Entrepreneur, Operator, Investor. 20+ years building businesses across the UK, Europe, China, and emerging markets. Now a Partner at a wealth management firm. Playing RPG Life, sharing what I learn.
Most post-exit founders park their wealth in "balanced" portfolios that feel safe but hide fragility. The barbell approach — combining radical safety with calculated asymmetry — is a better model for wealth that needs to survive decades.
A full in-house family office runs $700k to $1m a year, which makes little sense below $100m. The cheaper route is to buy the same work from a multi-family office or an outsourced CIO, for a fraction of the cost.
Taking money off the table doesn’t mean you’ve stopped believing in your investment. It’s a strategic move that reflects confidence while also securing some gains.
Every founder gets pitched by other founders. Most become angel investors by accident, not design — and most break even at best.
The founder who sold the company can't sit still. Still checking the portfolio, still eyeing the next deal. The job changed the day the company sold, but the instincts didn't, and that gap is where a lot of newly liquid founders lose money.
Around 30,000 Britons left the UAE between February and April. Most can't afford to come home. The April 2025 UK tax reset closed that fallback, and the structural lesson sits underneath the news. It's older than this year's stress test.
Two family-office reports landed this month with the same quiet finding: the offices adopting AI are using it for paperwork, not portfolios.
Family office direct investing more than doubled in 2025 to $12.9bn, with healthcare second only to AI. On Sunday, Citi named — in its own corporate language — which part of the adviser job AI now does. Two reorganisations in the system around founder wealth, happening at once.
In the first 12 months after exit, founders face more consequential financial decisions than they made in years of operating. The quality of those decisions degrades predictably — not because founders get dumber, but because the decision-making environment is fundamentally hostile.
AI is being sold as the operator that wasn't there before. Yale's refreshed search-fund data — out last week — says EBITDA improvement was always the missing piece, and most historical returns came from multiple expansion, not operator skill. The pitch is louder. The math hasn't changed.
Many founders hold investments personally when a holding structure would be more efficient. Options vary dramatically by jurisdiction and personal situation. Making the wrong choice creates unnecessary complexity; not choosing at all often costs money.
BADR jumped to 18%, carried interest to 47%, BPR/APR softened to £2.5m. Three weeks on, the most common excuse for deferring wealth-architecture work is gone. Peer-reviewed research on founder identity arrived alongside, pointing the same way.
