Ron Biscardi and Katie O'Reilly - Maximizing Value at Conferences (EP.425)

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2:32Hello, I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. This show is an open exploration of the people and process behind capital allocation. Through conversations with leaders in the money game, we learn how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital. You can join our mailing list and access premium content at CapitalAllocators.com. All opinions expressed by TED and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of capital allocators or their firms. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

3:11Clients of capital allocators or podcast guests may maintain positions in securities discussed on this podcast. The beginning of a new year brings with it time for reflection and the renewal of rituals. We reflect on our personal and professional lives, set goals for the coming year, and start sprinting towards those goals, hopefully with enough time to calibrate our personal GPS. One part of the ritualistic sprint is conference season. Industry leaders gather at Davos for the World Economic Forum and Miami for iConnection's Global Alts in January. in Beverly Hills for Milken and May, in Sun Valley for Allen & Company in the summer, and at many other locations throughout the year.

3:54We'll be doing the same at our Capital Allocators CIO Summit in April, Senior Decision Makers Summit in June, Capital Allocators University in July, and Small and Emerging Manager Summit in September. So as you get ready to leave the starting blocks, it's a good time to pause and think about how you optimize your time and budget at industry events. At Capital Allocators University in December, Hank hosted a panel with Ron Biscardi and Katie O 'Reilly to discuss how to think about, plan, and maximize your time and value at conferences. Today's show shares their panel discussion from Capital Allocators University.

4:33Before we get going, we have some exciting news at Capital Allocators. We're hiring. We are looking for a head of business development to really lead all relationship building efforts with you. our community, the followers in the institutional investment space. The role will involve all aspects of external facing engagements. That's our gatherings, whether it's our summits or our universities, from planning to leading correspondence with managers and allocators, to marketing the events that have open registration, to hosting. The role will also collaborate with existing sponsors and establish new sponsor relationships.

5:10And then the role will take on any new initiatives that arise. We're always experimenting with new things, and we anticipate this person being a leader in those new initiatives. Ideal candidates are someone with five to 10 years of experience in financial services or investment management, especially in client-facing roles. That could be investor relations, gap intro, maybe it's software sales to institutional investors. Really what's most important is that this person is passionate about our mission of bridging knowledge gaps and making valuable connections for institutional investors. and without question, they are a fan of the podcast.

5:44The job spec is in the show notes if you're interested in learning more and applying. It's also on our website at capitalallocators.com slash about. That's capitalallocators.com slash about. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. Thanks so much for spreading the word about Capital Allocators and our head of business development job opening. Please enjoy Hank's conversation with Ron Biscardi and Katie O 'Reilly. Our first panel, we have Ron Biscardi and Katie O 'Reilly. Ron is the CEO and founder of iConnections. iConnections hosts the world's largest cap intro event, Global Alts, every January in Miami.

6:22They also have a pretty slick mobile app that powers all of the capital allocators events that we host and keeps the industry connected throughout the year. Katie O 'Reilly spent 15 years at the Milken Institute running their global conference. And now at ProSec, manages a group called Conference Concierge, where they advise asset managers on the conference circuit, on how to execute their strategy and what they're attempting to accomplish. There are not two other people who have better perspective on the investment conference circuit than Ron and Katie. Welcome, Ron and Katie.

7:01Katie, I want to start with you. When you're advising clients on approaching the next calendar, how are you evaluating conferences for your clients? What are the criteria that you use? First of all, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. When I joined ProSec, ProSec had a pretty robust strategy for maximizing conferences because our business is really reputation and brand management, mostly for financial firms. And so the way that ProSec approached conferences on behalf of clients was mostly thinking about thought leadership and access to media, which are two big buckets. But the other piece of it that we built with Conference Concierge was really the fundraising and business development piece.

7:42So how firms should be thinking about approaching conferences and how to get the most out of it. And oftentimes I find, I talk to clients who are going to conferences and don't have a clear strategy of what they're trying to accomplish. So a lot of times the conversation was, yeah, we went to this conference, we didn't get much out of it. And now RPM doesn't want to go again. So I think having a clear strategy is a big piece of it. We built a database of probably now 1 ,500 conferences all over the world that we track according to four criteria for asset managers. So it's access to LPs, meaning are you going to meet LPs you otherwise wouldn't or at such scale that it becomes inefficient not to be there?

8:22That's one. The second is access to deal flows or strategic partners? Are you going to either gather some intelligence or meet with potential partners at a scale that, again, makes it inefficient to be there? The third is branding and thought leadership. So that's, will your CEO or whoever is speaking be on a panel that is a panel of their peers that just by association lifts the brand? So it's not just logo, it's what is the thought leadership of that? And then the last is media and access to journalists, which is not always the criteria. The other piece of it is thinking about there's a difference between what I would call a marquee conference and an industry-focused conference.

9:02So most conferences are not going to check all four boxes that I just talked about. That's probably half a dozen conferences in the world. You could be happy with getting two in one event. That may be worth it depending on what the cost is. But when you think about a marquee conference, there's ones like I would say the milk and conference in LA, maybe FII in Riyadh, Davos. These are the types of events that almost regardless of industry are good for a CEO to be at. And then there's looking at the industry events and conferences and you have a separate prism through which you evaluate them. Across those four criteria, how do those become more of a priority or less of a priority depending on fund size?

9:43That's a good question. It's not only about fund size. Fund size in the sense that it relates to your budget is important to think about. Let's take Milken, for example. A lot of the big private equity firms go. They have a lot of passes. They speak. The meetings they're doing with LPs there are so efficient because all the pension funds are there and they're speaking on panels. They're checking multiple boxes. There are some firms that come in the mid-market private equity, let's say, who come and feel like we're just completely lost in the crowd here. Those are the firms we say to hire us so we can help you figure out how to do it.

10:20But there are others. We had a client who they were probably two, three billion assets under management. They were exceptional at doing this conference. So it's not only about fund size. It's about what do you want to accomplish and how good are you or your founder, whoever's going at building relationships and looking at it over the long term. They weren't going and then saying, oh, well, we didn't get any tickets out of that for one year, so we're not going back. That's not the right way to look at it. Ron, I'm curious, the same question specific to global alts. How do you see larger firms approach global alts?

10:57How do you see smaller firms approach global alts? Well, I think the larger firms are better equipped to take an approach similar to what Katie was describing. They just have more manpower. They have more experience. They know they have to make the investment up front. I think what our cap intro events have helped all fund sizes do is prepare well in advance because that's really what you're talking about. At the end of the day, if you think you're going to go to a conference and show up the day of and get the same out of it as the person who's been working it for two months, it's not going to happen.

11:32At our events, our scheduler opened two weeks ago for the LP side, just yesterday for the GP side. We have 1 ,500 meetings scheduled already among those participants. And these people will spend the next six weeks scheduling another 15 ,000, 16 ,000 meetings. So long before you get in the room, you have to be thinking about who do I want to meet, why do I want to meet them, and planning ahead, then the other elements that Katie described are just as important. They're not as obvious because, of course, asset managers want to meet with LPs primarily. But if there are strategic partnership opportunities, if there are just opportunities to build your brand and do a dinner, all these things really need to be considered well in advance.

12:22And I have an engineering background, so I relate a lot. to the PMs who run funds because they're super analytical. They're very math oriented. They don't place a lot of value in marketing that they consider to be soft stuff, but it's super essential. Really at the core, it's all about building your brand. And the firms who grow and build amazing businesses really pay attention to the brand building. And they connect all of these elements to that one thing. The bigger firms, I guess by definition, they've figured a lot of this out. But there are smaller firms who do it incredibly well. Actually, one person who I think we all know comes to mind is Daniel Dart, who's, first of all, this guy went to jail, his conviction got overturned.

13:11He's got an amazing story. And he's now running a$5 million venture fund. He is literally everywhere. And he works the events like no one I've ever seen. And he knows everyone. He is so far above where he should be in terms of his network. Yeah, that's a great example. It's shocking. And he's a$5 million venture fund. Theoretically, no one should want to talk to him. So you just have to really spend that time up front. It makes a gigantic difference. When folks registered for this cohort, we asked for questions and topics that they wanted to discuss with their peers and with our panels. And probably the number one topic was how do you get an LP's attention?

13:56And so I'm curious from both of your perspectives, we can start with you, Ron. What advice would you give to anyone attending an iConnections event of how you get an LP's attention? So I think the first thing you have to do is you have to go into this with the proper mindset. You are not selling something that flies off the shelves. This is a super long sales cycle, possibly the longest sales cycle of anything in the economy. We hear stories all the time about people who met four years ago, five years ago, and then the timing was right, and then a transaction takes place. So I feel like the first thing you have to do, because I think this creates the right vibe with the LPs.

14:42You have to go into it just assuming this is going to take a really long time and I'm really here just to make friends. I'm here to make friends, build relationships, get my product and my story, my strategy, my vision in front of as many LPs as possible so that when the timing is right for them, they'll remember me. So I don't think of it as you're going to do something that is earth shattering. We don't have to be that smart. We don't have to be that creative. It's really go into it knowing I want to make friends and pay it forward as much as possible. I mean, the master of this, of course, is Rahul.

15:23Rahul pays it forward to the LP community still to this day. And he's raised more money than anyone I know. He's constantly thinking about ways to help the LPs have a better experience, do their jobs better, constantly sending articles and information, getting in front of that audience. I think it's really much more about the basic blocking and tackling of making friends, being supportive, and staying in front of them versus some brilliant idea that's going to dramatically differentiate you. I mean, at the end of the day, you have to have good numbers. That's the minimum bar to get into the room.

16:01But in general, the business isn't really that different from any other business over the long term. People buy from people they like. They buy from people they want to do business with. And I feel like we've seen the most success from people who they know they're in it for the long haul. They constantly work it. They're constantly in front of that audience. Yeah, I agree with a lot of what Ron said. Don't overthink it. You're trying to make a relationship. You're trying to make friends. And I think that takes some of the pressure off. You don't have to walk into these events and have the most amazing idea.

16:33No one wants to sit down at a dinner table and be pitched to. So people think of networking, like probably if I asked all of you to say the first word that comes to mind when you hear networking, they're all going to be negative words because everyone thinks of it as, ew, I don't want to do that. But it's basically just building relationships, being curious about people, being someone people want to spend time with. Because to Ron's point, this is a performance business for sure, but lots of people perform really well. So what's going to be your edge beyond performance? And a lot of times it's your relationships.

17:05We built ProSec on the back of convening and Jen, who's our founder, I would say spends 50 % of her time just doing that, organizing salon dinners, making sure we have interesting people coming to them because that's how we get business. And Mike Milken, who I worked for for 15 years. I mean, my joke with Ron was people think he founded the high yield markets. He was actually the world's best event planner. That's what he spent all his time doing. And the most stressful meetings with him were not about fundraising or budgets or content. It was, I want to see your dinner seating map. And why did you put this person next to that person?

17:39What do you know about them? What do they do? What do they want out of their life? Who are they married to? How many kids do they have? Where'd they go to school? What are they going to say about us when they leave this dinner? And I learned so much from that. For the folks that are attending any of these conferences, and they have to go back to their CEO or their CIO and talk about what happened, talk about where there might be new opportunities. How do you balance that need for results from a conference with what you just said about the importance of network? Where if anyone goes back to their CIO or CEO and says, well, I don't have any new opportunities, but I met 10 really great people, what's their CIO or CEO going to say?

18:20It depends a lot on the personality of the person running the firm. And if that's the CIO and they don't understand the value of network, you have to educate them. And maybe that's just sharing some articles, sharing statistics. You're not always going to be able to say, I went to a conference and then point the line back to say, that's how we got this investment. But the truth is that that's how people build businesses. You have to demonstrate the proof. Start small. I think it depends on where you are in the cycle, what size the firm is, and where they are in their own development, where they are in the investment cycle.

18:57If you were trying to sell private equity and you had great numbers over the last two or three years, it's been really, really hard. In most cases, not because of the firm doing anything wrong, as much as the market for private equity has just been really difficult. There haven't been enough exits, so there's not enough free cash flow. on the LP side to make that next commitment. You have to understand, I think, where your business is in the cycle and where the market cycle is and be in it for the long game. If you're in it for the long game, you can navigate anything. I would say if you're a marketer working for a PM who sends you to a conference and is upset that you didn't come back with tickets, you should start looking for a new job.

19:41That's not going to work. Obviously, the founder of the firm is everything. It's okay to have an aggressive mindset. And of course, the industry is, by definition, a lot of type A personalities who want to make stuff happen as fast as possible. I get that. But you have to be realistic because I think what it does is turns you into the person Katie described, who you definitely never want to be. You don't want to be the person at dinner pitching everyone your fund. If you want to turn off LPs, just do that. going back to Daniel Dart, the reason everyone loves him, he doesn't pitch anyone anything.

20:14He literally is just making friends and having fun. He's interesting. So I've seen that be a much more effective approach. Ron, you mentioned the difficult fundraising environment, especially on the private side. You collect a lot of data at iConnections. I'm curious what that data has told you about where we are in the fundraising cycle and what's of interest to the folks that are attending your events? So we created something we call punching score. So this is basically if say event-driven funds were 10 % of the funds in an event, we assume they should get at least 10 % of the meetings. If they get more, they're punching above their weight.

20:55If they get less, they're punching below their weight. We have this based on AUM, based on geography, basically any characteristic that we capture on a fund. And there's a lot that we capture. we can calculate a punching score. This is an important thing to start to get a feel for where you want to go. What's the best use of your time? We just had our Asia event in November. And what we noticed that was interesting in Asia is they definitely lean towards more liquid strategies. If you're running a private equity fund, Asia right now, based on our data, is not probably the best place to spend your time.

21:34Miami last year, so January of 24, Global Macro got basically twice the number of meetings that they were supposed to based on the percentage of funds in the event. But across the board, I think you're going to see, well, most of this is liquid stuff. I do feel like what we're hearing anecdotally through the IR team is probably pointing towards a resurgence of private equity. I think PE is going to have a better year in 25 than they've had certainly for the last two or three. So we're thinking about turning these into real research reports. If anyone's interested, Hank can put you in touch with us and we're happy to put you on the list to send these to you as we formalize it.

22:21Katie, curious what's top of mind for your clients in prep for next year? What are you hearing? What are you seeing about their priorities, their challenges? When COVID was happening, there was a lot of hand-wringing about our events gone or their conferences going away, et cetera. And because of all the shifts in terms of how people work now, the vast majority of people work in some type of hybrid model. I think conferences and events are even more important because we don't interact the way we used to. So any opportunity to mix and have in-person interaction is a lot more valuable than it used to be.

22:59So that's the first thing I would say. I think in terms of the season coming up, regardless of what markets are doing, whether it's a tough year for private equity or going to be a great year, there's a need to constantly be in front of LPs. They're always thinking about LPs, whether they're fundraising or not, and building relationships. I think the other trend I would say is the Middle East, almost all of our clients who are raising money are focused on the Middle East and how to build relationships there. And we actually opened an office in Abu Dhabi partly to support that, just because we have so many clients that care about it.

23:35We're doing the same in Singapore. I think the Middle East has been a huge focus for sure. I feel like retail. I hear a lot about retail. I don't know that I agree that these are necessarily the best strategies though, for a lot of funds. We've done three events now in Abu Dhabi. We're partnered with Abu Dhabi Global Markets at their finance week. So we're thrilled to be there and there is a ton of interest. But I haven't really heard a lot of success stories yet. I feel like there's been a lot of travel. There've been a lot of meetings. I'm not really hearing as much as I expected to hear about flows.

24:15The funds at the top of the game are still, I think, doing really well there, but they've been there for 20 years. KKR, Blackstone, Carlisle, the next tier down, if you're a$20 billion fund, a$50 billion fund, and you don't have the same brand power as those firms. I'm not hearing the stories that they went over and had a lot of success over the last few years. And retail have a similar feeling about it. I think everyone is excited about getting retail flows. They're generally considered to be stickier in some ways. But I feel like, again, it's a category that tends to buy the biggest brands. And I wonder a firm that just doesn't have that same brand power, if their time would be better spent just sticking to the institutional market and doing the basic blocking and tackling.

25:11But for sure, those two areas have been a very strong focus. One closing question for each of you before we turn it over to Q &A from the group. What's one piece of advice that you have for the folks looking to the conference circuit in 2025? Don't underestimate the value of just having a plan and knowing why you're going. What does success look like? Because if you don't know that, it's hard to know if it's been useful. We have clients that spend millions of dollars on conferences. They get to the end of the year, shrug their shoulders, what do we get out of it? They spend it all again because there's just this momentum to it.

25:49But obviously, smaller firms don't have that luxury. So just don't underestimate the value of being strategic, having a plan, being prepared. I agree with all that. And I would add to it, I think it's very smart to find event partners. I always found events much more effective when I was part of a group. When I was on the fundraising side years ago, we would just partner up. We'd make friends with strategies or funds that were not competitive with what we were doing. And now you've expanded your reach dramatically when you're showing up at an event and you're co-hosting cocktails, you're co-hosting a dinner, you're getting information flow from that group in a way that just makes the conference much more effective, much more impactful.