Genesis: The founding letter

Most of what's written about alternatives is written by people trying to raise capital from you. Fund managers with quarterly letters that double as marketing. Consultants packaging consensus as insight. Media outlets chasing clicks with headlines that make your LPs nervous.

I wanted something different. Something written from the chair I actually sit in — the LP seat. No fund to sell. No capital to raise. No narrative to push. Just one allocator writing to another about what's actually happening in the market.

I've allocated through two full cycles now. I've backed managers who returned capital and managers who didn't. I've sat through pitch meetings where the deck said one thing and the data room said another. I've watched consensus trades get crowded and contrarian bets get lonely. That experience doesn't make me right about everything. It makes me honest about what I don't know.

This newsletter exists because nothing else speaks to family office principals in their own language about the questions that actually keep us up at night. Not "what's happening in PE" but "what does this mean for our next commitment." Not "here's a market update" but "here's what changed and why it matters for how you allocate."

You manage somewhere between $250M and $5B. You're already deep in alternatives — PE, private credit, real assets. You've moved past the introductory conversations. You know what a J-curve looks like. You know what carry really costs. You don't need anyone to explain DPI to you.

You're the kind of allocator who reads widely but finds that most of what's published is either too shallow or written by someone with something to sell. You want to know what other serious allocators are seeing. What's working. What's quietly breaking. Which managers are earning their fees and which are coasting on vintage luck.

You read this because your time is valuable and the signal-to-noise ratio everywhere else is getting worse. This is meant to be the one thing worth reading on a Sunday morning.

You forward good issues to one other person you respect. That's the only metric I care about.

Every Sunday morning, around 1,000 words. A focused read with your coffee.

Each issue covers what actually moved during the week — not everything that happened, but the few things that matter for how you think about your portfolio. Where capital is flowing and why. What managers are saying in private versus what they're putting in decks. The metrics that shifted. The patterns forming before they have a name.

I try to connect dots that don't get connected elsewhere. The kind of observations that come from sitting in the LP seat and paying close attention. Some weeks the signal is loud. Some weeks the most honest thing I can say is that nothing changed. Both are worth knowing.

This is not a market recap. Bloomberg does that better. This is not a sector-specific newsletter. There are good ones for every niche. This is not a fund marketing vehicle. There is nothing for sale here. This is not written for people learning about alternatives.

This is the weekly allocation brief written by a peer who read everything so you don't have to.

I will never use the word "exciting" to describe a fund close. I will never call something "unprecedented" when it's happened twice before. I will never write a sentence that exists only to fill space. If it's a quiet week, I'll tell you it's a quiet week. That honesty is the whole point.

I intend to keep improving this. The format will evolve. The sourcing will deepen. The network of allocators who contribute perspectives will grow. But the principles won't change: independent, unsponsored, from the LP seat. Always.

If you come across something worth reading, send it my way. A publication. A perspective. A corner of the market I'm not covering well enough. Some of the best leads I've had came from a reader's two-line email.

Thank you for being here from the beginning. Or thank you for finding your way here, wherever in the archive you're reading this. This letter will always be here as a reminder of what this publication is about and who it's for.

I'm glad you're reading. Let's get to work.