Power of Focus

Below is a quote I used while speaking with an investment fund manager last week that was looking to raise capital, they were doing so by approaching every investor they could possibly speak to.  They were explaining how their firm has so little resources compared to their $1B competitors.

“You can take a $5 disposable camera and take it out of the box, stand 10 feet from a building and take a great picture that will be developed and look good if not great. You could stand in that same position with a $10,000 camera with every gadget, lens, and a tripod and it will not take as good of a picture if you do not do one thing, focus.”
- Brian Tracy

The Point: You can beat your competition with a smaller staff, with less financial resources, and less experience if you just learn to focus. Focus on your top prospect investors, focus on local potential investors, and focus exclusively on the types of investors which are most likely to make allocations to your fund. If you can dial-in on these three areas your hot prospect list, local investors and the right investor mix (family offices, wealth management, pension funds, etc.), than you can really cover a lot of ground quickly.

If you are looking to improve the branding for your hedge fund or setup a new hedge fund I would strongly recommend using Design99.com for the work. Here is how it works.

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You go to Design99.com and start a new contest for $300, you get dozens if not hundreds of logo proposals from designers all over the world. You provide them feedback as they compete with each other for the $300 payment. If you like one of the logos enough after a week you choose them as the winner and that one designer gets paid $300. It is a very inexpensive way to review dozens of ideas and then pay only for what you like.

I am not an affiliate of Design99, I do not get paid in any way for writing this post. I simply have found this such a valuable resource that I believe this will help many hedge fund managers improve their marketing and branding efforts. Hope this helps.

I have been asked 3-4 times in the past quarter about CPOs or Commodity Pool Operator Funds. The CTA / CPO fund industry is over $350B in size and I believe it will grow to over $1 Trillion in assets over the next 7 years. Below is a Wikipedia definition of a commodity pool operator:

“A CPO is an individual or organization which operates or solicits funds for a commodity pool; that is, an enterprise in which funds contributed by a number of persons are combined for the purpose of trading futures contracts or commodity options, or to invest in another commodity pool.” National Futures Association (NFA) definition. The NFA regulates every firm or individual who conducts futures trading business with public customers.

A CPO will generally consist of an entity that accepts funds, securities or property for the purpose of trading commodity futures contracts. The CPO may also make its own trading decisions or more usually it will engage a commodity trading advisor (CTA) to do so on its behalf.

CPOs and CTAs are regulated by US federal government through the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) with additional oversight from the National Futures Association NFA.