Making the initial commitment to invest is the easy part, but getting to know each other is the important part. As long as you are a non-retail investor, please reach out, speak to us and get to know us. We would like to do the same in return. Ecosystem control is something we try to maintain at Truenorth. We are seeking the right investor relationships and we aren't in the business of gathering assets (AUM) without a genuine alignment of interests. We would welcome getting to know you first, and then we can assess whether we suit each other as long-term investing partners.

We operate on an invitation-only basis, and refrain from general solicitation. We must know you, or, you must be recommended to us by investors we know. Our qualifying process will entail getting to know you and whether you align with the people we serve, the capital we manage, and the philosophies we practice. We will base our judgments on the value you bring to our ecosystem as opposed to the monetary value of your capital. This is the opposite approach to the industry standard of asset gathering. We want the right people first, not your money. We are happy to initiate dialogue with new like-minded investors, but we can’t promise immediate access to our fund.

Yes, they can. Wealth Managers and Financial Advisors can become clients on behalf of their clients. We have the capabilities to provide business-to-business advice, or to manage their capital in the form of bespoke mandates. We also provide solutions to build unique products that are highly customised to fit a purpose. Not the typical institutional offerings. We aren't in the business of selling products, but we do build specialised offerings for managers and advisors based on our underlying strategies. We see ourselves as the 'designers', 'builders' and 'engineers' all rolled into one, not the marketing department to sell the product.

Anyone who is a long-term orientated thinker will naturally align with Truenorth. Family Offices tend to fit the profile well, simply because of the time horizons and the entrepreneurial nature of the people who created the wealth in the first place. We will sit at the decision-making table with you to provide counsel on making prudent capital allocation decisions whilst providing insights into removing toxic excess that may be destroying your capital base. With the key decision makers, we see this as a 'partnership-based' approach as opposed to a ‘teacher-pupil’ relationship. Investing doesn’t need to be complex. Complex planning can never substitute better thinking in how a family allocates capital for generations to come. With better thinking, we can negotiate the finer nuances of specific investments as we consider the totality of the investing puzzle. 

We will either advise you on asset allocation or directly manage your capital. This means providing personalised advice beyond your immediate wealth needs into tomorrow. We also pride ourselves in upskilling family members who eventually take 'front office' roles inside their own Family Office. This takes the investment of both time and capital, which makes our solution extremely unique, and it makes us very proud to know our partnership transcends the value we deliver beyond the metrics of performance.

Yes, 'we eat our own cooking' and rely on no external advice except our own. We believe in our value proposition and the processes we've built over time. We are morally and financially inclined to back this up with 'real' capital. To us, this shows 'real' skin in the game. We have seen the results from the way we deploy capital, and we know where our strengths lie in comparison to the wider market. We are very proud that our clients are the beneficiaries of this same advice. Although we do get sold to by the financial services industry, we never outsource the management of our capital to third-party products or solutions we have not built ourselves. We believe in 'implementing' our philosophy in real-time, not just stating it, we believe in the 'real' control of risk, not outsourcing it to a product, and the 'real' control over the levers of our capital. This cannot be sold or outsourced, it can only be built and owned from the ground up.

Besides advising clients and managing their capital, one of our founding missions was to 'Build Confident Investors'. This journey means more to us than simply compounding capital and preserving it, and the same should be true for the owners of capital. It's about sharing knowledge, understanding the nuances of quality investing, and the process of 'how' to become a confident allocator of capital for decades to come. There's a lot to unpack, but there is a power source sitting inside of this confidence for those who are willing to learn and unlearn over time. We think like the investor, and therefore, we avoid the culture behind institutional imperative, so we are acutely aware of what it takes to achieve confidence from the end investor perspective. We've seen this type of confidence ripple through families with the younger generations embracing these principles decades before we ever had the chance to grapple with them. First comes knowledge, then comes understanding and context, and then comes wisdom. Wisdom is the nucleus of confidence. We encourage our partners to collect these pieces of wisdom over time, we believe that confidence doesn't simply appear overnight, it compounds as we internalise concepts and connect the right dots.

If you have questions regarding fees we advise you to speak to us directly, there is no better way to understand our fees. Our fee structures are fair and simple, with no hidden layers. Different offerings deal with the investor in different ways so we reserve the privilege to discuss these matters on a one-to-one basis. In terms of transparency, we serve the interests of the few and not the masses. Therefore, we only discuss these fees with those we know, or when we formally engage a client.

In investing, risk is simply defined as the permanent loss of capital for every share you hold. At Truenorth we frame risk differently to the conventional industry ideas of beta and volatility. Let's face it, most things in life carry some form of risk, especially investing, we can’t avoid it, but not all risk is linear. Investing has real money on the line and naturally, there is an emotional attachment to how we perceive risk. In fact, it tends to be amplified. Perception of risk is subjective, everyone feels differently about it, and this is fine. But the real problem lies in the way investors think. Having a perception of risk based on a false narrative does nothing but increase risk. For example, ‘High-Risk High Reward’ is a false dichotomy that is sold to you. ‘Low-Risk Low Reward’ is also a false dichotomy that is sold to you. There is such a thing as ‘Low Risk High Reward’, and ‘High Risk Low Reward’. Rather than framing ideas of risk, we spend time teaching these concepts to our people to remove fear, so we can encourage more rational thinking in irrational markets. Risk isn’t always what we think it might be, instead, we teach our people to get close to it and make it their friend. So, equities are risky if you don’t respect your capital enough to learn the fundamentals, but it can also be a huge opportunity when ideas begin to click and there is harmony amongst the chaos.

Not quite, it’s a lot more nuanced than that and investors need to look inwards rather than point the finger at a whole market. The old adage of looking 'at the player and not the game’ seems about right in this context. A crucial aspect to consider is the investor's ability to introspect and understand their own role in the investment process. The notion that markets are merely a gamble often stems from a superficial understanding. Quality businesses all over the world have existed for many decades and have compounded huge amounts of value for their customers and shareholders alike. Investors who view market movements as a game of chance may be overlooking the intricacies involved in making well-informed investment decisions, and what it really takes to be successful. This tends to be a comment from an investor ‘who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing’ by judging on time horizons of days and not years, or simply because of bad experiences that have left them with deep investing scars because of ‘their’ decisions. 

If we can presume, for argument's sake, that last year's performance was +30%, but this year's performance is down -25% and you have no answer to why this may be, naturally, fear kicks in, right? Here lies the answer, in many cases investors are basing their perceptions on surface-level observations, such as yearly performance, flashing market numbers or fluctuating charts, rather than thinking of the nuances and dissecting the puzzle of real businesses. But I hear you saying, ‘I don’t have the time, or the know-how, and I don't care about analysis?’ These are all valid points, everyone has a life to lead, but a more intellectually honest response would be to look within ourselves to say that we need some form of understanding of the component parts of the ecosystem before participating, and this is all down to education and the want to learn. Everyone owes it to their wealth, and there is a commercial responsibility for firms to provide this know-how so well-informed decisions can be made. Otherwise, yes, don't invest.

Another source of fragility is outsourcing investment decisions to a manager without a thorough understanding of their strategies or their thinking. With all good intentions, one may feel close to their wealth, but in fact, there is a complete sense of detachment from the investment process if the investor does not understand the person managing their wealth. What does this all mean? It means investors are living purely inside their own five-sensory world as opposed to the deep reality of money management or the paradigm of real businesses and what they are worth. Understanding at least the basic parts of investing is important. It’s definitely gambling for those investors with minimal understanding of the game they are playing. For those who try to understand the nuances of investing see the markets for what they were originally designed for, and the perception is naturally different. We participate in a market where we provide capital to worthy businesses to grow. These are real assets that have the potential to generate cash. We don't focus on the ups and downs over the days, we believe in enterprises and how their earnings have the potential to grow over time. This takes study.

Here’s the irony of this type of thinking, we believe that one person's gambling provides enough liquidity for another person's opportunity. This isn’t a pretty explanation, nor does it sound fair but it’s definitely the reality of the market every single day. Isn’t this why start-ups launch in the first place? It's always seen as a gamble to begin with, but some businesses become multi-billion dollar organisations. Founders see this as a calculated opportunity because they understand the potential of their business. What was once seen as a gamble isn’t anymore. 

It’s all about an honest perspective, not a subjective generalised comment that is made by emotions. We prefer judgments based on understanding not five sensory reactions. This is why we aim to provide education and want to align with our investors first before we even discuss capital or the specifics of investing. We hope this provides a rough answer to your question.

You are right, maybe you don’t need us. Maybe a passive approach fits your personality and lifestyle, it could be a wise choice for you. However, we would like to make a point that passive investing isn't a low-cost low-risk strategy either. We would encourage investors to dissect this notion a little further to be truly informed. There are no 'free lunches' when you invest. The truth is, there is a likelihood we may not be suitable for each other in the first place. If you prefer passive investing it will most likely mean our investing philosophies won't align either. By default, we wouldn’t see investing in the same way from day one, and this will translate to risk for us both. We want to insulate your capital and not frame a solution for you to become our client. Active management of capital and passive investing are two mutually exclusive investment approaches, they aren’t even in competition with one another like the market likes to stipulate. Ultimately, we want to know what we own, and concentrate our holdings for comfort, not to diversify across a few thousand businesses we know nothing about. At Truenorth, this translates to fragility and risk. With these nuances in mind, indexing could be a great fit for you, but it’s not something that would let us sleep easy at night.