New Managers April 2012

Seeders Corner
A new series: the manager of a seeding fund speaks to Opalesque

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A very clean offering

This month, Opalesque talks to the co-founder of the Harvest Fund.

The Harvest Fund creates and manages private equity investments in emerging hedge fund firms. It is run by newly formed firm Harvest Funds Management, LLC (HFM), based in Westport, CT, an affiliated company of Moody Aldrich Partners, LLC. HFM is supported by Wilshire Associates Inc., which advises on manager research and manages the managed account platform.

Christopher Kelley

Christopher Kelley, co-founder and managing partner of the Harvest Fund, brought in more than twenty five years of private equity and hedge fund seeding experience to the business. Previously, he was co-founder and managing partner of Weston Capital Management's hedge fund seeding business where he incubated over ten firms and grew the platform to $1.2bn. He was also founder and president of Value Asset Management (VAM), a Bank of America-backed private equity holding company that took majority interests in premier investment firms.

"The Harvest Fund is a strategic type of investment fund," he told Opalesque in an interview. "What we want to do is both seed firms that have 'x' amount of capital, and provide acceleration capital for, for example, a firm that has already a quarter of a billion in AUM and wants to start to new fund."

The Harvest Fund has a three-year lock-up and so must attract 'sticky money.' It has U.S. onshore and offshore feeders, and a master fund. There is also a one-year liquidity lock share class targeted for high-net-worth individuals.

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.