Lisa Vioni, founder and CEO of Hedge Connection, has been as busy as ever serving investors and her asset management clients in building relationships that will outlast the current “shelter-in-place” orders that are impacting so many.
She has been fielding an increasing number of inquiries from potential clients on how to conduct business virtually, but perhaps she has best done this by example in building a series of timely YouTube interviews with investors, managers and industry thought leaders, including Peter Fusaro, partner of ESG and Impact at AV Group and Andrew Gitlin, CEO of PAAMCO Launchpad.
Prior to setting up a camera in her ‘den’ though, Vioni has been a leader in creating and executing virtual cap intro events for several years. In fact, she has patented the firm’s technology in producing these unique web-based events.
Over the past 12 months, she has completed four virtual cap-intro events with over 750 managers and 550 allocators participating. The latest event had more than 235 participants – including 114 funds and 122 investors. Hedge Connection reports 520 interactions that took place.
Prime brokers, administrators, and other large institutions are now showing interest in licensing the firm’s patented online investor-introduction system as a SaaS solution to facilitate connections between their private fund manager clients and qualified investors.
The New York area company is planning on having several more virtual events in 2020 and are investing heavily into additional technology that will include video, chat rooms and live streaming.
“We are in the midst of a social sea change and how we live and work going forward is evolving before our eyes,” said Vioni. “As the weeks go on, we see that we can efficiently work from home while interacting virtually. When life goes back to normal, we will find that the psychology of what it means to work remotely will be permanently altered creating a more productive and versatile workforce.”
Hedge Connection has sharpened its technological toolbox since its founding in 2005 and recently has added an administration tool that displays real-time engagement in the tracking of the phone meetings, distribution list requests and downloads of marketing materials over the course of the online cap-intro event.
The new software tool provides a comprehensive snapshot of the investment needs of participating investors including strategies of interest, amounts allocated in funds, geographic location and many other important analytics, according to Vioni.
Steve Adang, CIO of outsourced CIO firm Anchor Pacific Investment Management Corp. was a recent participant in a Hedge Connection virtual cap-intro event.
“Our company is located outside the New York hub of hedge funds, so being able to use Hedge Connection’s virtual cap-intro platform to connect with a wide variety of managers was hugely beneficial,” said Adang.
He said the system was easy to use and Anchor Pacific Investment Management was able to analyze a relatively large sample of hedge fund returns to determine which ones they wanted to connect with.
“All in all, we ended up connecting with 15-20 managers through Hedge Connection’s virtual summit,” he added.
