
Breaking through
Getting traction
The problem in the months after launching the fund was that there
was nowhere to hide. After the usual pleasantries, people just kept
asking about our AUM. When we had to answer ‘$3.55 million’ or
more vaguely ‘Just under $5 million’, there would inevitably be a
silent pause, tinged with incredulity.
We tried lame excuses like, ‘We just wanted to start with a small
amount of money from friends and family to get our systems going
before taking in larger institutional investors’, but nobody would buy
that one. Besides, it was a lie. So I stopped pretending.
The truth was that we had tried
all the