I run what might genuinely be the smallest family office in the world. This is not a billion-dollar endowment fund. It is my own capital, managed with one simple ambition:

Preserve capital and compound it steadily over decades.

This page explains who I am, how I invest, who this publication is for, and what you will find here.

About Me

I work as an airline pilot for a major flag carrier and hold an MSc. Alongside my aviation career, I spent many years working inside a family-owned operating business.

That experience shaped how I think about capital. I saw firsthand how markets with low barriers to entry behave, how quickly competitive advantages can erode, and how disruption actually plays out at the operating level.

A windfall forced me to engage deeply with capital markets and wealth management. I had to determine whether external advisors added any value, or whether I needed or rather wanted to do all the work myself.

Today, I am responsible for managing my own capital and that of my family. The Tiny Family Office documents how I allocate that capital across equities and selected alternative strategies, using an endowment-style framework inspired by David Swensen and adapted to my own managed portfolio.

I have two goals with this publication:

• Run my own multi-asset portfolio with a long-term, endowment-style approach.

• Document the process in a way that could eventually justify spending most of my time reading, researching, and investing.

Writing The Tiny Family Office forces me sharpen my decisions, think carefully, and it (hopefully) offers something more useful than the typical finance Substack.

Investment Universe

At the heart of The Tiny Family Office is capital preservation and compounding. I think in decades, not quarters, and I care more about resilience than excitement.

A few guiding principles:

• Global equity anchor

  A broad global equity exposure (index funds / ETFs) forms the base of the portfolio.

• A handful of individual companies

  Around that, I add carefully chosen businesses with:

  • strong moats

  • recurring or highly visible revenues

  • solid balance sheets

  • aligned management and ownership

  • low risk of disruption

• Alternatives for diversification

  I diversify with uncorrelated or less correlated assets, such as:

  • hedge funds / absolute-return strategies

  • credit / fixed income

  • insurance risk (catastrophe bonds)

  • gold or commodities

• Owner mindset

  I always try to think like a long-term owner, I am not a trader. My whole approach is inspired by people like Warren Buffett, Chris Hohn, Terry Smith, Tom Russo, and David Swensen.

• What I don’t do

  I do not invest in private-equity funds.

Audience

This publication is for people who take investing seriously:

• Private investors with a family-office mindset.

• High-income professionals who want a framework.

• Portfolio managers, analysts, and active capital allocators.

• Independent thinkers and students of investing.

What You’ll Find Here

The content on The Tiny Family Office is organized into a few sections:

• Portfolio Updates (Monthly)

  The core of the project. Detailed portfolio allocation, changes, rationale, performance context, and commentary.

• Research

  In-depth work on individual companies and broader themes. From hidden European holding companies to on-shoring trends or demographics.

• CIO Notes (Weekly)

  Notes on what I am reading, watching, and thinking about as an investor: fund letters, interviews, research papers, charts, podcasts, and ideas. Always with portfolio implications in mind.

Free vs Paid

To keep the audience focused and the work sustainable, some content is free and some is paid (for now everything is free).

Free readers get:

• Selected research

• Weekly CIO Notes (curated intelligence)

Paid subscribers get:

• Full Portfolio Updates with detailed allocation and commentary

• Access to all research reports (entire archive and all new ones)

• Weekly CIO Notes (curated intelligence)

I believe good research has value. Charging for access forces me to stay disciplined, consistent, and accountable to the people who choose to follow.

How to Start

If you’ve just arrived, a simple order works well:

1. Read the post on Investment Philosophy to understand the foundation.

2. Read a recent Portfolio Update to see how the portfolio looks today.

3. Read a Research Report that is interesting for you.

4. Decide whether a free or paid subscription fits how closely you want to follow along.

Final Word

This project is about long-term thinking, rational allocation, and building something that lasts. I will be here for the next decades.

If that resonates with you, I’m glad you’re here.

Disclaimer: The Tiny Family Office is a personal publication. All content reflects my own opinions, research, and investment decisions. It is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or tax advice. I am not acting as your financial advisor. Investing involves risks, including the possible loss of principal. Do your own research or consult with a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Quality and Cash Flow

Free cash flow is the starting point. I prefer an owner-earnings approach similar to Berkshire Hathaway: operating cash flow minus the capital expenditures needed to keep the business running, adjusted for stock-based compensation and other recurring items (SBC is a tax).

Reported earnings can be useful, but free cash flow shows how much money actually returns to owners. A company that converts a high share of its profits into cash, year after year, earns my attention.

Predictability and Staying Power

Predictability matters more than growth. I want to understand how a business will look ten or twenty years from now. That is difficult for sectors driven by innovation or structural change, such as technology or energy transitions. In those areas I proceed carefully or stay away.

Businesses that produce essential goods or services, have stable demand, and can adjust to changing tastes are more attractive. Scale, brand strength, and pricing power create a margin of safety.

Balance Sheet Strength

Low debt gives a company and the management team optionality and some room to breathe. It is also part of the margin of safety. It allows reinvestment when others are constrained and protects against permanent loss of capital. I prefer conservative balance sheets even if that reduces short-term returns.

Valuation and the Limits of “Cheap”

Sum-of-the-parts valuations rarely work in practice. I have made that mistake before (a few times). The market does not always close the gap between value and price, and if a discount persists for years, it is worth asking why. Often the market is right: complexity, weak incentives, or poor capital allocation can trap value indefinitely.

I would rather pay a fair or slight premium price for a simple, durable business than hold a cheap collection of questionable parts that should in theory be worth more.

Holding

I have no sell rules. I prefer not to sell at all unless the business or industry has changed in a fundamental way. In my experience, selling a good company has almost always been a mistake. Taxes reinforce that lesson, and you need to find a better business or opportunity to invest that money.

I accept concentration within my equity portion of the portfolio. Individual holdings can influence outcomes more than broad market exposure, and I am comfortable with that. The rest of the portfolio provides diversification across asset classes.

Family Ownership and Management Alignment

Tom Russo often says that great companies need the capacity to suffer. This is the willingness to accept short-term pain for long-term gain. I look for that same trait. The best management teams think in decades, not quarters. They invest through downturns, endure criticism, and focus on compounding intrinsic value rather than optimizing the next earnings release.

Family ownership often supports this mindset. A controlling family provides stability, alignment, and resistance to short-term market pressure. It lessens the risk of activists or opportunistic takeovers (I do not like it when a good company goes private) that can force strategic decisions for the wrong reasons. Families that have owned businesses for generations usually think in terms of stewardship rather than performance cycles.

Management incentives are another lens through which to judge alignment. I pay close attention to how executives are compensated. Are they rewarded for near-term earnings per share, or for durable growth in free cash flow and return on invested capital? Is their ownership meaningful, or mostly in options that vest quickly?

I prefer management teams who are true owners. When incentives favor long-term value creation and when a family’s capital remains invested alongside mine, the odds of patient decision-making rise sharply.

Adaptability and Change

Themes such as GLP-1 drugs raised questions about whole categories of companies. Many investors are quick to abandon businesses exposed to shifting habits, such as alcohol, fast food, or packaged foods. My view is that global leaders like Nestlé or McDonald’s have the scale, distribution, and capital to adapt. They have done it before. Change takes time, but these firms can turn the ship when they must.

Liquidity and Time Horizon

My own portfolio is structured for a long horizon. I can stay fully invested and tolerate multi-year drawdowns without needing to withdraw capital. Managing family capital for people who need ongoing distributions is different, and I have done that in the past; it requires more liquidity and shorter-duration assets. For my own capital, I want permanence and compounding.

I prefer to start with a different one: How do I build a portfolio that will survive and compound for decades?

It’s the foundation of how I run The Tiny Family Office.

Goals

I’m not trying to be the best-performing investor every year. My goals are much simpler:

• Preserve wealth across decades.

• Compound steadily at 7–8% annualized.

• Limit drawdowns to a level I can comfortably live with.

• Own businesses and assets I can sleep with at night, through good times and bad.

Asset Allocation

Any family office or endowment fund starts here, because this is where most of the risk and return are determined. My own strategic allocation looks roughly like this:

• Equities (~70 %)

  • A global ETF (MSCI ACWI / FTSE All World) forms the base.

  • Around this, I add a handful of high-quality individual companies.

• Alternatives (~30 %)

  • Hedge funds & absolute return strategies: long/short equity, event-driven, macro, multi-strategy, credit.

  • Gold: resilience against inflation, currency debasement, and shocks.

  • Commodities: selectively, when the cycle demands it.

• Fixed Income & Cash

  • No long-duration bonds. I prefer to avoid duration risk. This may change over time depending on yields, government debt, inflationary outlook.

  • Minimal cash, but flexibility to rebalance when markets fall.

• Private Equity

  • Manager dispersion is too extreme. Results depend heavily on whether you pick a top-quartile manager or not. The gap between the best and the rest is huge.

  • Too dependent on individual fund managers and deals. Outcomes are driven more by fund-level execution than by broad asset class dynamics.

  • Lack of transparency. Compared to public markets, it’s harder to evaluate performance and incentives.

This structure is designed not for one market environment, but for many. The equity bull market of the past decade may not repeat. Inflation may come and go. By diversifying across asset classes, I prepare for a range of futures.

Read more about the portfolio here:

Entrepreneurial Investing: Owning Companies Like a Founder

Most people buy stocks. I buy businesses.

That’s the essence of entrepreneurial investing: looking at every potential equity investment as if I were buying the entire company.

When I study a business, I ask:

• Can it earn high returns on capital for a long time?

• Does it have a durable moat, brand, duopoly, or recurring revenues?

• Is management aligned with shareholders, ideally with skin in the game? Is even a founding family involved?

• Does the capital allocation policy make sense? Are dividends, buybacks, or reinvestments done intelligently?

• Is the risk of disruption low enough that the business can endure for decades?

I’d rather own fewer companies I truly understand than dozens I can’t explain.

Some examples of the kinds of businesses I like:

• Nestlé: food brands consumed daily by billions. Predictable business.

• OTIS: majority of revenues from maintaining elevators already installed.

• LVMH: luxury goods with centuries of natural demand behind them.

Risk, Volatility, and Drawdowns

Every investor faces drawdowns. The question is not if they happen, but how you prepare for them.

I accept that an equity portfolio can fall by 50% during a severe crisis. I expect my total drawdown to much be smaller in extreme scenarios due to diversification across asset classes.

A portfolio I can live with through downturns is a portfolio I won’t abandon. And staying invested is the only way compounding works.

The Investors Who Shaped My Thinking

My investment approach was shaped by some of the best:

• Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger — think of stocks as businesses, not tickers.

• Tom Russo — the “capacity to suffer” for long-term success.

• Terry Smith — buy good companies, don’t overpay, then do nothing.

• David Swensen — endowment-style diversification across asset classes.

Their common thread is long-term ownership, patience, and respect for quality. I adapt their lessons into my own approach.

Closing Thoughts

My philosophy is not about guessing the next big move or trading in and out of the market. It’s about building a portfolio that:

• Survives downturns.

• Holds quality businesses like an owner.

• Compounds steadily across cycles.

It may be the smallest family office in the world, but it is a fine one built on principles that last.