As I reflect on the year, the foundational objective of 2023 for GPFO was building out our platform to better serve the active members now in 20+ jurisdictions. I wanted to take a moment to share some of the challenges, why and how we went about it.
As a private network that has been built over 15 years, GPFO is based on close-knit connections and personal referrals. The boom in active members over the past few years has posed some challenges, as we work to keep the sense of community and continue to grow our offering for members around the world.
We have also had a treasure trove of resources internally that most members were unaware existed or under-utilised since our inception in 2009. With this in mind, in 2023 we built out some major products and features – and some were more surprising than others in their impact.
• The Members Portal & Industry Portal: Launched in May 2023, the portal aimed to bring together all the GPFO resources in one platform. It is arguably the best UX in the industry, something that has taken a lot of iteration and refinement. It has delivered an excellent user experience and has thankfully led to high usage and a safe home to our content library of 900+ presentations, 350+ articles and 21 magazine editions as well as all our other resources that I outline below.
• Family Office Jobs Board: Launched in August 2023, this is the largest single source of roles exclusively in single family offices and private multi-family offices around the globe. It was a project that came together quite quickly, but has taken time to flesh out. We aimed to solve the painful problem for seasoned family office executives when searching for a role within a family office. When searching keywords on jobs boards, they are mixed with roles at asset managers and service providers with family office facing roles. There was no single source of roles in family offices. It has been a pleasant surprise to watch the community reinforcement action of this product as family offices can find high quality candidates more efficiently, and candidates have a comprehensive source of curated new roles in family offices each month. It blew way past our expectations.
• Research & Reports Database: Launched in July 2023, the database holds data from 300+ reports, categorised by geography, publisher, and topics covered since 1997. It covers topics from family office asset allocation, to family office executive compensation. Over the past 15 years we had collated what we understand to be the largest repository of research and reports on family offices and the global wealth ecosystem. We are delighted to be able to turn this in-house resource into a valuable product for our members and partners -providing access to the right data in a few clicks.
• Industry Newsletter: There was a threefold increase in subscribers in 2023. This was actually launched externally in June 2021, but 2023 was the year it blossomed. We have published a version of this newsletter in various forms to members since 2009 but we took the decision to widen its dissemination to support the wider family office ecosystem. In the past year our content was seen 340k+ times across our platforms, which was certainly helped by the tailwinds of peak interest in family offices. We are pleased to see this publication cement itself within the ecosystem, and among our suite of publications.
Suffice to say that this year we have a lot more planned, including celebrating 15 years of GPFO!
Hugo King-Oakley helps manage the GPFO community and covers much of the private markets activity in the network
