By Opus Connect
In its first quarterly Family Office Report this May, FINTRX found that the family offices joining its platform are increasingly entrepreneur-led, with a growing appetite for direct deals.
“First-generation entrepreneurial families are not just creating more family offices — they are investing in ways that look more like an extension of their business-building experience,” said Patrick Galvin, a researcher at FINTRX, adding that the change signified a “preference for direct deals, private equity and venture capital, and a more selective approach to commingled fund structures.”
And even as they trim near-term private equity exposure, the UBS Global Family Office Report 2025 found more than a third (37%) plan to increase direct private equity over the next five years. For anyone running a sell-side or capital-raise process in the lower middle market (LMM), the family office (FO) is no longer a courtesy call after the PE funds pass. It is a buyer you pitch on purpose, and most people pitch it with the wrong deck.
The sponsors and bankers getting traction with neither audience are usually doing one thing: sending one deck to both. They forward a tight PE story to a family office and wonder why the reply is polite and slow, or send a warm legacy story to a fund and watch it die in the investment committee (IC). One deck cannot do both jobs, because the two buyers are not buying the same thing.
A Steward Story
What PE buys is a Return Story: how capital goes in, compounds against a thesis, and comes back out inside a defined window. The family office buys a Steward Story: why this business will keep compounding under one roof for a generation, and why the buyer is the right custodian. Same company, same numbers, two narratives. Lead with one and the buyer who wanted the other feels it by page two.
The split is structural. A PE fund runs on a clock: capital from limited partners (LPs) that has to come back, usually inside a three- to five-year hold, which makes the exit the point. A family office runs on a different horizon, with direct holds of seven to fifteen years, because the capital belongs to a family compounding across generations. It uses less leverage, weighs tax and culture more heavily, and the principal, not a committee, makes the call. One buyer is underwriting a return. The other is choosing a steward.
The five slides that must flip
You do not need two decks. You need to flip the five elements that carry the story. The company, the EBITDA, and the diligence file do not change; the emphasis does.
- The hook. PE: a platform thesis in a fragmented market. FO: a durable, owner-led business built to compound.
- The financials. PE: the growth bridge and exit multiple. FO: cash-flow stability and margin resilience.
- The management slide. PE: a team that can scale, then exit. FO: a team that wants to stay and steward.
- The structure. PE: leverage and the path to a return. FO: alignment, lighter leverage, continuity.
- The “why now.” PE: why the window is open for an outsized return. FO: why this is the right home for the next twenty years.
For the independent sponsor, this is the whole game
Independent sponsors feel this most, because many raise from family offices and then pitch them like funds. Send a fund-style deck, all leverage and exit math, to a principal weighing whether to trust you with capital for a decade, and the mismatch reads as a values mismatch.
As family offices lean harder into direct deals, the sponsors who win that capital will tell the Steward Story to the family and the Return Story to the co-investing fund, from the same deal, on purpose. The deck is not the work. Knowing which story the person across the table is buying is the work.
One deck for both audiences is not efficiency. It is a quiet way of telling both buyers you do not understand what either of them is buying.
Want to pressure-test your buyer targeting before you go to market? The Opus Connect Masterclass walks independent sponsors and advisors through matching the story to the capital, deal by deal.
