Ep 2 – Infrastructure, Secondaries & Saying No to FOMO Deals

Episode 2 of Inside the Family Office: Live Investor Panel

Real family office practitioners and allocators share how they structure deals, protect families, and think about wealth: Isaac, a former Morgan Stanley advisor who now runs a multi-family office and investment bank in L.A., walks through how his team allocates across public and private markets. He explains why secondaries and “cleaning up cap tables” are attractive right now, how he thinks about SPVs and fee layers, and why infrastructure and process matter more than chasing the latest hot sector. Isaac also pushes back on “country-club investing” and urges families to only back deals that truly fit their objectives, liquidity, and decision-making capacity. Dr. Cook reinforces the critical – and often neglected – role of back-office infrastructure in family office success.


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Transcript

Welcome back to Inside the Family Office, live investor panel. In episode two,
infrastructure, secondaries, and saying no to FOMO deals, Dr. Cook is interviewing
Isaac and multifamily office CIO and investment banker based here in Los Angeles.
You're going to hear how his team allocates across public and private markets, why
they're leaning into secondary opportunities right here, right now and how they help
families avoid chasing the latest hot trends just because it's in Bloomberg or being
talked about at the country club. And most importantly, Isaac explains why
infrastructure and decision -making process matter more than any single deal itself.
Isaac, please tell us all about you and what you're interested in and doing.
Beautiful. Thanks for having me. Hi, guys. I'm Isaac. I run a multi -family office
here in LA. Great to be here again. Usually Richard has me fly across the country,
so it's nice to sit in traffic in the 405 and travel the same amount of time as
it would to fly to Florida. But great to be here. So we run an MFO.
I spent a majority of my career at Morgan Stanley. Left a few years ago to start
And on the private side, we're agnostic. So tech, venture, private equity,
growth equity, real assets, infrastructure. What I think is interesting lately is
secondaries for our clients. I think especially when it comes to liquidity or lack
thereof, specifically when it comes to companies staying private longer when it comes
to the capital markets, IPOs and exits. I think vintages in 14,
15, 16 did very well. I think folks in 21 got caught, unfortunately, and so we
like cleaning up cap tables. And so for our clients, it's very attractive entry
points, really good companies, and being able to run diligence on just the future of
just our economy and our country. And so for us,
a myriad of structures, so Obviously, SPVs has been interesting structure lately,
although you have to be careful. I was talking to some of my colleagues. I'm seeing
two, three, four, five, six layer SPVs. You have to be very careful, but the point
is - Careful the fee layers. Definitely. I think being able to, but again, attractive
entry point, really good companies, and just being able to play the liquidity game
for folks who want to get out. And of course on your side as a buyer, our clients
have found tons of potential in that. I'll say to one of the later questions in
terms of advice and things we always look for and tell our clients, I never like
when people do things just because it sounds nice, right? We invests in sports
teams, I think sports teams are great, but not everybody needs to be
owner you know it has to make sense you have to find a good sponsor a good
manager and it has to make sense with your situation same with life science tech
don't invest in AI just because you see it on Bloomberg every day it has to make
sense in your particular portfolio and so I just see unfortunately family offices and
investors do things because their country club buddy did it and that's just an
atrocious way to invest and so I just think having it makes sense for yourself and
your family is something we always preach. And I think people should make a note
of. Lastly,
to that point, infrastructure, I think it's very important. I think being able to,
and you touched on it, to your last question, being able to make effective decisions
at a moment's notice is really hard to do. Your liquidity, what I say classes, your
exposure at any given point in time, who's making the decisions. When you get in,
when you get out, when to say yes to an opportunity, do you invest in an SPV, a
fund of funds, a fund, do you pay to $120, do you negotiate a co -investment? I
mean, these are questions that you have to be able to answer quickly. And, you
know, how do you come to a yes when you make a decision to a potential investment?
I came from the wire house where they made the biggest funds in the world wait
four years to say yes to a fund and family officers say yes at the end of a Zoom
call you know I mean that's you don't have to be Goldman but you have to take
your time and have a process and and try to find a level of infrastructure for
your family to make decisions so anyways I think those are great points things that
I'd like to really highlight here are the importance of infrastructure and having
worked for MFOs and SFOs outside of my own family as well as my own SFO.
I'd say the back, and being an accountant, the back office is often grossly
overlooked and in some cases underfunded. And so if you're able to tap into an MFO
platform where you're able to partner with other SFOs that help provide that
infrastructure, don't don't underspend on these things. They really provide the ability
to pivot, to close on deals. And Isaac's right, you need bespoke advice,
you need to take time to make thoughtful decisions. So great insights there.
This wraps up episode two of inside the family office live investor panel.
Infrastructure, secondaries, and saying no to FOMO deals. Now, Isaac showed us how a
disciplined family office builds the backend systems, liquidity plan, and governance
required to say yes or no to deals in minutes, not months. If this episode speaks
ideas for your own investment process, follow the show. Send this to your CFO or
CIO and join us in Episode 3, where we go deep on tax -free compounding with self
-directed IRAs and Roths.