Ten months ago our family office made a decision to become part of the family office community. During that time I have had the chance to attend nine different conferences put on by seven different conference organizers and had the chance to meet close to 300 families. By going through this process I have learned a number of things, the most important — and it makes 100 percent sense to me — being that there is a major family office trend toward direct investing in lieu of investing in funds.

Family offices are moving away from funds as a result of fees, transparency issues, nonalignment of interests and the inability to understand all of the investments within the fund. Because of these issues (and a few others), family offices are moving toward direct investments, co-investments and partnering with other families in the specific business in which each family created its wealth.

A recent Bloomberg article titled “Wealthy Families Have