R360 is set up as a limited partnership, with 48 founding partners contributing $350,000 each, which equates to about a 60% ownership. The group wants to add about 50 members a year until reaching 500 in the U.S. and 500 abroad. Garcia stresses that R360 will never be sold, and that “the idea is to have this around 100, 200 years from now.”
One perk of many wealth networks is access to deal flow. R360’s members can propose investment opportunities to the rest of the group, but each deal first goes to a four-person committee, which runs it through a process looking at 100 different factors, Garcia said. Then an outside firm, Conway Investment Research, conducts operational and financial due diligence. After that, the member proposing the deal can host a call.
Members also get access to experts at elite universities and medical schools. For R360, custom programming is being developed with Harvard Medical School, Stanford Medical School, Columbia Business School (around fintech and cryptocurrencies), West Point (around leadership) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Garcia said.
R360’s rather gauzy marketing material says its overarching purpose is “to architect an oasis for strategic wealth creators and their families to flourish.”
Its members may be feeling the need for an oasis more acutely these days. The combined net worth of the world’s 500 richest people swelled by $1.8 trillion last year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The global wealth inequality exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic has talk of taxing the rich reaching a fever pitch. Memes of guillotines fly across Twitter and are stamped on forums across Reddit.
While the R in R360 could stand for rarified, or just rich, Garcia said it’s a reference to the Archangel Raziel, who maintains all the wisdom in the world. Raziel, according to legend, is the angel closest to God so hears everything and writes it down into the “Book of Secrets,” he said.
Sometimes, the oasis members join is literal, in the exclusive getaways members can go on—for an extra fee.
In July, about 30 members went on a four-day retreat on Richard Branson’s private Necker Island. There, Cole led a talk with Branson. Other speakers included Harvard professor David Sinclair, author of “Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To,” and James Doty, a Stanford University School of Medicine neurosurgeon who founded the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at the school. Members also played tennis with Branson and visited parts of the island that are home to threatened species, such as ring-tailed lemurs from Madagascar.
An upcoming visit to West Point will feature generals talking about leadership with R360 members and their adult offspring. The trip also includes a chance to do the obstacle course, go to the shooting range and attend a football game.
Members who want to show heirs where their wealth came from can work with R360’s full-time filmmaker to produce a movie-quality documentary about their life, as well as have a 150- to 200-page hardcover memoir written. “If you’re going to be a good steward of wealth, you need to figure out how to influence generations you’re never going to meet,” Garcia said.