Hi.
I’m Cláudia Quintela and this is the first issue of something I’ve been meaning to start for a long time.
A fortnightly newsletter about what it actually takes to start, raise for, and survive as an emerging hedge fund manager.
Not theory. Not textbook stuff. What I see, week after week, sitting across the table from managers who are building and investors who are allocating.
A bit about me: I’ve spent 25 years connecting early-stage hedge fund managers with institutional capital. I started on FX trading floors at State Street, then UBS, then Morgan Stanley, one of the few women in a room full of men. In 2014 I moved to Blenheim Capital, one of the world’s largest commodity funds. In 2017 I left Blenheim eight months pregnant and launched Vibe Advisors, an independent advisory boutique that helps emerging managers raise that first £50 to £200 million.
I work with the underdogs. Managers the big cap intro firms won’t touch because they’re too early, too small, or too niche. Systematic, CTA, macro, FX. The strategies that need careful positioning and a long investor courtship.
I’ve been saying for a while that I should write about what I do for a living. The problem is I like working more than I like writing about working. So I kept pushing it off.
This week changed that.
I did something uncomfortable
I sat down with Ethan Kho on the Odds On Open podcast and talked, properly, about everything I’ve learned watching hedge funds launch, stall, and sometimes fail.
It was nearly an hour of conversation. No script, no slides. Just 25 years of pattern recognition laid out in plain language.
So instead of writing a polished first issue, I thought I’d do something different: let the conversation be the issue.
What you’ll find in the episode
The $5 trillion paradox. Global hedge fund assets hit a record $5 trillion in late 2025. Sounds like a boom. But 86% of that capital is controlled by just 550 managers. If you’re an emerging manager, you’re not competing for a slice of $5 trillion. You’re fighting over what’s left.
The mistakes I see over and over again. From unclear strategy definition to coming to market too soon, from missing business plans to terrible meeting etiquette. I walk through the specific errors that trip up managers at the company formation stage and the marketing stage, with real examples.
The fears nobody talks about. Managers are terrified of things they’ll never admit in a pitch meeting. The credibility gap. The economics not working at sub-$50 million. The capacity lie, where you claim $1 billion scalability because you think that’s what allocators want to hear. The managed account cage, where you have access to capital but zero control. I go through all seven.
What allocators really care about. Survivability, luck versus skill, operational risk, key person risk, edge durability, capacity honesty, business viability, and integrity. I break down the specific diagnostic questions investors use and what they’re really listening for when you answer.
The 1-5% rule. A typical allocator meets 20 to 100 managers to make one allocation. Your conversion rate from first meeting to investment is in the low single digits. Most managers quit after 10 meetings because they didn’t understand the maths. I explain why this is a numbers game and what that means for your sales strategy.
The pass-through economics problem. How multi-strat pod shops push costs onto LPs, run effective management fees of 3 to 10% versus your 1 to 2%, and why this creates a structural advantage you can’t replicate. And what you can do instead.
Sections of the episode
[00:00] The $5 trillion headline and why it’s misleading for emerging managers
[05:00] The concentration crisis: 550 firms, 86% of capital
[15:00] Building a business versus managing a strategy: the CIO/COO split
[25:00] The 1-5% conversion rate and the brutal maths of fundraising
[37:00] Capacity lies, managed account cages, and the fears managers won’t admit
[47:00] The allocator’s lens: luck, skill, and the “bus test”
Why this newsletter exists
I sit in an unusual position. I’m not a manager. I’m not an allocator. I’m the person in between, the one who sees both sides of the table.
Managers tell me things they’d never say to an investor. Investors tell me things they’d never say to a manager’s face. I’ve watched hundreds of these conversations play out over two and a half decades.
Most of what I know lives in my head, in meeting notes, in patterns I’ve spotted across hundreds of launches. I want to get it out of my head and onto a page.
This newsletter will cover:
- Fundraising reality. What actually works when raising institutional capital at the earliest stage.
- Manager mistakes. The patterns I see repeatedly, from seed round to first $100 million.
- Investor psychology. What allocators really think, how they make decisions, and what makes them say no.
- Operations and infrastructure. The unsexy stuff that kills more funds than bad trades do.
- The business of hedge funds. Fee structures, breakeven economics, capacity analysis, team building.
I’ll write like I talk. Short. Direct. With real specifics from real situations, anonymised where needed.
No jargon for the sake of jargon. No pretending the industry is something it’s not.
Listen to the full episode here.
I’d love to hear what you think. Reply to this email, or leave a comment.
If this is useful to you, share it with someone who’s thinking about launching a fund. They’ll thank you for it.
Cláudia