June 28, 2022

Raising Capital For Hedge Funds With Maury McCoy

 Maury McCoy is the president of McCoy Associates, a consultancy that works with investment managers to help them raise money from like-minded investors. Maury has raised over $250 million from foundations and other clients. His research on micro-caps has been published by the IMCA (Investment Managers Consultant Association) and he is a member of several blockchain organizations. Today, Maury speaks to us about blockchain technology, hedge funds, crypto, and more!

Transcript


 Josh
 Good day fellow deal-makers. Hey, if you happen to have a large pool of capital and you're looking for some allocation of conversations, this might be a, an episode you want to pay attention to. So Mr. McCoy, welcome to the show. 


 Maury
 Hey, thanks for having me good to be on. 


 Josh
 Yeah. Did I get that right in my introduction, like this is you're in the world of allocation and finding cool deals. Is that, is that what you do? 


 Maury
 Yeah. My I'm called a number of different things, a third-party marketer or a placement agent at the end of the day, I'm a glorified sales person, but I think that, the people I reach out to, I'm, I'm in the investment world. I'm not typically reaching out to, your lawyer. You're going to just trying to get them to invest in the latest hot stock. I represent a hedge fund managers, venture capital managers I've even represented a crypto asset hedge fund, but I represent these kind of unique investment strategies that cater to a larger pools of money. I think endowments and foundations, pensions, family offices, folks like that who have a lot of money and need to make good returns. I try and introduce them to the folks who can hopefully pull that off for them. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Yeah. How in the world, first of all, does your family kind of, would they say the same thing if they, if I was like, what does your uncle do? Or what does your husband do? Or would they say the same thing? Or what would they say? 


 Maury
 I, I tell them to say, raise money for hedge funds and that's, that's probably the simplest explanation. It gets a little more complicated than that, but yeah, for the most part, they know what I do, but yeah, a lot of variety of things we do around here. 


 Josh
 Sounds cool. All right, like, let's go backwards. How'd you get into this job? It sounds super cool. 


 Maury
 You know what? I, I had a buddy who was starting up an investment strategy. I actually am probably one of the few guys who came into finance from being a 3d animator. I mean, my background is diverse and I'm one of those guys who never knew what he wanted to do when he grew up, went to college for six years, had six different declared majors. My final year I took a finance class and that was like, oh my God, this is awesome. I could totally do this, but somewhere along the lines, around the six year, you want to get the heck out of college. So, yeah, so I, I, I did the number of things. I was a 3d animator. I produced video games. I, I went on to produce websites and I was getting a little burned out, to be honest with you. It was one of those situations where, my buddy came to me and he was like, it, you're in a job. 


 Maury
 Where do you want to make another dollar? You got to work another hour. He's like, you should come over to finance because, whether I manage a million dollars or a hundred million dollars, it's basically the same amount of work. It's just one I make a hundred times more. And, as someone who was putting in 80 hour weeks, I was I'm intrigued, sign me up. I had a buddy who was a really smart guy and he started this investment strategy that would hopefully appeal to these large pools of money, endowments, foundations, folks like that. I agreed to kind of quit my job. I'd, I'd set myself up where I could try something new switched from producing websites. I did amd.com and all these, I was doing really cool stuff, but, at the end of the day, my buddy trusted that I'd be able to figure out finance, having, not gone the traditional route that a lot of other people did. 


 Maury
 That ended up being a blessing rather than a curse. In a lot of ways. I didn't have a lot of bad habits that a lot of wall street people have, and I didn't have to kind of slum it through, smiling and dialing and trying to, sell someone a stock or something, but he convinced me, Hey, this is the approach I'm taking. It's kind of unusual. He handed me a book written by the guy who runs the Yale endowment, the chief investment officer of beyond dominant a guy by the name of David Swenson. He had written a book that was essentially a guide for other endowments and foundations, how to run money the Yale way. If you kind of reverse engineered this book, as far as like what Yale looked for in an investment manager, you could design an investment strategy. That is exactly what they want starting from scratch. 


 Maury
 It was essentially a cookbook for how to create something that these folks were interested in. I read the book, I struggled through it, like I said, not a huge finance background, but it was written, I could understand it. At the end of the day, I was like, what? I believe them. I think this is great. I think we can do this little. Did I know? I mean, absolutely ridiculous to think that we could do this. So this manager was managing about 300,000 under management and had a year track record, which in my world was like, wow, that's a lot of money. And you know, things are going great. His first year track record was phenomenal little did I know that these people won't take calls until you're managing a hundred million dollars and have a, a three to five-year track record, but it's one of those things, a little naive to be a little persistence. 


 Maury
 If you don't know what you can't do, sometimes you just go do it. I hooked up with him and it was a slug and, not knowing what I didn't know, I signed up to be commissioned only. It was like a year and a half of not getting a paycheck, but I, I knew were getting close and I firmly believed that I could do it. And, and I firmly believed in him and that he was doing the right thing and our meetings were productive. I mean, I could tell were close. So, right around a year and a half, I started landing some clients and, some big $10 million checks were coming in, which was great to go from never having done this to lamping, $10 million or $20 million, $50 million checks was exciting. But, but yeah, starting off. I mean, if I was to advise someone else, I would not say, take on a manager with a one-year track record in 300 K and go for it. 


 Maury
 I, I kinda describe it as like walking up to Spielberg with a VHS tape. That's kinda how I felt, but I think people were amused by us, two guys from Nebraska or they knew we weren't slick wall street people. I mean, we did not come across this way, but we did come across as honest and passionate and trying to do things the way that they wanted them done. I think they were like, these people are trying to meet us at what we want and yeah. It worked out. So. 


 Josh
 This is so cool from building websites to raising, I'm seeing over 150 million. 


 Maury
 Yeah. Well, at this point over a quarter billion, probably. Yeah. I've, I've raised money for different managers. Now over the years, a lot of them have a similar investment philosophy because I I've kind of found what works and what folks are interested in. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a lot of rejection high school dating prepared me well for this job. It's, there's, it's 99% of the time I'm emailing into the void or leaving a voice message that I know is never getting answered, but the people who are interested in this stuff are really interested in and when I can connect with those people. That's great. 


 Josh
 And, and when you were in high school building websites, probably wasn't the hottest career. 


 Maury
 I know it's crazy. When I went to college, I was actually a 3d animator. That's what I wanted to be. At the time that career did not exist. Like I, I was one of the few guys in the state of Nebraska where I grew up that can do this stuff. I actually had the TV stations coming to my house to plug into my equipment, to do some special effects because they couldn't handle it at their TV station. And so, yeah, it was really cool. I actually paid my way through college. I, I produced a big screen animations for like football stadiums, like the Atlanta Braves, the Carolina Panthers, Nebraska Cornhuskers and I sold packages. If you went to see a football game and there was animation on the big screen, getting the crowd, all excited, it might've been something I did if it was in the nineties, but the job didn't exist. 


 Maury
 I like it nowadays. It's like, oh yeah, graphic designer. I mean, it's split into 20 subdivisions of what you can be, but back then, they didn't even have courses. I was writing for magazines. I was teaching other people. I, I was essentially, paper blogging back in the nineties, but I was kind of a, an expert on animation and written up in magazines and stuff. My college didn't have any courses, even remotely compared to what I did. I got a degree in broadcasting and advertising amongst other minors and whatnot. So yeah. 


 Josh
 And now that career is absolutely massive. Do you ever look back and go, man, if I, what would life look like if I was doing this for, George Lucas or whoever, right. 


 Maury
 Yeah. It's funny, my job choices out of college. I, I had a choice to go work for your Steven Spielberg's Amblin imaging Amblin entertainment. They were working on a show called SciQuest, which at the time had some cutting edge graphics using the computer idea. And so I almost moved to Arizona. I ended up moving to Iowa, big cultural shock from Nebraska, as you can imagine, now it was the same, but there was like a company with like 150 people working on video games and movies. We worked on like blade the movie and we produced video games for Pixar and Disney and toy story, or, I actually handled a lot of the Hasbro and Warner brother accounts. I did like Looney tunes, video games. It was awesome. Creative people, everywhere, artists, animators, programmers, musicians. It, it was a dream job, but people were so exciting that no one ever left the office because that's where all the cool people were in Iowa was in our little building. 


 Maury
 So, yeah. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Then, from, from the creative side, everybody's like hip and cool flip flops and like we're here and then you got to finance for pension boards in an endowment where everybody at the board seat looks the exact same. Right? 


 Maury
 Yeah. It's definitely an upgrade in the attire. The hours were probably, I mean, I went from working long hours, but no one in that industry, they didn't care if you rolled in at 10:00 AM, cause everyone was working until 2:00 AM. Yeah. But yeah, no, it was, yeah. It's hard to find a bigger 180, but it was funny and I really missed the creative aspect, but I had kind of grown out of it. I'd gone from doing the work to managing the people that did the work to managing the people who decided on the work. Next thing I was staring down and I'm looking at spreadsheets with 30 tabs, open managing a website. I'm like, this is not where I started off. At that point it was time for a career change. 


 Josh
 Yeah. Taking the leap though a year, year and a half without collecting a paycheck, how did that go? 


 Maury
 Yeah, that was tough. Yeah. Because like I said about halfway through that process, I started to realize that, oh, this is not what people are looking for. As far as credentials, we weren't exactly giving pension funds, the warm fuzzies. When we walked in with, two people managing the amount of money were. Yeah, it, it took a while, but I knew I was close and I, I think, it would've been one thing if I was getting rejected all the time, but I was getting meetings and I could tell people wanted to invest. They just, it takes a brave investor to invest in a small upstart, emerging manager. They all say, oh, we're contrarian, we're doing things different because that's what we need to do to get different results. What you find out is that 90% of the people who say they're contrarion are waiting for the real contrarian to jump in first and then they'll follow along. 


 Maury
 Yeah, yeah. 


 Josh
 It was secondhand contrarian. Right? Like you go forward then me. Right. Like you brought it out and that's what, that's what you experienced kind of in that world. I was on a, I was on a pension board for the fire department and we would have people come in and pitch and we had, we had to go like study actuarial tables, essentially. Like when is Josh gonna die? Right. And people would come and pitch. That would have been you coming to pitch to the board, right? 


 Maury
 Yeah. Pension funds are tough and especially fire and pension. I'll tell you why it's in part, because they have people on their boards who are fireman and who aren't necessarily well-versed in these subjects. They're pitching the people that go with tend to be B, B plus managers, very safe, very conservative, no one on a pension boards is going to get fired for going with, Goldman Sachs or whatever. However, the people that I pitch are definitely, you've never heard of them. They're off the beaten path. I'm looking for allocators and boards that are on the cutting edge. A lot of cases you'll find this at university endowments. They have people there teaching the latest and greatest things. They're, they're all re doing tons of research on what works. Because like I said, the yellow endowment kind of was an innovator and produced incredible returns. A lot better than pension funds were doing. 


 Maury
 A lot of people mimic this model and we're trying to do what was doing. We, I catered to those people, endowments foundations. Yeah, if there's a, a pension fund, I typically there's so many people involved that the quirky managers, I bring them. They're not, they're not going to make it very far, but that's okay. 


 Josh
 Yeah. The super fascinating what you did it, and you probably learned this from the world of marketing, what are they looking for? Right. If I was to go pitch at Yale, why don't you read the book at, this is exactly how we do things, reverse engineer it and give them exactly what they want. Do you think a lot of cap, razors or allocators, do you think they miss that step? 


 Maury
 Yeah, I think so often I get managers who are like, Hey, I've come up with a, the greatest thing and this is the best way to do it. You're going to try and convince them that this is what they need. It's better sometimes if what they need and then you bring it to them. Yeah. It's, it's a tough situation because a lot of times people are trying to do things different than what the allocators are used to. Sometimes that's a great source of generating returns, but then you have two problems, you have to educate them and then you have to convince them. Honestly, with the strategy that I was doing, people haven't seen these small, the managers I represent tend to focused on smaller stocks, micro cap, small caps. A lot of people at that time were scared. They didn't, weren't familiar with the asset class. 


 Maury
 They associated it with scams and penny stocks and oil drilling. But there's thousands of these microcap companies. I mean, Netflix was a microcap company, monster energy drink was a microcap company at some point. So, it's a great playing field, the microcap space, a, I had to convince them this was a place to play. B this is the manager you need to do it. Yeah. 


 Josh
 If you had an ha, if you had to add an extra step, I have to educate you, convince you and then convert to dollars. Yeah. Those are a lot of steps. You try to find people who are kind of doing something similar research innovation, right. In these universities and go, Hey, we got something that might be a good fit based on what you're doing. 


 Maury
 Yeah. It, and this book wasn't exactly prescriptive down to the exact strategy. I mean, the yellow was saying, Hey, we're looking for managers who are small, who are focused on niche markets and specialized in those areas and who are willing to close and not take much money and close their doors so that they can continue to find success in the area they're looking at. Now, the problem with investment managers is size, is the enemy of results. You look at someone like Warren buffet and he's like, Hey, if I had $50 million, I could double it every year. Like, he's like, that's no problem. When you're sitting on, tens of billions of dollars in cash, like he is his opportunity set is really tiny. He could only buy major companies. He's somewhat limited in his opportunity set. One of the appeals of like, for example, a lot of the managers I've worked with, I've kind of carved a niche where I represent these microcap managers and now endowments and foundations will call me and say, Hey, do you have any interesting microcap managers? 


 Maury
 This is the space we're interested in. Microcaps, as an asset class are fascinating. It's one of the best performing asset classes. It's outperformed, small caps, mid caps, large caps, bonds, whatever, over time, over the last hundred years, if you look kind of historically, there's tons of opportunities, there's thousands of companies that are overlooked. There's less competition. My guys are not competing with the Warren Buffetts and the Howard marks of the world. That's what you want is you want a great playing field. If you're going to be swinging for home runs, you'd rather go down to the little league field then, go to Wrigley. So, yeah, and that's what my guys do. I, I try and find, heavy hitters and who are playing in a little league field. The problem is that they can't take much money. They have to remain small. From a comfort level of your pension or one of these big pools of money, you'd love to see a team of 10 people and a compliance department and a marketing department and all that. 


 Maury
 These people are working out of their houses, oftentimes which by the way, now is cool again. That worked out well to my advantage. Like, most of my firms, would not be the time they sit around and read all day stocks stuff, and they don't need a big fancy office with chandelier's in their waiting room. I worked out well for my guys that, COVID happened, I guess, cause now it's okay to work from home and they were doing it beforehand anyway. I've been working from home for 15, 20 years. So. 


 Josh
 Sweet. As you're doing this, like what does a typical day look like for you? 


 Maury
 I reached out to a lot of folks. I will, these networks, you can, LinkedIn is invaluable. I can find people who've worked at some of these endowments or foundations who ascribed to this philosophy that I know that appeals to them. I'll often try and find, oh, a new college or university here, reach out to them. It's like I said, it's a long drawn out process of trying to get their attention because they have a lot of people trying to get their attention. If you're managing billions of dollars, you have a lot of people coming to you saying, Hey, give me some of that. And I'm one of those guys. To be able to stand out a, I've been fortunate in that, the managers I've represented the number of them in the past. They've all worked out. Like I haven't had a dud yet. That goes a long way in that, I, no one's ever been burned by a manager I've been put with them. 


 Maury
 You build up of, capital reputation capital there. Yeah, it getting on their radar is tough. Then, an ideal day is just like, I, I'm on a call introducing an investment manager to a client that, loves them. Like this is what they're looking for because the guys that represent the folks I represent are hard to find. The other problem is because they close early. Like, let's say they get 150 million in assets. They'll close shop and not advertise, not market. The people who got in or the people who got in. A lot of times you'll hear about a great manager, but they'll be closed. I try and find those people before they're closed. What's nice is I, I don't have to do look for investment managers. They come to me, I've helped enough people close that. They're like, Hey, you're the guy who's taking people from, a million dollars to $150 million or whatever. 


 Maury
 And then we close. I have people reaching out to me sending me their quarterly letters. I've got a farm team of, a couple dozen of these similar managers. It comes time for me to pick up a new client to represent, I, I kind of, I don't always have a choice. I mean, not everyone wants to work with me. I mean, you have to give up some of, the in order to, share that. A lot of people are more than willing to do that because it is such a grog. Especially the early money is so hard to get in an investment strategy. 


 Josh
 How do you get paid for this? So I'm a hedge fund manager. I'm quirky. Yeah. I'm cool. I want to raise, I I've raised a million, but yeah. Let's get to 25, right? 


 Maury
 Yeah. Okay. Typically what I would say is I'd like to see, at least 5 million under management, I'm not as salicious. I was before I like to see a three-year track record because that's kind of what institutions typically kind of required to at least get a feel for how you've been able to do. I it's great. If I can see how you've done in a market downturn, 2008 situation or a COVID situation, because everyone wants to know, everyone looks great in a bull market when tech stocks are flying and you can do no wrong. I mean, look at wall street bets, but yeah. So, you know, it's great. If we can have someone who's done through a bit of adversity and I can see that, but yeah. So I look for that. I, I look for, like I said, there are certain things I look for, are you focused on a niche, like an area where there's, you can specialize and better than everyone else. 


 Maury
 Also I look for concentrated managers, which is a big thing, concentrated managers. Their portfolio is this is not your typical Vanguard or Schwab portfolio with hundreds of companies. The managers I work with will invest in 10 to 15 names, which is, as you can imagine, somewhat risky, especially when you're in these smaller, more volatile names. I look for people who are concentrated. I mean, my philosophy is, and it's kind of Yale's philosophy. That, why would you put money in your 50th best idea? That's not what we're paying people for. Right. I find a manager like that has done a nice, a great track record. Who's doing things the right way, a good solid investment philosophy, some money under management, friends, family, full money as we call it, the initial people who get in kind of give them their start. My, the way my pay structure works is there's three variables. 


 Maury
 Usually there's some kind of retainer. So, just tended to keep the lights on and allow me to create presentation materials for them and enter their information and database. Just some basic stuff that has to be done. Typically I get paid a percentage of whatever they make on the money. I bring them for a period of time. The standard structure is I would make 20% of what the manager makes four or five years from the time I land that client. 


 Josh
 Gosh, that's awesome. 


 Maury
 Well, so I mean, from their standpoint, they're like, I'm making 80% of money. I would've never made and I don't have to do anything. You know? I mean, they have to do stuff. They have to be in the meetings when I call them and, pitch and do the song and dance. For the most part, these are smaller firms. They don't have the budget for marketing. I mean, a lot of people, the bigger firms would hire someone internally pay them a reasonable salary. For me, they're willing to give up a little more on the backend because they know they're going to be making money if I'm making any money, ? It works out well, incentives are aligned. 


 Josh
 Yeah. What licensure, or what kind of regulations do you have to work through? Because that's probably a question that people have, they're like, how do I pay you and how do we work. 


 Maury
 Well? It's amazing how many people are doing it illegally too. Yeah. Yeah. So, so this is the part of the conversation where I have the disclaimer that says nothing I say is investment advice. And everyone's investment situation is unique. All of those disclaimers need to be said because I'm a registered broker. That means I passed my series seven and series 63. That means I am allowed to market securities and sell securities. A hedge fund is technically a security. And so I have those licenses. I also have a series 65 license, which allows me to work with investment advisors. There's a distinction between brokers and investment advisors have a fiduciary responsibility to do what's in your best interests. Brokers only need to do what's appropriate all these. Yeah. The, the compliance world is a nightmare. I'll be honest with you for every page I send out of information. 


 Maury
 I usually have a backside of that page. That is nothing but disclaimers a warning to you of all the things that can go wrong with the investment. I was just telling you it was great. So, yeah, so there's a lot of that, but yeah. Series 7 63 to be a registered broker. That is if I want to get paid a percentage of the management fee, if someone, makes a deal and says, Hey, I'm going to bring you to this guy. You can pay me a finder's fee or a percentage or whatever, technically that's a no. If, if they lost money on that investment, they would have to make them whole, if they didn't go through the proper channels. 


 Josh
 Totally. All right. So I laughed because it's amazing. The two most common messages I get on LinkedIn and I'm not a broker, I'm a real estate broker. Okay. Okay. The two most common message congrats on the new business, right? Cause I've started a bunch of startups and businesses and such, and then I've had jobs when those failed. The second message is we raise money for us. When I start talking to them, I go, listen, I am not an investment banker. I am not a registered broker. I'm not a broker deal. I do not have those licenses. I've interviewed the office of financial regulations. They gave me the guidelines on what I'm allowed to do and not allowed to do. They go, but we could pay you this way. I'm like, oh no, no, I can't do it yet. 


 Maury
 Yeah. Back in 2017, it was pretty funny because crypto is taking off and I was actually representing a legit hedge fund that was, properly registered. And, but I had dozens of people coming out of college from, smart guys, Stanford, MIT, they all wanted to get into crypto and they were doing everything somewhat illegally. The other thing about a hedge fund in particular is depending on how it's structured, you're not allowed to advertise it. Hedge funds can only be purchased by what are called accredited investors. People will make more than 200 K a year who have more than a million dollars in net worth. There's even a qualified investors, which is a, a step above those folks. Yeah, so you can't just go onto a website and announce our great performance and talk about things. If you're a hedge fund, a lot of them find ways around it and still do. 


 Maury
 Technically, yeah, if you have a website it's supposed to have a password and only the people who are investors can get in and only people who you've had a previous relationship with can become investors. It's, it's onerous to be honest with you, and they're trying to change the laws, the jobs act that Obama passed a while back, came up with some new, interesting reggae plus ways that average folks can get into new investments and things that are a bit riskier, but investment protection is the name of the game. You don't want people to do really dumb stuff. And, and crypto in particular, people can do a lot of dumb stuff because they weren't being watched, made a lot of money. People lost a lot of money. It was interesting. 


 Josh
 For this game that people are playing on how to, how to do these kinds of things. Everything is all good until someone loses their money, then they've worked their way backwards. Right. 


 Maury
 Yeah. 


 Josh
 And you've been doing this. How long have you been doing this? 


 Maury
 Since early two thousands. So 2003. 


 Josh
 Okay. You've made it through, you made it through the oh 8 0 9 test issue. What's your business like then? 


 Maury
 I could have taken 2009 off because no one had money. They're like, we can't give you money. Cause we don't know where our money is right now. A lot of them at the time were making commitments to venture capital and private equity. Those companies had the rights to call this money that they didn't really have people were selling a lot of their stocks because they needed to come up with funds. Yeah. 2008, 2009 was tough also because I get paid a percentage of what my manager makes my 2009 check or whatever. It was 40% of what my 2008 check lines. So I'm along for the ride. Like when I'm telling someone to invest with this person, I am, along for the ride with you, if they do poorly, I do poorly, 


 Josh
 I love the model of a venture, relationship as you do better, I do better. Our, our, whatever, our motives are aligned, right. For this to do really well for you. So I really liked that. Did you always have that model or did you kind of evolve into that? 


 Maury
 It's something that a lot of investors to see for, they want to see a manager that's eating their own cooking, so to speak. If you're running an investment strategy for them and you only have 10% of your net worth in it, they're like, why don't you have all of your money in your own? Do you not believe in yourself? Kind of thing. Historically the managers I work with, they, and to be honest with you, it's probably not the greatest thing in the world because they're running investment strategies that are kind of an outlier and have a chance of producing great returns, but can have bad years. This isn't ever going to be a hundred percent of an endowment portfolio. The managers that work with it, there'll be a one or 2% of their portfolio max, but they expect the managers I work with for it to be a hundred percent of their portfolio because they're not going to do anything dumb at that point. 


 Maury
 Everyone needs to be concerned about capital preservation. It's an interesting thing in the investment world. There's a lot of different fee structures. And, there's two in 20, which is kind of a standard hedge fund structure where you get 2% just tend to keep the lights on. You get 20% of the outperformance. There was a there's situations where a lot of folks, well, I'm just gonna not charge any management fee. I'm going to be free. I'm only going to charge on outperformance. They think that's a great model, right? Our incentives are aligned. I only make money. If you're making money, you don't have to pay me anything. The problem with that is, and I tell people because I get people coming to me, like, what do you think of this structure? I, I give a lot of early managers advice and I don't like that structure because if you underperform the first year, okay, you're kind of in the bill for everything. 


 Maury
 If you underperform the second year, same thing, you haven't made any money because you haven't outperformed. Or even if you just perform the same as what you're supposed to, you're still not making any money. On the third year, all of a sudden you're shooting for the moon and rolling the dice and taking big risks because you have to, in order to make up for the previous two years. Incentives become very unaligned quickly in that environment. There's things you have to watch out for. 


 Josh
 Yeah. I, I love to that. It might not just be the two 20 model, right. That I've experienced it in venture. I've seen a lot of venture groups or hedge funds go, Hey, we're not charging management fee, but they're still paying for their light bills. They're still paying for their admin, their analysts. When the things don't pop up, they have to lay everybody off real fast. Right. So, yeah, nobody's getting rich on that 2%, unless you're managing, hundreds of millions of dollars. 


 Maury
 That's a problem too, because what happens is the big firms, the folks who applied to know the pension consultants of the world, they're not looking for outperformance. They're just looking to not lose money and no one gets fired, maintaining the status quo. We call them closet indexers because eventually they just buy everything and they perform exactly like the market and they keep their 1% management fee on the billions of dollars they're managing. So, yeah, that's a problem in the industry, but the smartest folks on the other end of the table realize this. They are looking for these smaller quirkier managers, one or two people shops who are doing something different, who aren't closet indexers, in fact, the furthest thing from it, because, did it get a differentiated result? You have to do something different. 


 Josh
 You have to do something different. Right? Exactly. Or just throw your money in an index fund. Right. If, if that's the game you're playing, 


 Maury
 Lot of them do that. A lot of them, it's the smart move. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Yeah. When you're working with these groups, right. You started out, from 3d animator now you're pitching to, huge endowments funds, right. Total change. If I could think of any total opposite change in the world, you are right. You're pitching what was the first big check that, or check that cross your plate where you're like, oh gosh, I haven't had a paycheck in a while. Here's the present. You see one pop across the table. What was the first big one? 


 Maury
 It was, it's funny. I hadn't landed that account over a million dollars. I'd landed a few little small, a hundred K accounts. The first big account was a $10 million check from a large endowment out of New York. If you've ever heard, a sponsor of NPR, I, I, chances are, I've met with all of those folks and it's a, it's a name we'd all recognize. They came in and they were very brave. Fortunately the manager, knocked the ball out of the park and for the next decade, put up great numbers for them. He closed, they got some of their other friends involved, universities, things like that. We closed that manager up and for the next, two decades, really, he hasn't been open and has compounded money for these guys at a great rate. 


 Josh
 Why would, why would a hedge fund manager close their door? Why would they, not just keep going, Hey, keep bringing my own. 


 Maury
 No, it's, it's tough to do. That's where the integrity part of being an a manager comes in. Cause let's, I'll give you a real simple math here. A situation, a microcap companies are typically companies below $300 million in market cap. Okay. These small companies typically below the Russell 2000, if people are familiar with indexes. Let's say you have 10 of these companies that are a hundred million dollars market cap and you're managing a hundred million dollars. Okay. You manage a hundred million dollars, which means you're putting $10 million in each of these 10 companies. That means you own 10% of this small micro-cap company. Okay. It is sometimes hard a to get that much B maybe you shouldn't be getting that much. If something goes wrong, it's sure as heck hard to get out of it. Sometimes microcaps are called Roach motels. I don't know if you grew up in there, with the TV ads were, have Roach motels, the roaches can get in, but they can't get out. 


 Maury
 Sometimes that's how investors feel with microcaps. You can, you can buy into them, but if something goes wrong, who's going to take your shares from you. These aren't like Tesla or Netflix or where there's thousands of shares trading a day. So yeah. It's all of a sudden, you're owning 10% of 10 companies. There's two things that you can do. One, you can buy bigger companies. If the company is gonna have 200 million, you're owning 5% of them, you can buy more companies. If you have 20 companies, instead of 10, you still only own 5% of each company, or you can buy bigger companies. The problem is as you buy bigger and bigger companies, there's more competition, right? By closing your doors early, what you're really doing is opening up a huge opportunity set with no competition. That's kind of the beauty of these micro-cap names. 


 Maury
 You have thousands of opportunities, very little competition. It's like a fishing pond stocked with the biggest fish. The problem is, everyone wants a big boat and if you're willing to sit in your little rowboat, you can catch fish all day, but everyone wants a big boat. So, the best problem I have is that I do well for my managers and they close and put me out of work. I'm onto the next manager who, hopefully I can do the same thing for, but I it's pretty much a requirement at this point that I'm looking for managers who say, I'm going to shut the doors at this point, because that's, what's best for our investors. I have to be, I'm always looking at people from the investors perspective. 


 Josh
 Now you're coaching emerging managers and you're seeing all sorts of cool stuff, pop up with blockchain and crypto and all this stuff, right? Like NFTs and things that I have no clue what are most of them are. Right. But. 


 Maury
 Like, people don't. 


 Josh
 Even, they don't even. 


 Maury
 Know people in the industry. 


 Josh
 When you're seeing that. You, and they're going like, Hey, we're not going to charge a management fee. Hey, we're opened up forever for, we'll raise money until we, till we drop. Right. Do you say you spend a lot of time coaching them. Do you, do you show them from an investor's perspective of why they should do this? Why it benefits the investor to charge an investment, fee or carry or a management fee? Yeah. 


 Maury
 No, definitely. Yeah. A lot of folks, I mean, if I can give someone early in their life cycle to where I can make a fundamental change, that will help them raise money when they hit that three-year mark. When they have that five, $10 million, because what you want to don't want to do is all of a sudden, you get three years down the line and you have to change your investment strategy. Totally. All of a sudden people are like, well, that track record that you just built is no good because now you're doing something different. Yeah, I do a lot of coaching and, pitch books. I mean, people, the biggest thing with the pitch book is you get two slides. I tell people, get their attention. I mean, these people see thousands of decks. There's more hedge fund managers than stocks, I think. By the time you get through these pitch books, I say you have two slides and you have to tell them what's unique and different about you. 


 Maury
 What is your edge? What are you doing that no one else is? If you can't get it across in two slides, they're not going to pay attention to the rest of anything you say they just don't have the time for it. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Yeah. When, when you're, when people come to you, what's a red flag other than, maybe fundamentally they're just a bad person or you see dishonesty, or they don't have the right business model. Like what are some red flags that you would say I would not help raise money there or co-invest with that hedge fund manager? 


 Maury
 Yeah. I guess one of the big things is when they're focused on how much money they'll make, that's a big red flag for me. I, I, the best people in this industry, I mean, I find some quirky guys who are, they could care less how much money they make. This is a game that they are passionate about and they want to win. What I want is a guy, a person who can talk for an hour about a company, and then I, I can talk to him more and they can talk another hour without repeating themselves. I mean, these people live for this stuff and whether they were managing their own money or managing money for other people, they would be doing the same amount of work. Those are the people I look for. That comes across in a meeting usually. You have people who are like, well, I got into college. 


 Maury
 I didn't know what I wanted to do. I, studied business, I'm going to start a hedge fund. This is, ESG is hot right now. Let's start a, an ESG fund. Those folks, I had two managers team approached me the other day. They were like, we got this ESG fund and it's, and it's hot right now and we're going to raise money. I'm like, yeah, but what's your investment strategy. They just, couldn't really, it's well, we're ESG, we're invested in these, socially conscious companies and everything, and that's great, but ESG is an opportunity set. It's not an investment strategy. Your opportunity set is actually smaller than everyone else's. It's, that's great if you can have some edge and definitely a lot of money is going into that space as it should. I think it's great, but you really need to have a, a differentiated investment strategy. 


 Maury
 It can't just be the latest buzz word. Those people didn't even make it past the LinkedIn chat of like, will you work with me? I, I was able to filter that one out within two questions and it's not because I don't like ESG. It's just because they didn't have a defined edge in that space. Right? 


 Josh
 Yeah. ESG diversity impact we're of this. They'll, maybe 20 different keywords that they're thrown out rather than here's our business model. Here's how we're going to make your client some money. 


 Maury
 Yeah. And it was even worse than blockchain. Like no one knew what they were doing. Luckily I worked with probably one of the most reputable firms who went on to do great things and has been kind of turned into a venture capital firm at this point, backing some of the biggest crypto projects. So I, I was fortunate and unfortunate. I mean, and, you do your research and you make sure you team up with the right folks. I was fortunate to work with a very reputable firm that is now managing billions of dollars in the crypto space. When I started with them, they had 5 million. 


 Josh
 That's super cool as you're doing this. Right. Like you had to learn what a hedge fund is, right. You're doing animations and video games and such, and you're like hedge fund family, office, private deck, like what are some of the, cause you work with a lot of emerging funds and growth funds, like what are some of the differentiations between the different groups, family, office, hedge, private equity, venture capital. Maybe could you give us an overview of that? 


 Maury
 Yeah. So family offices are great. I kind of categorize family offices into two different categories. For those who don't know, a family office is a giant pool of money. Usually a founder is started a business and sold it and sitting on tens of millions of dollars at that point. Rather than give it to Charles swab, they say, we're going to, start up our own. I'm going to hire some smart people and they're going to manage my money for me. You have multifamily offices where they pool families together to kind of save on expenses and hire the very best people. Family offices kind of go into two camps of one where the founder is still involved and those folks tend to be a bit more adventurous and risk-taking and appreciate entrepreneurship. You have some family offices that have been around for decades or even centuries. They are more like, I just want my check and we have, at this point a hundred descendants and we just need to keep the money flowing. 


 Maury
 They're probably less likely to invest in an innovative, disruptive kind of strategy. Yeah, so family offices, family offices are interesting right now. One of the areas that's been hot is private equity and venture capital as you've referred to. I would say that for example, this last year Washington university, an endowment, they produced a 65% annualized return, which is just ridiculous. Like, it's one thing if your brother did it, getting lucky investing in apple stock, but when you're the size of a billions of dollar endowment to basically increase that by 65% in a year is crazy. They did it through a lot of venture capital investments that finally paid off private equity, things like that. So everyone's trying to imitate that model. It takes a while some of these venture capital bets are things that, they placed five, seven years ago, right? But every wants to do that. 


 Maury
 If you look at the allocations of big endowments, like if you have over a billion dollars, you probably have 30% in private equity and venture capital. Whereas if you're a small foundation or a family office with $50 million, let's say, the research shows that they have less than 3% in private equity and venture capital. The reason is that there's only so many good private equity and venture capital firms. Everyone knows, Andreessen union square ventures, the big names that are getting into the Twitters and the PayPals, but not everyone can get access to those. Historically the math kind of works out. If you're not getting into one of the top core tile, private equity or venture capital firms, you'd better off not investing at all in that asset class. What's interesting about the microcap space that I pitched is that it's a good proxy for this. 


 Maury
 You have these small companies that are capable of doubling and tripling. It's hard for Proctor and gamble, the triple a, but these little small, a hundred million dollar companies can double or triple. Folks who may not have access to the best private equity and venture capital firms, what's fascinating is it's the largest endowments, the Harvard stuff, the Yales, the folks who have, tens of billions of dollars. They can't always invest in my managers, my manager, my current manager I'm working with is closing at 150 million Yale smallest check is probably 150 million. They can't even look at me. He would take up a hundred, they would take up a hundred percent of the capacity of the, my manager. They can't look at my guy, but who can small family offices, smaller endowments. It's one of the places where being small is an advantage because you can invest with the managers that I represent that put up great numbers, oftentimes venture capital, private equity tech numbers, because they're investing in the same types of companies. 


 Maury
 I mean, private equity companies are going after the same companies. My, you know, managers are going after. They're just public when they're doing it. It's, it's one of the places, family offices and smaller endowments can get an advantage over the big guys. And so, yeah, it's kind of interesting. Everyone wants VC and PE and I'm like, oh, come over here. We have the same things. You just, you just can't give us a ton of money. 


 Josh
 Yeah. Hey, that works too. When it's just like, nah, I can't take that much or no, like turn away where other groups are like as much as you have, how much is the check, one more dollar, right? Like give us everything. 


 Maury
 Well. From an incentive standpoint, like trying to land business, I would say that is one thing that's good is that I've gone to folks with their manager. When they've come back and been in trade, I can say that manager is closed now. There is this fear of missing out. There is an incentive to act. Whereas if you're taking an endless amount of money, the people on the other side of the table can sit there forever follow you. We'd like to see a little more track record. You're never going to close, but if they know you're going to close and you're going to do this really cool thing that only certain people get access to, they're often more inclined to at least give you an early look so that they don't miss out. 


 Josh
 Give you a little look, see right here, take a look at this. 


 Maury
 That's all I asked for. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Yeah. As you're doing this, oh, I clarify for us private equity versus hedge or venture capital said, right. Let us, let us understand more of the business model of a hedge fund. 


 Maury
 Yeah. Hedge funds typically invest in public companies. Stocks that are traded on the, on the New York stock exchange and the NASDAQ and places like that. They trade in and out every day. If you're into a company, you can get out of it. If you can find someone to sell, you, sell your shares to private equity, oftentimes they'll take a business and buy it out and kind of own that company or own the majority of it. Sometimes they'll take a public company that is trading shares and they'll buy it out and remove it from the stock market. They'll take it private. The reason they do that is a, it's expensive to be a public company. It costs about a million dollars in reporting. Also if you have a longer-term vision where maybe you need to switch things up, public companies have to report quarter to quarter. 


 Maury
 And so it's hard for them. Sometimes as they're trying to grow and disrupt things, they're going to have some bad quarters and the stock is going to get punished. Oftentimes a private equity company will take a company, private, do all the messy work and it'll emerge like a Phoenix is a much better company at which point they'll take it public again, with the new business model. Venture capital. There's various stages of venture capital there's seed stage there's, a rounds B rounds. It goes on and on. Essentially what they're trying to do is find little startups, get a percentage of the company, five, 10, 20% of this company, keep them on their feet, keep feeding them money. As they've proven, they can continue to grow and acquire customers. A lot of times venture capital, you think of as being associated with the tech space, not always, but these are companies that if they take off the Twitters, the PayPals of the world, then you're looking at these. 


 Maury
 They, they measure their returns, not in percentages, but X, right. We 30 extra money on that one versus we made 30%, but they also, 19 out of every 20 other investments probably don't. So it's a much riskier investment approach. It's part of the reason you don't see average investors investing in venture capital. Yeah. You'd have to have a lot of bets to kind of diversify away the risks. 


 Josh
 There's a book that I read called. It was by Bazell Peters called early exits. And it talks about the venture model. Right? Great book. Canadian venture guy wrote it maybe in oh eight. Like it's an older book, but it like described the model of super cool. What books, what books would you recommend to learn? If someone wants to learn cap raising or the hedge fund world? Like what are some books and why did you choose hedge funds as your, focus? 


 Maury
 Yeah. I, it's probably mother duck syndrome. My buddy, who was running one came to me and said, Hey, join on. And, and I saw that was a great way to do things. Since then, I've been looking for other things like that, it's like, oh, I know this works. I found a ditch and over the years, people know I'm associated with that niche concentrated in microcap managers. I have managers who run those strategies coming to me. I have announced some foundations who are interested in those types of strategies coming to me. All of a sudden you're like, okay, I'm in this little tiny spot. It's in the investment world. I have a small potatoes as they come. I mean, people I've talked to people in the industry who laugh at what I'm doing, because it's like picking up nickels, it's in world. At the end of the day, it's enough for a guy working out of his house to do well. 


 Maury
 Yeah, so I would say books, it's interesting. I mean, I, I'm fascinated by personal finance and I think people need to understand the whole breadth of personal finance. That's the same guy, David Swenson, who wrote that book for how endowments and foundations should manage money, which is a great book, pioneering portfolio management. I would say that he wrote another book called unconventional success, which is probably more appropriate for the folks listening to this. It discusses, okay, here is what real estate is and why you should have it in your portfolio. Here's what, a, a T bill is and why you should have it in your portfolio. Here's why you should have exposure to international emerging venture capital. He breaks out all the asset classes and how an average investor can get exposure to them. I would say, not only do your average retail customers to benefit from this, a lot of endowments and foundations would probably do better than trying to be too fancy. 


 Maury
 And, and they could take that same, strategy and approach an asset allocation model and apply it to what they're doing. 


 Josh
 Yeah. It is, I just looked it up. It's on audible and Kindle, or you could get it hard copy by David Swenson. 


 Maury
 Yeah. With any, yeah. Don't misspell that one. I accidentally misspelled his name and I pitched him. Yeah. That makes an impression one way or another. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Read your book. I love it. He's like, you spelled my name wrong and you're like, 


 Maury
 Gosh. Yeah. 


 Josh
 What does, what does success look like for you? Like Y how far, how long are you going to go? Are you going after a full billion? You know, like what's, what's your goal? 


 Maury
 I, I like finding managers who are doing things the right way and helping them succeed. It's kind of weird. Like, I, I will make money if they succeed and stuff, but I see some of these people who are really passionate and ambitious and you kind of feed off their energy, right. I don't have the energy of a 25, 30 year old hedge fund manager. Who's, spending all of his nights, reading, quarterly reports. I kind of tap into their energy and I want to see if they're doing things the right way. They're honest, and they're not out to make a million dollars. Those are the people who ended up making a million dollars. I like to help them get there. I, I liked, I can't tell you endowments and foundations and universities, it's a great audience. I'm generally not making a rich guy richer. My clients are building libraries in Africa, they're curing cancer. 


 Maury
 They're, doing all sorts of things, preserving nature. I've got, when I go to sleep at night and my managers are making money for these folks, I feel good, it's and they feel good. It's a good part of the industry to be in, because Lord knows there's an investment, a lot of shady, stummy awful parts to be involved in. Unfortunately, because of my buddy kind of brought me in at the highest level, I got to avoid a lot of that. All of that really, I just was fortunate and not everyone is there's dark corners of the investment world, where people are trying to take advantage of people. Unfortunately, everyone on the other side of the table I'm pitching to is so much smarter than me. I could never bamboozled them. If I wanted to, so yeah, it works out. Okay. 


 Josh
 Yeah. Now you mentioned when I go to bed at night, I could sleep, sound in this world, the world that you're in, what does keep you up? 


 Maury
 I, unfortunate to not be an investment manager, because those are the guys who really lose sleep. They don't want to lose their client's money. It's funny it's I represent them. If they blow up, I can move on to the next guy. If they blow up, it's five years of their life, it's all of their money. They're probably losing more sleep than me, which is comforting because I know that they're concerned and they're going to do their very best. Partnering with the right people who have a downside protection mindset, especially in a riskier part of the market, that's a huge deal. Like that's number one for me is I'm looking for people who think about not losing their client's money, not how much money they're going to make. When you talked about red flags. Typically my first meeting, I generally get a sense of these people are worried about losing money and that's what you want to see. 


 Maury
 Yeah. 


 Josh
 Have you seen the show billions about the hedge fund app? 


 Maury
 It's awesome. 


 Josh
 It's so good. Okay, cool. We're brothers. All right. That show, who do you mostly relate with? 


 Maury
 Oh gosh. I imagined myself being the much cooler people on there, but nah, I, I'm just, it's not nearly that exciting, the, the crypto investment world when I was in that, it was, it was more exciting, but with the traditional investment strategies, they're looking at your number, looking how volatile you are looking at your downside protection. There, there are no magical formulas that, cause hedge fund managers to outperform everyone else, unless you're cheating, which, over the years there have been people who cheated. I lost money to Bernie Madoff. Once I remember back in early 2000, when I was pitching a management firm, multifamily office, as it were, and they were impressed by us, but this other guy had way better returns. I found out at the end of the day that they gave money to Bernie Madoff and they blew up. They're no longer in existence and all those people scattered to different jobs. 


 Maury
 Yeah, no, it's no, my guys, to be honest with you, the asset class and the sector of the market I'm in is fairly exciting as far as investment world goes, because a lot of people are investing in bonds and fortune 500 government. They're just, it's boring. I, I have tried to represent these large cap value managers and it's just like, oh my gosh, I can't do it. I can't get excited. Like, how are you going to outperform Warren buffet? Like, I mean, and to be honest, we have Warren, Buffett's had a hard time outperforming the S and P 500 over the last decade and you're going to come along. A lot of these folks who are investing in areas where it's really hard to get an edge or an advantage, I can't, I just, I can't sell them because I don't believe in them. I've had a lot of folks approach me that I'm like, this is great. 


 Maury
 I wish you luck, but I don't believe it's going to work. And I hope you prove me wrong. A lot of them do, but yeah. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Super cool. I got some questions I want to ask you. All right. 


 Maury
 All right. 


 Josh
 Tell me when to stop. I've got some cards of questions. 


 Maury
 Oh, sorry. Right there. Anywhere there. 


 Josh
 Yeah. Yeah. I outsource some of my questions to smarter people who write it on. Okay. Okay. What do you appreciate about the culture that you grew up in? All right. So you graduated in the nineties, right? Yeah. High school. 


 Maury
 97. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Okay. So what is, 


 Maury
 What do I appreciate? Yeah. I would say I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and I would say, everyone up there, it grows up. As I've mentioned, Warren buffet, a number of times it's because everyone up there is indoctrinated into value investing and everything. I would say in general, Nebraskans are fairly financially conservative and, people who had credit card debt that was like shocking to me when I like found other kids who had like, were in debt. I'm like, you don't buy something if you can't afford it, it's like, you work, you save the money and then you buy it. How are you? It, it was, it blew me away that this stuff even existed. There are people out in California who like, everything is on credit and you're taking other people's money and rolling the dice with it. And that mentality has been really hard. 


 Maury
 I live in Austin, Texas now. It's a little more venture capital, a little more adventurous, but I still, my roots are definitely financially conservative, rule number one, don't lose money rule number two soon, see rule number one. The honesty and integrity of generally of folks in the Midwest. I, I don't, the niceness, I mean, Nebraska slogan as Nebraska. Nice. I think it fits, I, I think I have run into people in wall street who are exceptionally cocky, exceptionally flashy, and that doesn't fly in my world. I'm not impressed. So, hard work and integrity are what impresses me. 


 Josh
 That's super cool. Have you seen the SNL skit? Don't buy stuff. 


 Maury
 That's awesome. Yeah. 


 Josh
 I don't think I understand. If I can't afford it, don't buy. So. 


 Maury
 Yeah, it's tough. It's, it's easy for me to say that I was able to, I had a good job in college. I was able to put my way through college. I think the cost of talent has tripled, since that time and salaries have not. I, I really feel for these young college students, because you can't just work at Wendy's and put your way through college, it's they're in a tough spot. Yeah, it's, oh, the golden days were so great and everything, but they really were from a financial perspective and having healthy, if you're a millennial trying to buy a house, it's, they're in a tough spot. 


 Josh
 Oh yeah. Oh yeah. With that, what advice do you have? Not investment advice because you'll have to do four pages that disclaimers and we just don't have to, what advice do you have for emerging fund managers, hedge funds, guys who are trying to raise some capital, like what's, what's a good practice that they can adapt to that. 


 Maury
 I'd say keep at it. If you believe in yourself, that's the most important thing. A lot of people want to take the easy money. There are firms out there that will do some incredible deals for a firm to take a percentage of ownership, right? Like if you're not managing any money, they'll give your first couple of million dollars. Okay. They will take a big chunk of your firm. Then, depending on how much time, I mean, if you're early on in your life cycle, perhaps, but if you've put in three years already and you're getting frustrated because you're not raising money. That's when I don't want to say the vultures, just, I mean, it's a useful business model for people to come in and they'll say, tell you what, we'll give you a million dollars and you put up a hundred thousand of your own money. 


 Maury
 The first 10% of losses are yours, not ours. A lot of people will take that deal. The person who put up a million dollars, they just, they just get a margin of safety of 10% loss on this manager. The manager is willing to do it because now they have a million dollars. Now they can go out and raise another million, ? Cause it takes money to raise money and no one wants to be a large part of a manager's portfolio. So yeah. 


 Josh
 You just mentioned something. It takes money to raise money, 


 Maury
 Right? Yeah. Chicken, egg, chicken, egg. 


 Josh
 Yeah, 


 Maury
 Yeah. Money to get the money. Yeah. It's so in general, an investor doesn't want to be say more than 20% of your assets. If you're managing $10 million, you might get a $2 million check from someone. Part of the reason is if they come in with a $5 million check and then it doesn't work out and they pull that money, they feel like they're bankrupting your business and putting people out of work and all that. Generally, that's not the case. I tell those people believe me, we'd be doing a lot worse. If we didn't have your money, I'd be happy to have a $5 million check. A lot of folks don't want to be a large percentage of your assets. They also want other people to invested alongside them. So, yeah, I think that's, so you've got to slowly build the money over time and every million you get, it just makes it easier to get that other bigger check. 


 Maury
 When you get to 20 million, then you're getting $5 million checks. You slowly have to build up there. It's very hard for managers to get there. It's the first number of years are a slog. Some managers get there through appreciation. If you put a million dollars of your own money in that, you save doing whatever, working on wall street and you started your own firm and you grew up to 3 million. That's one way to do it. It takes a lot longer. Usually, if you're earning 10% a year, it's going to take you seven years to get there. Yeah, I, I, that first money is the hardest, which is now where I try and find people with more assets, 5 million, 10 million, maybe they have a family office. Maybe they have some other money from somewhere to kind of get them started because that money is hard to get. 


 Maury
 I empathize with all the guys who are starting a business, cause that's the hardest part. And you know what, they're not marketers. They're not supposed to be marketers, right. They're supposed to be in the back room with the green nightshade on looking over, quarterly numbers doing research. Part of my role is can see I'm rather talkative, but a lot of these people are. So they need someone to represent them. Yeah, in some ways too, you don't want to go up and tell the world, Hey, I'm the Tom cruise of investing. No, one's coming from an investment manager. That's going to come off at wrong. If I say this guy is amazing, you can say that thing. And it comes across a little better. And, and hopefully at this point, I've got a good idea of who the amazing managers are. 


 Josh
 Do they still wear those green visors with Abacus Rowan in the background and not doing, 


 Maury
 I don't have anyone who's an advocate, but I did have a guy who had 30 file cabinets. He had every, like, he had ads from like, a men's clothing store going back 20 years. He can see the progression of that. You get some interesting folks in this industry that, when I say I like quirky guys, but in some ways there's something wrong with people, but in a good way, and a lot of these people are extremely funny, intelligent, but they just, their brains are wired differently than most people as the marketer. They're definitely wired differently than mine. And so, yeah. That's another thing I love these folks, may not be good people, and so I, I helped them out and I can relate to everyone I get along. 


 Josh
 That's super cool. Two more questions. One. How could people reach out to you? Especially emerging fund, they have 5 million, they have a niche market. They're concentrated, hedge and they want to connect with you and maybe do a deal where it's a good place for them to connect with you. 


 Maury
 LinkedIn is a great spot. Maury McCoy, M a U R Y M C C O Y a on Twitter. I'm also at Maury McCoy. The nice thing about having an unusual name is I was able to get, all of the handles I wanted. Yeah, M U R Y MCC a Y my company's name is McCoy dash associates. And so there are no associates. I've got a couple of pets running around here, but at the end of the day, that's a great place to mccoy-associates.com. You know, I'm maury@mccoy-associates.com is an email. Anyone can reach out to me. 


 Josh
 So I lied. I have two more questions. When people mispronounce your name, how did they miss that? Announce it. 


 Maury
 Marie often. Yeah, it's funny. More and more. I always tell people, Maury Povich and Maury Povich just canceled his, 30 year run show. I don't know what I'm going to tell the next generation to tell them how to pronounce my name, but yeah, it's more rate. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Okay. Got it. Cause before the interview, I was like, was it Maureen? Was it Merck? I was like trying to run it through my head. I was like, I'm going to call him Mr. McCoy. 


 Maury
 But you know what? I struggle with this. Especially with names from cultures, I'm not as familiar with LinkedIn added the feature where you can input how to say your name. Oh yeah. I have done that because I realized he is kind of tricky, but there are some names. I mean, obviously I'm a how, gosh, it's a struggle sometimes. Yeah. 


 Josh
 They're like, Hey, you, 


 Maury
 There's a lot of really smart people who have come to this country and work in the investment world. Yeah. Yeah. 


 Josh
 Super cool. Last question. What questions should I have maybe asked you that I screwed up and didn't ask you that you want to talk about? 


 Maury
 Not that I think I hit on almost everything, I, I would say it's not all roses. There, there are disadvantages to the types of people I work with. You know, they're, they're smaller. They're, they don't have the financial resources, operationally, they don't, they don't have a travel department, it's a struggle and it's kind of a, these are the things you put up with. I kind of consider them barriers to entry for other people, working with the managers I want to work with and everything that's frustrating. I have to just think that's one other person who's, gonna bail and not continue on. And my managers feel the same way. The ones I work with. So it's a struggle. This is not, I, there are people in my industry who are going out and meeting with the pension funds of general electric and managing, landing a hundred billion dollar checks. 


 Maury
 Boy, that'd be nice, but that's a, that's not what I do. I, I found this little niche and I grind away and it is a grind. I mean, this all sounds good. I'm raising tens of millions of dollars. And I worked with crypto asset funds. What people don't see is that the majority of my day is researching people, sending out emails that might connect with them, trying to find folks who are interested in this thing. Cause they're few and far between, but the ones who are really good excited when I bring them a manager. That makes my day when I'm connecting those rare people on both sides of the table who want to meet each other, the, the Tinder of the investment world is, or so ago. 


 Josh
 Swiper, no swiping. Right. Capitalist. 


 Maury
 Yeah. Right. 


 Josh
 Yeah. Awesome. Well, Mr. McCoy, Marie, thank you for being on the show that I, I said it, right? 


 Maury
 Yes, yes, yes. 


 Josh
 Yay. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on the show, fellow dealmakers in the audience as always reach out to our guests, say, thanks for being on the show. If, if their services match what your needs are, reach out to them and say, Hey, let's do a deal. That's the purpose of this show is to connect deals and deal makers. If you're working on something or want to talk about it here on the show, head on over to the deal, scout.com, fill out a quick form. Maybe get you on the show next until then talk to you all next episode. See you guys. 


 Maury
 Perry. Thanks sir. 

Maury McCoyProfile Photo

Maury McCoy

Owner

Maury McCoy is the president of McCoy Associates, a third-party marketing firm that works with talented investment managers focused on inefficient areas of the market such as small/micro-cap equity funds and crypto-asset funds to help them raise money from like-minded investors.

Maury has raised over a quarter-billion dollars from various foundations, endowments, pensions, family offices and private clients.

His research on micro-caps for institutional investors has been published by the IMCA (Investment Managers Consultant Association) and he is a member of the Texas Blockchain Council and Silicon Valley Blockchain Society.

Certifications:

Uniform Investment Adviser Law Examination - Series 65
Uniform Securities State Law Agent - Series 63
General Securities Representative - Series 7

Registered Representative, Compass Securities Corporation
Securities offered through Compass Securities Corporation, member FINRA, SIPC;
50 Braintree Hill Office Park, Suite 105, Braintree, MA 02184
Tel: (781) 535-6083 www.CompassSecurities.com

Not investment advice and not an offer of a security.