Adam Davies, CEO of hedge fund Haverstock Capital, talks about how marketing in the space has moved in the last two decades from lunches to LinkedIn.
Financial Services Forum: How has marketing traditionally been done in the hedge fund space?
Adam Davies, Haverstock Capital: When I started in the industry 18 years ago so much of it revolved around what people talk about as the “gentlemen’s clubs” and that sort of thing.
Most marketers fitted a certain mould and were very effective at what they did, but almost everything revolved around connections—whether through family, friendship, or school. That’s not to say you couldn’t make new connections, but a lot of it centred on that.
The hedge fund world was also very closed. Trying to find information was difficult. If you found a hedge fund website at all, it was usually just a holding page with no real information.
That gives you an idea of how asset raising worked. Everything was behind closed doors. It was all regulated and done properly, but there was no outward-facing or retail marketing. Everything happened through meetings, phone calls, and connections. I was lucky to break into the industry, but it was very elitist. Typically, only people who already knew about hedge funds, or knew someone in the industry, were working in them. People tended to come from very similar backgrounds. That has changed a lot over the last 18 years, but that’s how it felt back then.
You made the point on LinkedIn that the industry has evolved since then and people’s expectations are shaped by consumer journeys like Amazon and other digital experiences. Can you talk more about that evolution?
The things I mentioned aren’t wholly specific to asset raising or marketing, but they’re all important factors. Over the last 18 years, the industry has become more outward-looking. There are probably many reasons for that. The ESG movement played a role, particularly around diversity, although it has fallen slightly out of favour more recently. Even before that, firms were becoming more outward-looking. Investment managers had websites and were hiring people from more varied backgrounds.
Now, if you walk into a typical boutique hedge fund—perhaps with fourteen or fifteen employees—you’ll see much more diversity in terms of gender, background, and ethnicity. That has clear benefits and has influenced how marketing works. Many of the people joining the industry don’t already have extensive networks, and allocators are diversifying in the same way.
Relationships are still crucial, but the way relationships begin has changed. Regulation has also changed, and allocators have become larger and more institutionalised. Smaller firms have had to follow suit and ensure compliance with regulatory frameworks. Technology has also played a big role. Many analysts and senior analysts are now in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. They’ve grown up with technology and are comfortable finding information online quickly. They may be scrolling through LinkedIn in the morning rather than attending events or lunches as a first step.
All these factors have led to a marketing environment that looks much more like a B2C-style journey, at least in its early stages.
Face-to-face meetings have fallen out of favour, and COVID accelerated that. Is digital engagement as effective, or does it need to be combined with more qualitative approaches to win clients?
It’s not a full B2C cycle in hedge funds. It’s more about how initial interactions are made, which can then lead to relationships, lunches, and meetings. It’s about how you’re introduced to people.
I spent two years outside the industry, from 2023 to early 2025, running my own software company. I was selling B2B, not exactly B2C but there are similarities. That was an eye-opener. Hedge fund events tend to be inward-looking. Panels are usually made up of people who’ve been in the industry for 15 years, rather than bringing in perspectives from other sectors.
One thing that stood out was how hedge funds market themselves through presentations. It’s often the opposite of what research tells us is effective. For example, good presentations—like TED Talks—use minimal text and focus on the speaker. In hedge funds, decks are often full of information, charts, and text, and presenters talk while the audience tries to read. People can’t do both effectively, and they don’t retain much as a result.
Marketing messages should be simple. Hedge funds often want to sound very clever, so they make things complicated, which goes against what research suggests. Because the industry tends to be inward-looking, it hasn’t moved forward as quickly in this area.
When I moved from COO to CEO and took on more marketing responsibility, I researched effective presentation techniques and tried to implement them. My two years outside the industry reinforced those lessons. While mass outreach doesn’t work in hedge funds, there are principles that can be adapted. Relationships still matter, but the question is how new relationships are started.
LinkedIn is becoming increasingly important. Investors buy people, not companies. In boutique hedge funds especially, investors are buying the CIO and the team. LinkedIn allows allocators to learn about individuals, their thinking, and their process before ever meeting them. That can help get the crucial first meeting.
The challenge is that many fund managers are reluctant to post on LinkedIn. There’s also the issue of linking digital engagement to in-person follow-ups. How do you manage that journey?
It’s about making things accessible. If someone is on your LinkedIn profile, they should be able to reach the company easily and find a way to contact you or book a meeting.
A useful piece of advice I was given is that at any one time, only about 5% of your market is ready to buy. You need to stay in front of the whole market so that when that 5% changes, they’re aware of you. Traditional follow-up emails aren’t popular. LinkedIn allows you to stay visible without pestering people. People are happy to scroll through LinkedIn during their commute, and seeing you regularly helps maintain awareness.
Personally, I wasn’t active on LinkedIn until I left the industry and started my own business. I still don’t love doing it, but I know how important it is. At Haverstock, the team is forward-thinking and has embraced it. We see the benefits at events, where people often mention our posts as an icebreaker.
It’s similar to changing presentations and marketing decks. People are set in their ways and see that their peers do things the same way, so they’re reluctant to change—even if they’re not seeing results. They worry that doing things differently will cause them to fail, which is the wrong way to think about it.
What would be your key argument to a less forward-thinking hedge fund for changing how they market themselves?
CIOs and investment teams base decisions on research, so they should research what effective marketing looks like. They’ll find that their current approach often contradicts best practice.
Hedge funds are in a highly competitive and fickle industry. You can perform well but fail to raise capital and still end up closing. Even with support from capital introduction teams, you may not gain traction. If someone had a great product that nobody knew about, investment teams would see that as a problem. Hedge funds need to think about their own businesses in the same way.
