Agecroft has changed the model of hedge fund third party marketing,” says Don Steinbrugge, Agecroft Partners Founder and CEO. “Most third-party marketing models are based on leveraging personal relationships and doing extensive entertaining. Ours has been to build a global brand with a reputation as an industry thought leader, strong institutional investment knowledge and representing very high quality managers.”
Agecroft Partners has been a prolific writer of industry thought pieces and white papers. Often asked to share their thoughts with the media on the hedge fund industry, they have also been a regular guest on Bloomberg Television and CNBC and have spoken at more than 100 leading industry conferences.
The firm has also created Gaining the Edge hedge fund conferences which are comprised of panel discussions led by some of the world’s most influential hedge fund investors. The objective is to have candid, robust, conversations and debates about various ways to enhance the risk adjusted return of a diversified hedge fund portfolio. Their first four conferences sold out with over 650 registrations and all profits are donated to charities that benefit children.
In addition, Agecroft recently launched Gaining the Edge-Hedge Fund Webinar series with the goal of helping to educate people within the hedge fund industry. Registration to the webinars will be complimentary although participants will be given the opportunity to make a donation to a charity that benefits children.
Agecroft is highly selective of the firms it represents by utilising an institutional quality due diligence process in manager selection. This begins by leveraging its industry-leading reputation to attract high calibre managers requiring marketing support.
“Ninety-five per cent of hedge funds can be screened pretty quickly. It’s the remaining five per cent that take a lot of time to do deep due diligence,” says Steinbrugge. He mentions that one of their managers was near capacity and will be closing soon to new investors and as a result they are in the process of identifying a new hedge fund to add to their platform.
Once a new manager is added, Agecroft works to add value to its clients by focusing on the following three components:
• Quality of product;
• Quality of message;
• Distribution strategy.
To be successful at raising assets, managers have to have a high quality product that ranks well across each of the selection factors that investors use. In addition, a manager needs a concise linear message that clearly articulates what their differential advantage is across each of those selection factors.
“One of our main objectives is to ensure that the product is strong, and secondly that the marketing message is as strong as possible to enhance investors’ perception of the fund.
“The third component of raising assets is reaching out to a wide selection of investors and setting up qualified meetings. It also requires making sure that we have the right follow-up strategy in place for each prospect. Building momentum in asset growth is vital to successfully raising assets; because raising asset is not linear it is exponential, as the hedge fund’s brand grows in the market place,” says Steinbrugge.
On winning the award again this year, Steinbrugge remarks: “We are honoured to have won this award in eight of the last nine years. Most importantly we are happy that the market place approves of the job we are doing.”
