Christmas Greetings

Welcome to this week’s edition of Cape May Wealth Weekly. If you’re new here, subscribe to ensure you receive my next piece in your inbox. If you want to read more of my posts, check out my archive!

2024 is probably the most eventful year of my professional career (so far).

I’ve launched this very newsletter and managed to grow it to over ~1.300 subscribers. While the number itself doesn’t feel very large, it continues to amaze me to see who reads it: From professionals in the financial industry (including at my alma mater Goldman Sachs), to GPs of PE and VC firms, to well-known individuals in the family office / ultra-high net worth space - hearing from people that they read my newsletter, and more importantly, that they enjoy what I write, continues to be a highlight for me every time I get that feedback.

I’ve made the decision to move on from the life as a family officer. Last Thursday marked my last day leading a Berlin-based family office after almost 4,5 years - a very rewarding and extremely insightful experience. I’m extremely grateful for the trust of the owners to let me help them on their journey in finding their ideal setup, and for the colleagues that accompanied me on my journey.

Which brings me to the most meaningful step: Deciding to go ‘all-in’ in regards to my self-employment. I’ve alluded to it a few times in the newsletter before, and a proper PR ‘launch’ is certainly planned for 2025, but of course I want my frequent readers to hear it first: I’ve been quietly working on setting up my own wealth management firm. I’m glad to have found two fantastic co-founders, Tamara and Markus, who both complement what I do with their respective expertise - and are of course a lot of fun to work with. A shout-out also goes out to our clients that are among the audience of this newsletter, sometimes even because of it - we continue to be grateful for your trust. 

But admittedly, 2024 hasn’t always been easy - especially when it comes to my pastime as a content creator. It might be because juggling a family office job, setting up a new business, and creating content is simply a bit much. But at times it also was a question of inspiration. 

Last year, when I was writing on LinkedIn on the side, I had a chance to write about topics that a lot of my audience might care about (like the Aspirational Investor Framework or my views on what’s going on in venture capital), as well as somewhat niche and esoteric topic that mostly I cared about, like why GPs are so focused on setting up insurance companies (to paraphrase an ex-investment banking friend, ‘it sounded interesting but I didn’t get it at all’). No matter the content, I realized that my posts tended to be very long for a medium like LinkedIn that is more focused on short attention spans, and hence, focused on my newsletter as a more permanent, ‘longer-form’ medium.

And that migration to a newsletter has at times worked well, but has sometimes also felt a bit tedious. (You might also be wondering why there was no regular newsletter last week). My fellow newsletter author Dirk Sahlmer (and his amazing newsletter saas.wtf) recently described it quite well: The writers who start writing on LinkedIn or writing a newsletter, and actually become successful with it, aren’t those that try to write what their audience wants to hear about, “they just seem to love diving deep into topics and breaking them down (mainly for themselves) - and they're kind enough to share what they learned.” I don’t feel like that is something I hadn’t been doing, but at times I did feel like I needed to write something that my readers cared about, rather than one the esoteric topics like insurance companies. It’s certainly something that I want to keep in mind for the future - and hopefully, with at least one less job on my plate, I’ll find some more time and joy to create content that my readers care about. I’m quite optimistic.

With that in mind, a few finishing thoughts for the year.

First of all, thank you to my readers and supporters on the first year of this newsletter journey. You’re the ones that make it worth it.

If you are still looking for a present for your loved ones - I personally enjoy a good book recommendation. My favorites this year include Unreasonable Hospitality (that was kindly gifted to me from a fellow financial advisor, and has continued to be ‘top of mind’ in how I build our service experience), Why Empires Fall (which is not only a great history lesson, but also made me more aware of the severity of our demographic challenges in Europe), and lastly, the fantastic Hyperion series (not just a great piece of science fiction, but probably one of my favorite books ever).

If you are a financial professional based in Germany interested in making a switch to the world of family offices, reach out to me. The family office trend, especially for smaller structures run by one or two investment professionals, continues at a steady pace. (Prospective) clients often ask me for contacts to qualified individuals that might make good family officers - so if you’re looking for a new challenge, please don’t hesitate to reach out. (Please note that I might not respond to you before the new year.)

If you have any ideas for topics that I should write about, please always feel free to message me. Many of the pieces I wrote came to be thanks to inspiration from investors asking me about that topic (i.e. the private equity liquidity management series, or the question about differences in management fee calculations). Those are the pieces that I like the best as I know at least one reader will care deeply about it.

And of course feel free to contact me if there are any wealth management needs that Cape May can help you with. ☺️ Since properly launching this year, we’ve worked with clients ranging from affluent individuals to sizable family offices, on topics ranging from strategic asset allocation to building access to private equity to the management of liquid portfolios. More on who we are best fit to serve in said ‘PR launch’ next year, of course - but if you want to chat, always feel free to reach out.

With that said: Merry Christmas to all of you, and a happy new year. I’m excited for 2025, I hope you are too.🎄

Liked what you read? If you enjoyed this piece, make sure to subscribe by adding your email below. I write about topics covering the world of family offices, asset allocation, and alternative investments.