By Ken Akoundi and kartik uchil “There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” ― Mahatma Gandhi Introduction It has been increasingly apparent that investment offices need to define certain basics to have a more efficient dialogue with vendors. Without it, ample time is spent defining, in mid-conversation, what…

By Ken Akoundi “Ignoring facts does not make them go away.” — Fran Tarkenton What’s happening? Technologically speaking, something has happened in the last few years. The long-term investor community has gone through a shift: they are upgrading their investment office technology out of the 1990s into the 2010s. What does this…

By Ken Akoundi and Kartik Uchil [0] “We have to understand the ubiquity of energy in everything we do.” - Ernest Moniz Introduction The Selfish theme has been on my mind, thinking of one of my earlier readings, Selfish Gene, where all genes by definition and for survival have to take…

Originally appeared in the June 2009 Edition of Journal of Risk (Defunct). Risk management is relatively simple in its essence: what is the probability of an event occurring, and, if it happens how badly will it hurt? However, if we consider how we estimate probabilities and losses, the answers to…

By Ken Akoundi and Kartik Uchil “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” ― Socrates Knowledge in the investment office It has been increasingly apparent that investment offices need to define certain basic definitions to have a more efficient dialogue. Without it, ample time is spent defining, in mid-conversation, what each party…

Why tech implementations fail and how to avoid them. — By Ken Akoundi and Josh Smith “I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.” - Ruth Bader Ginsburg “We are not perfect, nor should we pretend to be.” - Dr. Travis Bradberry Most institutional investors have been or will be exposed to a technology decision at some…

Wrong nomenclature = confusion — By Ken Akoundi and Kartik Uchil Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. - Isaac Newton With one of our CIO clients, we were discussing the Investec vendors we had recently been considering and how annoying it was that they…

A cheeky interpretation of investment office problems “it’s the engines captain she can’t take much more of this “. - Scotty Long-term investment offices often suffer from endemic technology and operations processes. Some are cognizant of the problem; others bury their head in the sand and hide behind a veil…

Sales Advice to my 20-year-old Self — Selling is something we do for our clients — not to our clients. - Zig Ziglar The Long-Term Investors (also known as allocators) constitute an elusive and potentially large market opportunity (i.e., think every Family Office, Endowment, Foundation, Pension, and Sovereign Wealth Fund -in all 30k+ entities controlling over 70…