Suggestions
Jan Voss
Managing Director @ Cape May Wealth | Head of FO @ BLN Capital | Exploring trends and developments in wealth management, family offices & more
Jan Voss is the Managing Director of Cape May Wealth and the Head of Family Office at BLN Capital.3 He is an experienced professional in wealth management and investment strategies, based in Berlin.
Jan holds a Bachelor of Science in International Management Double Degree from ESB Business School, Reutlingen University, and a BSc. in Business Administration with a Major in Management Information Systems from Drexel University.
His career highlights include:
- Managing Director at Cape May Wealth since May 20233
- Head of Family Office at BLN Capital since July 20203
- Senior Investment Manager at Team Europe Management GmbH from December 2019 to June 20203
- Financial Analyst in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs from June 2016 to June 20183
Jan is also an active author on LinkedIn with over 15,000 followers, regularly sharing insights on family offices, venture capital, and asset allocation.1 He recently launched a newsletter through Cape May Wealth to share his expertise in wealth management.24
At BLN Capital, Jan leads a three-person investment team focused on long-term investments across various asset classes, managing over 100M€ in assets with a portfolio of 30+ companies.1
Highlights
Here in Berlin, many of the affluent entrepreneurs that I work with face an interesting conundrum: They their made money in asset classes into which they don’t want to invest anymore. 💰
Venture capital no longer feels like the ‘guaranteed return’ as it did prior to interest rate hikes. Real estate is faced with price declines and the burden of higher interest rates. Despite continued growth and profitability, even the outlook for “Mag 7” stocks seem uncertain in the light of a looming recession and a US election. And crypto… well, that’s a whole other story.
To a degree, it is understandable - I know many successful entrepreneurs who actively wanted to stay away from their industry or asset class after making their money there. But it becomes more challenging when all their investing experience comes from only those asset classes. Where do you put your money? Or if you’re just less optimistic on those “high beta” asset classes - what is the right balance? How do you structure your portfolio?
In my search to best tackle such questions, I have become a proponent of the Aspirational Investor Framework. Rather than thinking about asset allocation as something scientific (“what is the right allocation to hedge funds to the second decimal?”), it attempts to help a client define their goals - ranging from short-term safety goals (Safety Bucket), to long-term financial planning to maintain their lifestyle after inflation (Market Bucket), to their entrepreneurial and personal desires (Aspirational Bucket).
In the last months in discussions with (prospective) clients as well as other financial advisors, I’ve had numerous chances to put it into practice - and in return, face many questions on some of its intricacies. In posts over the next weeks, I’ll address some of the most common questions on the framework that I’ve received.
This week on the Cape May Wealth Weekly newsletter, we'll tackle the most frequent question: How to fit today’s income requirements into the Aspirational Investor Framework. Link in the comments - enjoy!
#aspirationalinvestor #assetallocation
Why family offices (don't) raise external capital (Part 3): Service - knowing your priorities 👨🍳
This week on Cape May Wealth Weekly, we're talking about the many reasons why FOs end up (or don't end up) raising external capital.
As I already mentioned yesterday: Entrepreneurs reaaaally don't like it when you tell them no. In the context of their own FO, there might be a number of reasons for something like this. It might be when their family office staff tells them that an investment they like didn’t make it through their due diligence check. Or it might be when a lawyer or tax advisor advises them against an idea of theirs.
But in a multi-family office, it might be when their staff tells them that they can’t help them right now - they have to help another client first.
The point of a family office is to be quick and diligent in responding to the needs of your owners. In the case of a single family office, those priorities are clear: Even if there might be a more important investment-related task, you typically try to deal first with any urgent personal needs of the family. Even if there’s more than one owner (think a family or a group of founders), this statement typically holds true. It might involve a bit of smart time management, but there’s typically no conflicts about division of time among their staff.
But how about a family office turned into a multi-family office? It should still be the key priority of the family office staff to serve the founding family, but how do you know to divide your time properly between the founding family, and their desire for you to go out and onboard (and properly serve) external capital? No matter how the size of external clients compares to the family’s wealth, there might be challenges: If new clients are smaller than the family, they might think that they are still the key priority. But even if the new clients are equally large or bigger than the family, they are the founding family - they should come first. From my experience, a problem in the making, whether it comes up sooner than later.
And interestingly, this tends to be the biggest reason - not scale, not structure - due to which I’ve seen entrepreneurs decide against external capital. Especially if they’ve worked with their family office for a few years, they’d rather not share them, especially if it’s a working system generating returns and a satisfying level of service.
And to me, it's unsurprising: If you’ve reached a level of wealth that can not only justify a family office, but one large enough that you consider opening it to external capital, there’s a good chance that the additional returns from external capital will not move the needle for you anymore. So if entrepreneurs then decide that they still want to go ahead, it’s for the right reasons: For the desire to build something new as a successful investor, for the sake of being a successful investor, and not just for more money.
#fundraising #privateequity #familyoffice
People also viewed
Related People
Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.