target family offices that have a specific interest in the investments that Verdant Frontiers offers. This strategy will likely allow the company to raise more capital without pitching to more clients.
If you’d like to learn more about Family Office List and how your company can benefit from its well-researched client lists, please contact us today. Our services are uniquely tailored to each partner’s needs, and we’ll work with you to identify your goals and help you achieve them.
Worth Avenue Yachts is a premier yacht brokerage firm that goes beyond selling and listing boats.
“One of the other things that we do as yacht brokers is that we act as consultants,” explains William Baldwin, broker.
In addition to managing luxury yacht listings, the company also facilitates charters and new yacht construction.
“We also advise comps and other market analyses to price yachts correctly and make informed consultations. This helps us coordinate surveys, sales agreements, and closing documents.”
With yacht prices starting in the low seven figures, these luxury seacrafts require an incredibly targeted strategy that demands heavy networking among high-wealth individuals. Baldwin quickly discovered that he needed a faster, more efficient method for identifying prospects across the country.
Below, we discuss how Family Office List stepped in to help Baldwin identify and build the connections he needed.
Positive Outcomes
- Worth Avenue Yachts secured a number of listings using Family Office Data
- Family Office List helped Worth Avenue Yachts streamline its outreach by providing quick and immediate access to a broader network of high net worth individuals
- When contacting family offices, Worth Avenue Yachts was able to craft a personal and more effective outreach with data from Family Office Lists
- Family Office List enabled Worth Avenue Yachts to better leverage their internal marketing data to identify active Yacht Club members within the Family Office community to better contextualize new relationships
“The contacts I made through Family Office List by far paid off more than contacts I made through cold calls.”
William Baldwin
The Challenge: Identifying Prospective Customers
The yacht brokerage business, just like any other ultra-high-end real estate brokerage, is all about your contacts.
When a family office wants to purchase or charter a yacht, it’s not by browsing the internet—it’s by leaning on its connections and talking to trusted peers to find the right vendor.
Knowing that personal connections were key to these yacht transactions, Baldwin felt his cold calling and generic research weren’t enough.
He had difficulty gauging potential customers’ interest before reaching out, wasting time and energy. And when he did reach out, he couldn’t access the right information to make a key personal connection.
Furthermore, because family offices tend to keep low profiles, Baldwin found himself reaching out on less formal channels, like social media, which he says isn’t necessarily where his target audience typically conducts business.
The Solution: Immediate Access to Family Office Lists
Clients like Baldwin and others in the luxury service market have found Family Office List’s contact lists incredibly valuable.
Baldwin was able to start his research with a quick search in the database for the term “yacht,” bringing up family offices with an interest in boating.
“There are a lot of fund managers and members of family offices that are very interested and yachting,” said Baldwin.
The platform’s search capability eliminated the need for the “spray and pray” approach that static and less detailed lists encourage. No one enjoys putting others on the defense from irrelevant cold calling, so the invaluable data of these family offices’ interests made outreach better received.
With family offices readily providing referrals to each other, Family Office List’s contact lists allowed Baldwin to make personal connections quickly and significantly expand his universe of potential clients and customers.
More specifically, our family office data can be filtered by assets under management, allowing Baldwin to target only those with sufficient levels of wealth to support a yacht purchase or charter.
Generally, $100 million is the baseline AUM threshold for single-family offices, while multifamily offices may manage several families’ assets to allow them to reach that $100 million threshold. By focusing on those family offices at the top of the AUM list, Baldwin can ensure that his marketing efforts are landing at their intended targets, freeing up his time to focus on relationship-building instead of scattershot messaging.
The Result: A Fast-Growing Network of Clients
“You’d think that I’d only find potential clients in New York or Newport, but I made a great connection in Chicago and the Midwest through Family Office List,” said Baldwin.
Once Baldwin combined the family office data provided by Family Office List with his own marketing data, he discovered something interesting—at least a dozen of his new family office connections were also yacht club members. This revelation allowed him to deepen and better contextualize these relationships, as well as target a new industry segment.
Another interesting—and unexpected—discovery was the multiple levels of connection that could be built among each family office.
Baldwin found that Worth Avenue’s yachts appeal to members of a family office themselves, but they can also be attractive to family offices’ fund managers and money managers, some of whom can afford yachts in their own right. In other words, even if a particular family office isn’t currently in the market for a yacht, it may know or be affiliated with someone who is.
All in all, Family Office List’s client services have helped Baldwin increase the speed and efficiency with which he builds relationships with his target customer base.
If you’d like to learn more about Family Office List and the benefits you can realize from working with family offices for yacht sales and brokerage, contact us today. Our well-researched and up-to-date client list will provide you with a major advantage over the competition.
LivBrook Capital is an apartment multifamily investment company that focuses on delivering value to investors by elevating communities across the Sunbelt States.
We sat down with Matt Wilson, Founder, and David Harrison, Managing Partner, to discuss how Family Office List has helped them expand their network, bringing them closer to achieving their fundraising goals.
Positive Outcomes
- Family Office List helped LivBrook connect with family offices in North America, creating targeted lists of exactly the type of family office that might be interested in what LivBrook has to offer.
- In contacting those offices, LivBrook learned more about perfecting their approach, ensuring that they have an offering memorandum and an active investment that needs funding.
- LivBrook’s community-focused strategy makes them an attractive option for many family offices, something they’re poised to capitalize on in the near future.
“[With Family Office List,] you don’t have to really do a lot of research to connect with family offices. We have their email or LinkedIn or name or address or phone number, what their goals are. So I mean, that takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of the way.”
David Harrison, Partner
LivBrook: An Apartment Investment Company Focused on Profit through Positive Community Engagement
LivBrook acquires properties with a focus on improving and learning from the local community. Their target market spans across the Sun Belt to Florida.
“There’s a high correlation between providing a resident focused community and retention rates. This symbiotic relationship is what drives Livbrook’s investment strategy’s and creates socially minded return profile for investors,” says Wilson.
In this vein, LivBrook has a social focus that aligns with many family offices’ core values.
While great returns are always an important piece of the puzzle, many investors are beginning to emphasize those investments’ social and environmental impact.
LivBrook hopes to lift communities and people through profitable, value-add investing, creating a positive feedback loop.
“We’re not just income-driven, and we’re not just return-based, just like family offices. Family offices have ethical concerns just like us. We want to do business with good people for good reasons,” says Harrison.
The Opportunity: Expand Their Network To Go Beyond Mid-Level Investments
LivBrook wanted access to family office contact lists in order to build more capital so that they could focus on bigger investments. That’s why they initially partnered with Family Office List: to focus on capital outreach.
“We previously worked with private high net worth individuals and institutional partners. We hadn’t really tapped into the family office space prior. Family Office List allowed for us to expand our capital network.” says Harrison.
With this goal in mind, LivBrook set out to find family offices interested in real estate.
They found that Family Office List’s filter feature helped them narrow in on exactly what they were looking for – and it even helped them gather personal information to craft a perfect pitch.
“I really like that you get information on what they do, what they focus on, and what their philanthropy goals are. And then when they’re not working, how they like to spend their free time, if they like to ski or if they like to sail or hike. It’s nice to be able to have that connection instead of going in blind,” says Harrison.
Danielle, the Director of Family Office List, even helped them narrow down their list to only include family offices interested in investing in real estate, personalizing the data just for them.
The Result: From Perfecting their Pitch & Outreach
LivBrook is using Family Office List to help fund current projects. As they started talking to family offices, they realized something: In addition to general networking, they also needed to be able to offer the offices a current investment.
“What a lot of them seem to have said is, ‘What do you have for me now?” says Harrison.
In addition to using lists to build long-term relationships, LivBrook also used lists to find immediate family office funding from offices ready to invest. LivBrook has the capabilities to quickly drill down and target family offices that match in terms of industry or interest
Family Office List helped them get their foot in the door, and they’ve built on the momentum from that initial introduction.
All in all, Family Office List is helping LivBrook find more potential investors. Now that the relationships have been established and the trust is there, raising capital when an active opportunity presents itself will be much easier.
The future value of these relationships is that family offices offer patient capital and reinvest with those they trust. They will be great assets in executing LivBrook’s plan to acquire more properties and build better communities.
If you are a family office and you are currently interested in investing with LivBrook – or you’d like to be contacted about other similar opportunities for assets that fit your portfolio, feel free to reach out to us.
Cody Shannon is the Founder and Managing Partner of Cody James Capital, a business he launched in July 2021 to educate family offices, high net worth individuals, and other institutional-level investors on how they can safely add cryptocurrency to their portfolios.
We had the opportunity to talk to Shannon about how Family Office List has helped him accelerate targeted lead generation and fundraising efforts. This article will show how his business has benefitted from an ongoing subscription to Family Office List.
Positive Outcomes
- Shannon used the North American Family Office database to build a resource-efficient strategy for pitching to Family Office prospects.
- Cody James Capital adopted a targeted outreach approach, making it easier to identify family offices interested in investing in digital assets.
- By focusing his energy on well-suited prospects, Shannon eliminated the frustration of wasted time for himself and the involved Family Offices.
- Family Office List helped Shannon land more meetings, outreach email responses, and calls.
“It’s really challenging to find good data all in one space. Family Office List definitely saves me time.”
Cody Shannon, Founder and Managing Partner of Cody James Capital
The Opportunity: Cryptocurrency Management and Education
Cody Shannon hails from a traditional background in finance, having started his career in wealth management with a prominent investment firm.
Given the popularity boom in digital assets over the past few years, Shannon noticed many family offices and high net-worth investors were starting to receive crypto mandates. Meaning they had a certain amount of cryptocurrency that they needed to add to their balance sheets.
However, many family offices and high net worth individuals lack reliable, trustworthy educational resources to invest in these assets.
The crypto space is still new, and dangers abound. Whether it’s getting hacked, losing a digital wallet, or getting scammed, it can be a complex world to navigate for investors used to more traditional assets.
Shannon set out to bridge that divide by combining his experience in traditional finance and his passion for cryptocurrency.
Starting a boutique firm from scratch, as Shannon did, takes courage. This passion is exactly what excites many Family Offices.
Family offices like to look for opportunities where their own expertise and capital can fuel future growth. The challenge for entrepreneurs like Shannon is making those connections with high-net-worth investors.
The Challenge: Making Quality Connections with Family Offices
Shannon recognized a need among investors for high-quality guidance on cryptocurrency.
However, he had difficulty finding and connecting with those investors.
“Some family offices might only focus on real estate, some only might be focus on hedge funds. So, in general, this space is really hard to break into.”
Like many clients looking to break into the Family Office sector, Shannon used LinkedIn and Google without much success.
“I was wasting time trying to research individuals,” he said, leading to a lack of solid leads.
“A lot of family offices and high net worth individuals can be secretive; they don’t want to be found,” adds Shannon.
In order to build a reputable client base, Shannon needed access to investors.
But more than access, he needed powerful filtering capabilities to pinpoint family office funding sources and investors interested and open to digital currency opportunities.
The Result: Organized Outreach and Personalized Pitches
“Prior to having access to Family Office List,” Shannon recalls, “what I would do is kind of like a shot in the dark to find family offices and then identify decision-makers. Family Office List really keeps you organized and reduces the amount of research time for each family office.”
Shannon found higher-quality connections thanks to his access to a large database of reliable information — information that profiles each family office based on their specific investment preferences.
“The main list feature that I use would be the ability to save filtered segments,” says Shannon.
“For example, I can create a list of single family offices in New York that are only interested in hedge funds. That’s a pretty specific list. I can also star favorite firms and create notes for each contact to stay organized.”
Another worry when reaching out to potential investors is a lack of legitimacy and personalization. When you don’t know much about a family office beyond what you can piece together from a couple of LinkedIn profiles, it can be difficult to come up with a pitch that doesn’t sound generic.
In that vein, Cody Shannon says that Family Office List helped “make Cody James Capital look more professional.”
“I’m reaching out to a specific family office because I know who I’m looking for, and what the investment criteria is for that family office.”
Being prepared before reaching out to investors is step one. You must first understand the world in which each Family Office is coming from so that you can address relevant pain points and lead with a value-add strategy. That is how Shannon and others have successfully leveraged the Family Office database.
“I’ve definitely seen an increase in the number of meetings and responses to emails and calls,” he adds.
In Summary
Behind each family office, there are real people hungry for well-suited deals. Like any other industry, family offices want access to people and opportunities they can understand and trust.
An ongoing subscription to Family Office List can help you start the conversation by equipping you with reliable, accurate data and well-crafted guides to help you share your story and align with potential investors.
With these powerful prospecting features in hand, like Cody James Capital, your business can forge our database to build more meaningful relationships.
If you are currently working on any initiatives for which you would like to engage Family Office investors, access to our meticulously maintained family office data will accelerate your outreach.
Family Office List offers different features to help users organize the data so that it fits their goals, just as Shannon was able to leverage those resources in ways unique to him.
If you’d like help selecting the best Family Office prospects for your business, contact us. We’re here to listen to your objectives and customize a solution.
London-based Conrad Family Office is one of our valued family offices with a robust international presence. Recently, Conrad Family Office began a real estate lending initiative in Guernsey, one of the islands on the English Channel near the coast of France. We caught up with John Clifford, Managing Director of Conrad Family Office, on how Family Office List is helping the firm achieve positive outcomes in its Real Estate lending plans.
Positive Outcomes
- Family Office List helped Conrad Family Office make valuable introductions both within the United States as well as the United Kingdom.
- These initial introductions have subsequently led to second- and third-degree connections that are helping to accelerate interest in the Guernsey lending initiative.
- Family Office List’s relationship-driven approach has yielded a compounding effect on the growth of the Guernsey lending network.
“Of all the Family Office list businesses we have been involved with, [Family Office List] is by far the best that we have dealt with”
John Clifford, Managing Director of Conrad Family Office
Conrad Family Office: Decades of Experience Spanning the Globe
Conrad Family Office has decades of experience in the Family Office space.
Headquartered in London, Conrad Family Office has long maintained a vast network of senior-level London connections. As a result, Conrad Family Office’s reach spans both domestic and international clientele.
Clifford emphasizes the reciprocal approach Conrad Family Office takes in its practice. For each initiative, one of the primary goals is to put together a strategic team of partners with complementary skill sets to achieve the best result for that initiative. Clifford explained that their Family Office initiative starts with the question, “How can we help you?” And if that initiative is better suited elsewhere, Conrad Family Office still helps by making the best match possible.
The Opportunity: Diving Deeper into the Guernsey Initiative
Conrad Family Office has known for some time that a Real Estate lending initiative, with a Guernsey focus, would present some challenges, as Guernsey’s regulatory environment is more nuanced and somewhat stricter compared to other Real Estate regulatory environments.
In addition to navigating Guernsey’s regulatory environment, Conrad also had to navigate the unfolding changes brought by Brexit as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. Like most initiatives, surprises are to be expected and tackled head-on.
In order to rise to the challenge presented by real estate lending in Guernsey and the accompanying current event caveats, Conrad Family Office knew it would need to put together a strategic team of partners with complementary skill sets.
The Result: Family Office List Helped Increase Networks for the Guernsey Initiative
From the Conrad Family Office point of view, Family Office List was quite different from other firms in a good way. Conrad Family Office views network building & business in general, as a journey rather than a race.
As a Family Office, it continuously receives invitations to Family Office events around the world. Instead of walking away with bags of promotional items and a receipt for a $5,000 event ticket, Conrad Family Office prefers a more human and reciprocal approach.
With Family Office List, Clifford has regular direct communication with Danielle Patterson, co-founder of Family Office List. Patterson checks in with Clifford frequently to confirm what initiatives Conrad are working on and how she can best assist.
Specifically, Conrad Family Office appreciates the highly personalized approach taken by Family Office List.
“We have different involvement with different parts of the world, whether it’s Washington, Geneva, Monaco, Dubai,” said Clifford. “If we were doing something, Danielle would announce it [to her network] for us — she’s done that in the past. And willingly, I would say. It’s nothing conditional. … It’s been more of a ‘We’d be delighted to do that.’ That’s refreshing.”
Conrad Family Office prefers a more private, bespoke approach to networking rather than one-time, catch-all events. Likewise, Family Office List prefers one-to-one, long-term relationship building based on proven value over time to build its network.
In the case of Conrad’s Guernsey initiative, Family Office List’s personalized, hands-on approach to networking is helping to accelerate the network Conrad Family Office is building for its Real Estate lending business in Guernsey.
“[Danielle] introduced us to a Real Estate and investment business who are quite interesting people, who themselves have introduced us to other people,” said Clifford.
If you are a Family Office and you are currently working on any initiatives for which you would like additional network-building support, feel free to reach out to us.