Billion Dollar Backstory

Your company's LinkedIn page is not the main character. It matters. It has a job. But if your LinkedIn strategy is built around the logo doing all the talking, Stacy Havener has thoughts. In this Story Snack, Stacy breaks down the biggest LinkedIn mistake she sees asset managers make: treating the platform like something it was never built to be. And there's a stat behind it that might make you re...

"Ditch the pitch" is easy to say. But it's hard to do when you're staring at a calendar invite and realizing you've been leading with the deck for years.  And you start thinking, “Okay, if I'm not presenting, what am I actually doing in there? Am I just… winging it?” Nope. In this Story Snack, Stacy’s breaking down what your meetings will actually look like once you put the deck aside and why ditc...

Every fund manager wants the story that gets allocators to lean in and say yes every single time they tell it.  So, this is often a hard pill to swallow…A story that actually works doesn't always get you a yes.  A powerful story either gets you a heck yes or a heck no, but never a maybe.  And even though hearing heck no is uncomfortable, getting closure in sales is everything (so you don’t waste y...

The capital-raising memo says: pitch harder, send the long intro email, and voilà, meetings. Stacy Havener never got that memo. She came into this industry as an English lit major who wanted to be a college professor. Finance was a means to an end, not the whole plan. She had no idea there was a "right" way to do capital raising. So she just led with what she knew best, which was storytelling and...

When an allocator says "We only work with established managers," it can feel like a door closing in your face.  And the natural instinct is to pry it back open by explaining yourself, defending your track record, and making a case for your fund.  Stacy Havener's advice: don't go there. Because handling objections to close deals is a thing. It's just not the right thing in this moment. That’s why,...

If you’ve ever thought, “Okay, I have to cover process… but I can literally see their eyes glazing over,” you’re not alone.  Because when you walk through your process like everyone else, allocators don't hear "rigor." They hear "table stakes," and they're already half checked out by the time you get to the good part. In this episode, Stacy Havener breaks down how to fix that without scrapping the...

At 15, Harald Berlinicke got a front-row seat to Black Monday during a bank internship outside Berlin. It was total chaos, with people yelling "SELL!" and a 20% drop in a single day. Most people would have run away from that pressure. But Harald ran toward it. And that's the day he knew he wanted to be in finance. Decades later, he's the guy on the other side of the table as a fund selector and fa...

Six months into launching your fund and already feeling like you're making every mistake in the book? You're in good company. That's exactly how the founder who wrote in is feeling. And honestly, year one can do that to a person.  The chaos is real. The second-guessing is real. The wondering-if-anyone-will-ever-take-you-seriously is very, very real. In this Story Snack, Stacy Havener tackles the f...

What if the biggest problem with “Emerging Markets” is the name? Edward Lam thinks that label has been doing the category a disservice for decades. Today, he’s sitting down with Stacy to zoom out and question the category…then zoom back in to what that means for portfolios, risk, and real alpha. Edward grew up in Hong Kong, went to boarding school in the UK, and landed in EM in 2004.  He had no tr...

Commenting is one of the most underrated relationship builders on LinkedIn, especially if you want to stay on people’s radar without cranking out content nonstop. But most people comment in a way that does nothing, or worse, makes things weird. You know the two classics:   1. “Great post!” (nothing burger) 2. And the thoughtful comment followed by an immediate pitch DM. (instant ick) In this Story...

93% of the population. Almost entirely locked out of an industry that says it wants the best talent. Laurie Robathan grew up on the wrong side of that statistic. He was raised in inner-city Bristol, went to a state school, and grew up in a single-parent family. He found his way into finance through one thin thread of chance, and he's never forgotten how easily it could have gone the other way. At...

You want to post more on LinkedIn. You know it matters. You've probably even got a draft sitting there. But the fear of being judged, specifically by people who already know you in real life, keeps stopping you cold. In this Story Snack, Stacy Havener breaks down exactly why that happens, why your brain is making it bigger than it is, and how to move through it without just white-knuckling your wa...

Robert Gardner has built four ventures in financial services,  including Redington , the UK investment consultancy that’s advised on £800B+ in assets. Now he’s taking on a new category: Natural Capital . Because nature has always been “investable”, just usually as a commodity. The old way looks like squeezing every ounce of value out of the Earth without any regard for long-term consequences. The...

Let's talk about conference season. You showed up and collected a gazillion business cards. You smiled until your face hurt. And three days later you got home, looked at that stack of business cards, and thought… now what? If that sounds familiar, this Story Snack is for you. In this episode, Stacy breaks down why conferences tend to feel like a huge waste of time.  She’s sharing what she’s learne...

Shannon is Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer for Wealth at Neuberger Berman, a firm with north of AUM, and she's spent years on the other side of the table, sitting through roughly 300 manager meetings a year. She knows exactly what earns credibility fast. And she knows exactly what kills it. In this episode, Stacy Havener sits down with Shannon to pull back the curtain on what alloca...

What do a Notre Dame finance degree, a brief detour into ninth-grade teaching, a Merrill Lynch internship, and 20 years at BlackRock have in common? They’re all plot twists on the road to finding exactly where you belong. In this episode, Stacy sits down with Ellen Bockius , Head of Business Development & Marketing at JLAM, a boutique real estate investment firm focused on the Mid-Atlantic coa...

What if the questions you ask say more about you than the answers you give? Two weeks before graduating from college, Buffy Alegria walked into a bank job interview knowing basically nothing about banking.  But she did walk in with four pages of questions on a yellow legal pad. They hired her before she finished the first page. That moment set the tone for everything that came after. Today, Buffy...

What if the secret to building a firm people know, like, and trust wasn’t a slicker pitch deck… or a better track record? What if it was the audacity to just be yourself? Sweta Singh didn't wonder. She just built it. Before she was a founder, she was on the other side of the desk entirely, issuing bonds for the State of New York, watching how public money moves through communities, hospitals, scho...

Most CEO stories start with an Ivy League credential and a tidy career ladder, but this one starts with a blackjack table. Before Natalie Wolfsen was running Orion, she was dealing cards to pay for college. At the time, she had no idea that the lessons she was learning on that casino floor would follow her all the way to the C-suite. In this episode, Natalie opens up about the chapters that don't...

Every allocator asks: “What makes your boutique different?” And most fund managers default to something like, “Our people are great!” or “Our process is best-in-class!” Which is fine. It’s just… also what everyone else says. In this episode, Stacy explains why saying “We’re better” in meetings won’t do you any favors and why being different (even if it’s uncomfortable) is the best way to stand out...

“Ugh… I’m going to sound like a broken record.” If you’ve felt that in a 2nd or 3rd meeting, you’ve probably had the urge to “freshen up” your story just to keep it interesting. In this episode, Stacy breaks down why that instinct can backfire. She’s digging into what actually matters in follow-up meetings, especially when new people join, when the sales team thinks “we already covered that,” and...

Most founders lead with the team because they’re trying not to sound egotistical. But allocators aren’t sitting there thinking, “Wow, great org chart.” They’re thinking: “Do I understand this firm yet?” In this episode, Stacy breaks down what allocators actually want in the first meeting and why you’re better off leading with a crisp origin story (even if the founder isn’t in the room to tell it)....

If your meeting goes off the rails, it’s not because your prospects are “unruly.” It’s because no one’s driving. And with the right moves, you can take the wheel fast without making it weird. In this episode, Stacy breaks down how to prevent unhelpful tangents before you ever walk in the room (hello, champion prep call) and what to do in real time when someone hijacks the conversation. Listen in t...

Ever felt the urge to tidy up your story before sharing it? You scan the room, see the impressive bios and the blazers, and think: “Oof... maybe I should skip that part.” You’re not wrong for feeling that way, and you’re definitely not the only one. In this episode, Stacy opens up about her London panel debut, where she felt that pull to edit out the messy parts of her story on the fly. She’s expl...

If you’re still following the traditional sales funnel framework in 2026, your firm’s growth is sure to stall.  Because the “inverted triangle” view of a funnel is oversimplified, and it’s starting to feel like the fundraising version of that tired investment process slide that makes everyone want to poke their eyes out.  It flops because not everyone in your funnel needs the same thing, and “just...