As a career and compensation consultant for family office executive directors, I have relationships with quite a number of these individuals. What's happened over the last half dozen years, and much more so recently, is that all sorts of investment professionals, such as hedge fund managers, approach me seeking introductions to my clients. Many, but not all, have offered to pay me a fee if they pick up assets to manage after my introduction.
As a consultant, however, being paid for introductions is anathema to how I do business. Besides, if I one day decide to sell investments to family offices, I would set up my own hedge fund with some highly talented portfolio managers and take a meaningful piece of the management company.
With a pretty constant stream of investment professionals approaching me to introduce them to family offices, I have become very adept at quickly pushing them off. Once in a while, however, a very interesting investment professional comes along. Even though I'm adamant about not providing introductions, I sometimes agree to lunch. Such was the case with the cryptozoologist.
We met for lunch in Midtown Manhattan to discuss his new venture. He has a doctorate degree in anthropology and a $30 million inheritance. He taught college for a few years but found it excruciatingly boring. One day, while killing time in the library stacks, he stumbled upon a collection of ancient documents. It was in these codices that he found the first hints of the amazing power of the alicorn-the horn of the unicorn. With the alicorn, he explained, a person can eradicate disease and potentially-he wasn't sure about this-live for centuries. However, he was certain that immortality was not a real possibility.
He has already spent about $10 million of his own money researching unicorns and claims to have uncovered their secret sanctuary. He's planning on committing the remainder of his fortune to an expedition to retrieve a cache of alicorn.
Unfortunately, according to his cost projections and business plan, he's going to need about $50 million more.
The $50 million, he explained, would cover everything. It even includes the training of the elite corps of female virgins who are required to capture the unicorns. Not included in the calculations are the monies and resources for converting the alicorn into medical cures. He doesn't see this as a problem once he has a store of alicorn. I agreed.
Initially, he went to private equity firms for the money. But, according to him, they lacked vision. He has instead found a few wealthy individuals who are interested in backing his unicorn expedition. He concluded that he's more likely to raise money from wealthy individuals and family offices than from institutional investors such as private equity firms. I agreed.
What he would really like to do is establish a company to acquire amazing creatures. He has a strong interest in pursuing wyverns and chupacabras because of their commercial possibilities. When I brought up the likes of the Sasquatch and werewolves, he was puzzled. He carefully and slowly explained to me that there are no such things as Sasquatches and werewolves. Unicorns, wyverns and chupacabras-yes. Sasquatch and werewolves-no.
He thinks that focusing his initial efforts on unicorns will give investors their greatest financial return as well as a long life, possibly lasting centuries. He asked for my opinion. I told him that if he successfully collected a substantial amount of legitimate alicorn, and it has the medical properties he believes it has, he's definitely on his way to becoming a disease-free billionaire.