The Investors Who Are Actually Writing Cheques In H2
The 287 cheque writers your warm intro list doesn't even know exist.
Let’s play a quick game.
Name five venture capital firms. Easy, right? Sequoia. a16z. Benchmark. Founders Fund. Accel. Every founder on the planet can rattle these off before their coffee gets cold.
Now name five family offices.
...
Yeah. That’s the point of this issue.
There are thousands of family offices around the world, private investment vehicles set up by billionaire families to manage and grow their own money. No LPs to report to. No 10-year fund cycles. No committee of associates deciding whether you’re “on brand.” Just a small, quiet team deploying capital on behalf of one family, writing checks when they like something, and staying invisible while they do it.
Collectively, family offices now manage more capital than the entire global venture capital industry. And almost none of them show up on Crunchbase, at Demo Day, or in your warm intro network.
So we did something about it. We spent the last few weeks compiling a working directory of 287 family offices and family holding companies across North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East & Africa, and Asia-Pacific: who runs them, what wealth they came from, where they’re based, and how (if at all) you can find them online.
Here’s a small taste of what’s in it. 👇
🇺🇸 A few you’ll recognize (and a few you won’t)
Cascade Investment / Gates Ventures: Bill Gates. Kirkland, WA. Massive farmland, rail and hotel holdings most people have never connected to Microsoft money.
Bezos Expeditions: Jeff Bezos’s personal venture and growth vehicle, separate from Amazon and Blue Origin entirely.
Emerson Collective: Laurene Powell Jobs. Hybrid investment-and-philanthropy shop that quietly owns The Atlantic.
JAB Holding Company: The Reimann family. The quiet hand behind Krispy Kreme, Keurig, Dr Pepper and half your coffee cabinet.
Kirkbi A/S: The family behind LEGO, holding 75% of the LEGO Group plus a growing renewables and entertainment portfolio.
ICONIQ Capital: San Francisco. The multi-family office for tech founders like Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Hoffman, now running north of $80bn.
That’s six. We have 281 more, including several of the most secretive capital pools on earth, family offices with literally no public footprint at all (we found and flagged those too, because knowing they exist is half the battle).
Why this matters more than your VC target list
Here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody tells founders early enough:
VCs need to say yes to someone every quarter. It’s a numbers game with a fund clock ticking. That’s exactly why the space is crowded, commoditized, and full of founders pitching the same 40 firms.
Family offices operate on a completely different logic:
No fund cycle pressure. They can write a check today, or wait five years for the right thing. Patience is their entire edge.
No committee theater. Many are a principal plus two or three people. If the principal likes it, it moves.
They actively seek deal flow VCs can’t access: direct real estate, private industrials, sports, consumer brands, climate infra, and yes, increasingly, tech.
They’re radically under-pitched. Most founders have never sent a single cold email to a family office. You’d be one of very few doing it right.
The catch? They’re hard to find, harder to research, and impossible to cold-email if you don’t even know they exist under that name.
That’s the entire problem this directory solves.
If you’re raising right now, don’t skip these
Finding the right family office is only half the game. The other half is not blowing it once you’re in the room, and that’s where most founders actually lose the deal. If you’re mid-raise (or about to be), go read these next:
The Number That Kills More Fundraises Than Any Bad Idea: one slide, one metric, and it’s quietly killing raises without founders ever knowing it.
The Quiet Filter That Decides Your Entire Fundraise: every investor runs this before you even open your mouth. Learn it now, not after the “no.”
The Way VCs Actually Calculate Your Valuation: they already have a number in their head before you walk in. Here’s how to hit it.
How Investors Decide If You’re Ready to Raise: it’s not timing, it’s not luck. These are the exact criteria they’re using on you right now.
The Pitch Deck Test Investors Use: the same test gets applied to every deck that crosses their desk, including yours.
What’s actually inside the full directory
The version we’re unlocking for Premium subscribers isn’t a teaser: it’s the whole working file:
✅ 287 entries, organized by region (North America · Latin America · Europe · Middle East & Africa · Asia-Pacific)
✅ Family/principal names, source of wealth, city & country HQ for every entry
✅ Website or verified LinkedIn page where one exists
✅ A one-line note on what each office actually invests in and why it matters
✅ A filterable data view (not just a static list) so you can sort by region, sector, or type: single family office, multi-family office, or holding company
This is the same category of research that costs thousands of dollars a year through institutional data providers. We built it so you don’t need that budget to start.
Start your 7-day free trial → Cancel anytime.
A preview of what’s waiting behind the paywall
We’re not going to spoil all 287. But here’s a taste of the names locked inside the premium version that most founders have genuinely never heard of, several of which are actively looking for direct deals right now:
🔒 A Zurich-based single family office quietly backing biotech spinouts from one of Europe’s most famous generics fortunes
🔒 A Singapore-based family investment arm tied to Southeast Asia’s largest agribusiness conglomerate, with a dedicated venture unit
🔒 A Bay Area tech founder’s personal office, no website, no LinkedIn, completely invisible unless you know its name
🔒 A Gulf-based conglomerate’s London investment arm sitting on stakes in Premier League and consumer brands alike
Every one of those is in the sheet, with a name, a city, and a way to find them.
This is exactly the kind of asset we built Premium for
We don’t gate recaps of news you could’ve read on TechCrunch. We gate the stuff that actually changes your week: proprietary lists, frameworks, and research you can act on the same day you get it.
Premium subscribers get:
The full 287-entry Family Office Directory (this issue)
Every past and future proprietary database, framework and swipe file we publish
Early access to new research before it goes out to the free list
Zero ads, zero fluff, just the operator-grade stuff
Plus full access to the entire Founders Corner archive - 60+ founder tools: every prompt, framework, and teardown we've published on getting a round closed.
If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading, this is the issue to do it on. The directory alone is worth more than a year of Premium if it helps you land even one direct conversation that a VC intro never could.
Download the Family Office Directory
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