Billion Dollar Backstory

“Keep me posted.”

Sounds promising. But also... what does that actually mean?

In this Story Snack, Stacy Havener breaks down one of the vaguest phrases in fundraising, and why “keep me posted” should be the start of the conversation instead of your cue to sit back and wait.

Because if an allocator wants you to keep them posted, your next job is figuring out what they actually want updates on.

Listen in to hear:

• The question to ask so “keep me posted” actually means something
• Why waiting until you hit the magic number could mean starting the relationship over from scratch
• How often to follow up (Stacy has a number)
• What to send when there isn’t a huge update to share
• How to stay top of mind without becoming the person they stop opening emails from

This is Story Snacks, a bite-sized series for fund managers who want to get better at strategic storytelling in under 20 minutes a week.

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Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

"The key to business is biting off more than you can chew, then figuring out how to chew it."

Manish Khatta has been running that play for a while now.

Last time he was on the pod, back in 2023, Potomac had just crossed $1B and he was pretty sure they were only getting started.

Three years later? They're past $5B.

And the lessons got a whole lot bigger with it.

Manish is back for a next-chapter conversation about what happens after the growth starts working. When the revenue finally catches up. When hiring gets harder than raising assets. And when the job starts asking you to stop being the operator and actually become the CEO.

In this episode, Manish and Stacy get into:

• Why hiring and stepping into the CEO mindset is infinitely harder than raising assets
• The question Manish asks advisors who say they “can’t grow”
• How firms can actually build relationships and land meetings on social media 
• His new marketing strategy (and why he doesn’t believe in chasing concrete ROI) 
• Why caring what other people think is the biggest roadblock to creating good content
• A pretty wild 2027 announcement Potomac gets to share for the first time 

About Manish Khatta:
Manish Khatta is a quant who has spent his entire career creating and refining technical trading strategies. A lifelong Potomac employee since 2002, he programmed the initial work behind Potomac's mechanical trading systems and now runs the firm as CEO and CIO, where he's known for driving innovation across investments, technology, and brand growth.

He's also a father of four and spends his free time playing tennis and being on the water.

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Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

This conversation was too good to leave in the archives.

In this encore of our Ask an Allocator series, Stacy sits down with Bill Harding, CIO of Jackson National, who oversees $200B in assets and $29.8B in directly managed fund-of-fund assets.

Bill gives us a look inside the mind of an allocator and shares what he’s actually paying attention to when evaluating fund managers, because past performance is only part of the story.

In this episode, Bill and Stacy discuss:

• Bill’s backstory, from financial analyst at a cheese manufacturer to CIO at Jackson National
• What fund managers need to get right when pitching a potential partnership
• Why past performance alone isn’t enough to earn an allocator’s attention
• Why Bill sees culture as a real source of alpha
• The questions fund buyers are asking behind the scenes (and why the most important ones aren’t always quantitative)

If you’ve ever wondered what really matters on the allocator side of the table, this conversation gives you a pretty good look behind the curtain.

About Bill Harding:
Bill Harding, CFA, is Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer at Jackson National Asset Management (JNAM), where he leads asset allocation, portfolio construction, sub-adviser monitoring, and manager research. 

He joined JNAM in 2012 after serving as Head of Manager Research for Morningstar's Investment Management division, and has more than 30 years of experience across JNAM, Morningstar, and Leprino Foods. He holds a B.S. from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an MBA from Loyola University Chicago.

Bill graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business. He holds an MBA from Loyola University Chicago and is a CFA charterholder.

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Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

In the world of M&A, deals tend to get reduced to spreadsheets long before anyone asks about the story or the actual people underneath.

Emily Blue built her whole career on believing maybe we’ve got that backwards.

She started out as a nursing major (until an anatomy syllabus sent her running ), failed the CFA before she passed it, and eventually found herself sitting across the table from some very fancy investment bankers. Then one afternoon, she was standing in an airport after a pitch that had gone really well... wondering why she felt so flat.

A phone call with her friend Ryan Halls changed everything. Eventually, that conversation became Hue Partners, an M&A advisory firm that works exclusively with sellers.

In this episode, Emily and Stacy get into:

➤ The airport phone call that turned into a firm

➤ Why Hue said no to every buyer who wanted to hire them

➤ What happened when a banker called Emily "soft" (and Ryan’s PERFECT comeback)

➤ Why younger, fast-growing firms are exploring partnerships earlier, and why waiting too long can cost you

➤ The real estate analogy that makes a pretty freaking good case for having someone in YOUR corner when you sell

➤ Why wealth firms are starting to look at boutique asset managers as a talent strategy

➤ The "messy middle," and what happens when the story that got you HERE stops fitting where you want to go NEXT

This one is about M&A, but it’s also about relationships, story, and knowing what you actually want to build. And what happens when the way it’s always been done doesn’t feel like the way YOU want to do it.

About Emily Blue:
Emily Blue, CFA, is a math nerd turned M&A disruptor and the co-founder of Hue Partners. She cut her teeth in M&A integrations, pushed back on traditional valuations, and led corporate development, and through every deal one thing stayed true: the best transactions aren't about multiples. They're about people. So she built Hue to put founders first, with no corporate fog and no empty promises, just real partnership before and after the deal.

Outside of work, Emily serves as Board Chair of the Girl Scouts of Northeast Kansas and Northwest Missouri, and advocates through Big Brothers Big Sisters and Newhouse. She has traded Kilimanjaro for toddler trails for now, and lives a chaotic, joyful life with her husband Harrison, their kids, and two doodles.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

Allocators are drowning in manager emails.

Kristof Gleich would know.

Today, he’s President and CIO of $50B Harbor Capital. Before that, he spent eight years leading manager selection at JPMorgan, fielding pitches from managers trying to break through.

So, he's a good person to listen to when it comes to figuring out how to stand out and win over allocators. 

In this Encore episode of Kristof and Stacy discuss: 

• Kristof’s path from physics to finance, how he went from studying physics to landing his first finance job at Goldman Sachs right after 9/11
• What actually makes a fund manager stand out (hint: it’s not tweaking a model or slapping “contrarian” on your deck)
• Why it pays to celebrate even the smallest wins as you grow your fund 
• Harbor Capital’s approach to backing emerging managers early (and why he believes more allocators should follow suit) 

About Kristof Gleich:

Kristof Gleich joined Harbor in 2018 and was appointed CIO of Harbor Capital Advisors in 2020, with oversight of the firm’s investment, distribution, marketing, and executive functions. Before Harbor, he was a managing director and global head of manager selection at JPMorgan Chase. He holds a B.S. in Physics from the University of Bristol and is a CFA charterholder.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

You didn't sign up to be a marketer. You signed up to manage money.

But the second you start your own boutique? Welp…

Marketing, sales, distribution, hiring... they're all your job now too.

Sean Peche knows that struggle firsthand. 

He's the Founder and Fund Manager at Ranmore Funds, a $650M investment boutique where "that's how it's always been done" isn't really a good enough reason to keep doing something.

And that applies to a lot more than how Sean invests. He's challenged a whole lot of the traditional playbook while building the business too.

So what does building a boutique differently actually look like?

In this Encore episode, Sean breaks it all down.

Listen in to hear:

• Why he dedicates one day a week to distribution (and protects the other four for the portfolio)
• The LinkedIn prospecting approach he leaned on before he had a marketing team
• Why his approach to hiring looks very different from your typical asset manager
• How "charitable marketing" lets Ranmore grow its network while doing some good along the way
• The mindset shift that happens when you stop thinking like a fund manager and start thinking like a founder
• Why honesty and humility might be a bigger competitive advantage than this industry gives them credit for

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Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

Ten years ago, Andy Raskin wrote a piece called "The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen."

And Stacy Havener is still thinking about it.

Not because you need to build a SaaS deck, but because the structure underneath it works on allocators too.

Too many pitch decks start with some version of: "Let me tell you all about us."

You go into a long spiel about your fund’s process and performance. Meanwhile, the allocator is sitting there with a very reasonable question: "Okay... why should I care?"

That's the gap Stacy digs into in this Story Snack.

Listen in to learn:

• What a decade-old SaaS sales deck can teach fund managers about raising capital
• Why allocators move faster to avoid pain than to chase upside
• How to frame old way vs. new way without accidentally insulting the allocator
• Why "better" might not be the word you want, and what to say instead

This is Story Snacks, a bite-sized, jam-packed series for fund managers who are ready to master strategic storytelling in under 20 minutes a week.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

Most boutiques market the product. Manish Khatta barely mentions his.

Roughly 90% of what Potomac Fund Management puts out has nothing to do with the funds. No performance charts. No fact sheets. Their most successful piece of content is a five-minute video series about fintech gossip that never says the word Potomac.

It sounds backwards. It's also how Potomac went from around $130 million in 2020 to $1.2 billion today, after more than three decades of hovering in the low hundreds of millions.

In this episode, Manish and Stacy get into:

• What "eyes on brand" actually means, and why product marketing comes second
• The scrappy pandemic video that started it all
•  Why he told his team not to measure ROI for two full years
• The Eminem clip he was told not to play at a conference, and why he played it anyway
•  What happened when Potomac started partnering with its own competitors
• Why he's now pivoting back to postcards, suits, and old-school marketing

About Manish Khatta:
Manish Khatta is a quant who has spent his entire career creating and refining technical trading strategies. A lifelong Potomac employee, he programmed the initial work behind Potomac's mechanical trading systems and now runs the firm as CEO and CIO. He's a father of four who leads an RIA built on content and transparency, and he spends his free time playing tennis and being on the water.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

Should you ever repurpose an old post on LinkedIn?

Short answer: yep.

Slightly more annoying answer: it depends.

Before you copy, paste, and send that post back into the wild, figure out why it flopped the first time. Was it actually a good post the algorithm didn't push out? Or was the post itself a little off? Those are two very different problems.

In this Story Snack, Stacy gets into how she decides which posts deserve another shot, which need a tweak first, and which she'd leave alone.

Listen in to hear:

• The one reason NOT to repost that Stacy isn't buying
• How to distinguish a reach problem from a writing problem
• When a few tweaks will do, and when you need more than that
• Why her short Tuesday posts aren't just chopped-down versions of longer ones
• What working with the LinkedIn algorithm right now

This is Story Snacks: a bite-sized series for fund managers who want to get better at strategic storytelling in under 20 minutes a week.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

What if luck plays a bigger role in fund success than anyone wants to admit? 

Simon Evan-Cook isn’t just throwing that idea out there. He’s lived it. 

He spent years on the allocator side, vetting fund managers and learning what really sticks (hint: it’s not just your track record).  

Now that he’s a fund manager himself, he’s pulling back the curtain on the truth no one wants to say out loud… 
 
Yes, being good at what you do matters, but so does luck, timing, and learning how to stack the odds in your favor.  

In this Episode, Simon and Stacy dig into:  

• Why some of the most skilled fund managers don’t always win 
• 13 ways emerging managers can make their own luck 
• What allocators actually remember after your pitch 
• And why being honest, even when it’s uncomfortable, is the real differentiator 

This is Billion Dollar Backstory: Encore, because some conversations are just too good not to bring back.

About Simon Evan-Cook: 

Simon Evan-Cook is an award-winning multi-asset fund manager. In 2022 he joined Downing to set up and manage the Downing Fox range of funds. Before that he built his reputation at Premier Asset Management from 2006, where he was a senior member of their highly successful multi-asset team. He began his career with Fidelity in the late 90s, before joining Rothschild Asset Management and then Gartmore. 

Simon also writes on investment (and beyond), including a monthly column for Citywire Magazine and his investment blog on Medium.com. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his family and dog, devouring movies and books, and superficially damaging European golf courses. 

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Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus