Modern investor tools (6): Hedge fund investor trends seen through Hedge Connection platform

Modern Investor Tools is a series on technology providers that assist asset allocators.

Founded in 2005, Hedge Connection is New York State-based platform that connects hedge funds and investors online and through events. Through its fund database, the firm offers comprehensive profiles on hedge funds, fund of funds, private equity funds and CTAs completely free of charge. And through its Capital Club, managers can get introduced to investors who belong to the same club.

"The basic business of Hedge Connection is as a marketing platform for these funds," CEO and co-founder Lisa Vioni tells Opalesque. "We are not a third-party marketer, but we give them a platform where they can raise their profile and get access to investors." It took a while for people to adopt the platform in the early days, she continues. "I stepped down as CEO in 2011, we did a big pivot and we re-imagined the way everybody interacted and then we re-launched the company in 2014."

In the last 12 years, she has seen two trends among investors. The first one favors emerging managers, as investors are realizing they are a legitimate investment; the second one not so much.

"This emerging manager sector has really become, in the past three to five years, very viable and sought out by the likes of family offices, although not necessarily the pension funds," she says. "The latter are always going to have issues with investing in small managers, because of the amount of money they have and the fact that they don't want to be a large component of the fund. But we have seen some pension funds, like Ontario Teachers' and others, that have started a fund specifically dedicated to emerging managers because they wan......................

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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.