Hedge Fund PowerPoint Improvement Tips

Hedge Fund PowerPoint Improvement Tips

One of the more frequent questions that we get through the prime brokerage firm I am with and through the Hedge Fund Consulting Group is about how to improve PowerPoint presentations so that managers can more effectively raise assets from wealth managers, family offices and institutions. The advice is always different based on the strategy, targeted channel of capital and current state of marketing materials but there are common threads which come up within every conversation.

Below please find a few of the most common tips which I often provide to fund managers looking to improve their PowerPoint presentations:

• Update your PowerPoint quarterly, most potential investors will have most likely already seen your one pager which is updated monthly. The presentation should mention your performance but the main purpose of it is to present your team's pedigree, investment process and risk controls. Hire a professional editor to spend 1 hour reviewing the presentation after each major review, this costs less than $100.
  

• 3 Areas of Focus: As mentioned within the bullet point above the three areas of focus within your presentation should be team pedigree and experience, investment process and risk controls. Many managers tend to be very high level while describing their investment process and risk controls, often times using terms which are seen too often within generic industry presentations. You have to let out enough of your secret sauce within your marketing materials so that others know there is actually something there. Solid returns alone, even within these recent markets is not enough, you must provide some explanation of your consistent process, system and parameters for operating. Please see the following bullet points for advice on each of the three most important sections of your PowerPoint presentation

• Team Pedigree: Take the time to describe all of the relevant experience that your team holds and try to explain those experiences in ways that mesh well with your firm's investment process and approach to managing risk. Many times certain types of experience can be valuable to managing a portfolio of investments but many times that connection needs to be spelled out within the presentation. If after creating this section you realize that your team consists of just one or two professionals without a long industry track record consider beefing up your close advisory board with industry veterans and experts in risk and portfolio management. Many times investors will ask how much of a fund principal's own assets are invested within the funds, regardless of the exact dollar amount if 80-90%+ of your own liquid assets are invested within this fund check with your compliance officer about noting this within your presentation materials, many investors turn to hedge funds due to the alignment of interests and providing evidence of this within your fund sometimes helps. It is important to retain capital raising talent as well, but without proper portfolio and risk management professionals or advisory professionals in place you may just spin your wheels. As you expand your team make sure and include a team hierarchy tree to your presentation, this may include your advisory team and a few service providers or research groups which you work with daily and rely upon for operations.
  

• Investment Process: This is the most common area of PowerPoint presentations which needs improvement. I have found it easiest to try to break your investment process into 3-5 steps which could then as appropriate be broken down further during a due diligence phone call or within meetings with potential investors. I would start with a single page displaying the 3-5 step investment process your firm uses, I would follow this by 1-2 pages explaining each step of the process in great detail. Described the tools you follow, the decision making process, research inputs, parameters for refining the universe of potential investments and triggers that may affect how the portfolio is constructed at each step. Following this consider adding another page to the PowerPoint on buy and sell decision triggers, when do you trim a position? When do you sell? When are positions cleared out completely? What stop loss provisions are in place? Providing a few trading case studies within this part of the PowerPoint may be helpful. Use real life examples from the previous quarter and update these frequently so that analysts will be able to read into your decisions in context of the recent market conditions.
  

• Risk Management Techniques: Your risk management techniques can be placed within a separate section of the presentation or tacked on to the end of your investment process section within your PowerPoint. It is hard to go over-board on explaining with granularity what risk management techniques your firm employees. Start with the status quo, what tools, research, stop loss provisions and systems do you use? Next move on to proprietary models you may be using, exclusive trading research or experience which provides additional insight into how to manage risk within your portfolio.

• More is More. It is often better to go overboard with details on your investment process and risk management details rather than not provide enough information. That said, never let your presentation grow to over 25 pages unless you have 3 or more products being presented within a single presentation. Getting your PowerPoint right is about balancing transparency and granularity with confusion and information-overload. Everyone is busy and often getting someone to invest 3 minutes to review your one pager can be a challenge of its own.

Creating a solid PowerPoint presentation is a task of continual improvement, but if you start with the tips above it should set you above 50% of the sub $200M hedge funds that we often speak with.

For dozens of additional marketing and sales resources please see our Hedge Fund Marketing Guide or visit http://ThirdPartyMarketing.com.

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Tags: Hedge Fund PowerPoint Presentation, Creating a Fund Marketing PowerPoint Presentation, Using PowerPoint to Create Marketing Materials, Investment Fund Marketing, hedge fund, hedge funds