Why It’s Harder Than It Looks
 

This week I spoke to Reshma Casale, the CIO of RCap, the family office of Fanatics founder Michael Rubin. She is a nominee for Family Office Investor of the Year – one of the categories celebrated at the Allocators’ Choice Awards in September.

She was cited by peers for her disciplined approach and ability to navigate the complexities of family office investing. “She makes it look easy,” one nominator said.

Casale pushed back on that perception. “It’s a lot harder to be in a family office than to be on the GP side,” she said, “Even if that appears counterintuitive.” With a family office, “nothing is linear.”

Casale took the role at RCap about five years ago, having previously worked in growth equity, and was tasked with building the portfolio from scratch. In growth equity, she said, the mandate was very clear: find one or two high quality deals a year with palatable terms and be a good board member.

But at the family office, her mandate is in a constant state of flux. When working on behalf of a family, regular changes need to be made based on liquidity needs, what is going on in the markets, and on individuals’ whims.

“It is all these other things that you have to think about. One family might need to take a large distribution because somebody wants to buy a 14^th house,” said Casale. “There are fun problems to solve.”

“There is an opportunity to be a lot more creative, especially if you partner with the right player,” she added.

Casale told me that Rubin approached the establishment of his family office like it was another of his operating companies, giving her an end goal and asking for a business plan that laid out how she planned to get there. She found this to be very alluring.

Currently, Rubin’s stake in Fanatics takes up a large chunk of the family office’s holdings, while the rest is split between liquid public and illiquid private investments.