How Our Third-Party Marketing Strategy Evolved from $20M to $700M AUM

The right third-party marketing model changes as you scale.

When we were managing around $20m at Systematic Alpha, we hired a generalist third-party marketer.

At the time we honestly did not care much where capital came from — Europe, Asia, wherever.

We just wanted to survive and grow.

Back then, we were focused almost entirely on performance and paid much less attention to presentation materials, investor communication, positioning, DDQs, and the overall institutional side of the business.

Our first third-party marketer helped us improve that side as well, and at that stage, we did not mind paying a retainer.

We viewed it as part of the cost of growth.

By the time we reached roughly $100m AUM, a meaningful portion of those assets had come through that relationship.

But once we reached that next stage of growth, our philosophy changed.

By then our materials were stronger, our institutional process was more developed, and we had become much more comfortable raising capital ourselves.

We became much more selective and increasingly preferred working with people who genuinely believed in the strategy and were willing to work on a success-fee basis.

Instead of broad distribution, we moved toward specialized third-party marketers:
– one focused on Asia (Japan, Hong Kong and broader APAC),
– one focused on Europe,
– one focused on the US.

Different regions behave differently. Different allocators ask different questions.

The distribution model that helps you get to your first $100m is not necessarily the one that helps you get to the next $500m.