Episode summary
How Billionaire Family Offices Actually Invest
How I Invest With David Weisburd
· · Hosts: David Weisburd · Guests: Eric Becker
Summary
Eric Becker argues that the biggest gap in traditional wealth management is not access to investments, but the lack of an integrated platform for founders before and after a liquidity event. He says he built Cresset after his own experience as an entrepreneur and long-time wirehouse client showed him how opaque, conflicted, and one-size-fits-all the industry can be, especially for families that created their wealth in private businesses and private markets.
He describes family office services as a broader operating layer around wealth: bill pay, fractional CFO support, estate tax planning, credit negotiation, governance, education, and philanthropy. Becker says the goal is to let founders stay focused on their core business while preserving wealth through tax efficiency, asset protection, and family education. He argues that the real threat to multigenerational wealth is usually not bad markets, but the next generation, spending habits, or family conflict.
The conversation also makes a case for long-term compounding in both investing and operating businesses. Becker favors diversified portfolios with equities, private equity, Treasury bills, and municipal bonds, and he sees opportunity in multifamily real estate, BDCs trading at discounts, private credit, and tax-aware equipment leasing. He extends that same long-horizon logic to companies that survive for decades or centuries through stewardship, governance, and disciplined succession.
Key takeaways
- Eric Becker says Cresset was built because traditional wirehouses were opaque, conflicted, and poorly suited to entrepreneurs after a liquidity event.
- Becker says family office services include bill pay, fractional CFO support, governance, education, philanthropy, and estate tax planning, not just portfolio management.
- He argues the biggest threat to multigenerational wealth is often the next generation’s spending, disputes, or bad decisions, not the original portfolio.
- Becker says tax efficiency and asset protection are the foundation of wealth preservation, including using structures that compartmentalize risk.
- He sees current opportunities in multifamily real estate, discounted BDC portfolios, private credit, and tax-aware equipment leasing.
- Becker says long-term stewardship makes businesses more durable and can paradoxically make them more valuable and desirable to buyers.
Notable quotes
“the threat to the wealth isn't bad investments or bad asset protection or inefficient taxes”
“The greatest threat to the wealth would be the next generation or the generation after that changing the plan and losing the money”
“you should run your business like you're going to own it forever because you just might”
“We have a very simple model. We charge one fee for traditional wealth management, an AUM-based fee”
How the episode opens
Cresset which is an RIA that you co-founded. Latest number 235 billion AUM and AUA. Why did you find the need to start another RIA?
Sure. So, my background and similar with my co-founder Avy Stein is really the life of the entrepreneur and CEO founder. So, my background isn't in traditional wealth management or the RIA world.
I came upon this from a need for my own family and for Avy's family. I start off in Baltimore um from humble beginnings and started my first company when I was a student at the University of Chicago. I dropped out of the university one semester before graduation to launch a healthcare technology company called the LifeCard.
I sold that company a couple of years later to Blue Cross Blue Shield. It was a great experience. My younger brother Doug, who was a high school senior, the two of us literally took our proceeds at closing in a cashier's check.
We were so un- sophisticated and poorly advised. And we went to the bank and deposited it in our checking account. And then with all of this extensive planning we had done, we went to the Audi and Porsche dealerships and we purchased new cars.
So, we really didn't have access to the amazing talent that say a firm like Cresset has to advise and plan. And that led to a career of of starting and building companies and investing in companies. But I never felt that I had the support of a firm like Cresset, a multi-family office that was really a fractional single-family office where we had all of the things that say the Walton family or some of the largest families in North America have with these large dedicated teams and the resources that go with it.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- family office governance
- wealth management conflicts
- tax-aware investing
- succession planning
- long-term investing
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Cresset
- AlphaSense
Watch the episode
Watch “How Billionaire Family Offices Actually Invest” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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How I Invest With David Weisburd, this episode and its artwork belong to David Weisburd. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
