Family Offices Learn to Play Nice

Katie Kalvoda, who manages money for a small group of ultrawealthy families, was thinking about investing in an urban farm that grows produce vertically in greenhouses. Knowing that early-stage investments in startups can be dicey, Kalvoda found a way to reduce the risk: She joined a group of other money managers in the offices of wealthy families to do the deal. Combining forces gave these family offices the muscle to get a better price, expanded access to research, and provided them with broader expertise to track the investment.

Family offices are trading in some of their traditional secrecy and pooling assets and intel to make venture capital and private equity investments, much as buyout firms do in so-called club deals. “We’re a block of investors working together with more scale,” says Kalvoda, who is chief investment officer at family office Newport Wealth Management. “We don’t have this wall of secrecy that we had at one time.”