Engaging with family offices and making an effective pitch to investors with Tim Moore, Director of Dorado Property and Dorado Capital

The opening keynote at the inaugural EtA Forum last year was Tim Moore, the Director of Dorado Property and Dorado Capital. This was a fascinating and far-reaching opening keynote that really set the tone for an excellent day, and I thought the insights that came out of the presentation would be particularly interesting for anyone looking to make acquisitions via search fund.

Tim not only has had experience in undertaking his own search, but has some exceptional insights into the operation and opportunity of the family office – a critical part of the search fund community. In his presentation he shares useful information on how entrepreneurs can engage with family offices, including where they prefer to deploy their assets, and what part of it is available for investment into companies (and how they think about that allocation for investment).

Later in the presentation he shares some exceptional and practical ideas on how to make effective pitches to investors like him, which is certainly something worth saving to refer back to as you practice and perfect your own pitch technique. Another interesting part of Tim’s presentation is a section where he describes the growth in funds. At the moment it’s coming from a smaller base, but we’re reaching the point where, by 2030, we could have as many as 30 funds launching each year, with $1.5 billion worth of capital available. This is not a small opportunity!

All-in-all, this was an excellent, tone-setting keynote which kicked the EtA Forum off with insight and panache, and, as you’ll see from the rest of the keynotes as well, made sure everyone left the event with valuable and actionable thoughts.

Connect with Tim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tcsmoore/

Connect with Pete: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteseligman/

Register for the next Eta Forum Event, download speaker presentations or watch the video of this episode here: https://www.peteseligman.com.au/eta-forum-sessions

What we discussed:

1:22 Pete introduces Tim Moore and his background.

3:28 Tim kicks his presentation off with the history of search funds – where it all started.

6:31 Next, Tim looks at the now, and discusses the amount of money invested into search funds and results.

10:54 Tim shares the key differences between the various types of investment pools.

12:22 Tim dispels some of the myths around what people think when they think of a “family office”.

13:56 Tim breaks down where the money in family offices go, and what form investments take.

21:42 To finish his presentation, Tim provides some valuable tips on pitching, and what family office investors want to hear.

26:50 The keynote concludes with an insightful Q & A session.

34:04 Pete wraps the episode up with some thoughts and analysis of Tim’s presentation.

Quotes

“Last night over a drink I got the impression that the searchers feel like they need more of the returns. We more-or-less say ‘it’s our money’, and they respond ‘it’s our business.’”

“A lot of the questions I get from people are along the lines of ‘what am I investing in?’ There are a lot of misconceptions about what family offices invest in, what their characteristics are, and so on.”

“People do have the impression that family offices are oak-panelled board rooms, and older, grumpy businesspeople. But of course, they come in lots of different flavours. You’re going to be speaking to a very broad range of people by age, stage level of advice, and so on.”

“On types of private equity in Australia, people talk so much about venture capital. They sometimes don't put it in the private equity basket, but from an asset allocation point of view. There's three categories of private equity and venture capital is obviously one of them.”

“You wouldn’t believe how often you see news in the Financial Review about things being bought by private equity, because it just drifts past your radar if you’re not paying attention to it, and then you forget about it, but it’s happening all the time below the radar.”

“It is extraordinary how you can have someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of their business, great communication skills, and they come into a boardroom, where there is some magnetic attraction… and they just read through the deck line by line, which is a stifling and paralysing experience for the recipient. Whatever you do, do not simply read through your pitch deck.”

“You talk to a CEO of an ASX 100 company, and you ask them how things are with the management team and inevitably they'll say to you something like “look, I've got a bit of a concern about this. We're doing a conversion to SAP next year, my CTO has never done that, and we need to work out how to bolster the team there. But then you talk to a small $20 million revenue business in the suburbs and you ask them the same question and they’ll respond that they have everything covered with the four people on the executive committee. The point here is it's much better to talk about where there are gaps and how they're going to be remedied, and don’t ignore the negatives. Talk about how you’ll deal with them.”

“By and large, for confidentiality reasons, tax reasons, all sorts of things, family offices do tend to keep a pretty low profile.”