Erik Serrano Berntsen, CEO of Stable Asset Management, shares a formula for organizational complexity when scaling alternative investment firms.
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“And something I often share with my founders is you want to keep complexity low, because I think both complexity and size to a certain extent are the enemies of performance. And a quick definition of complexity when you're running investment firms is number of investors, number of strategies, and number of employees squared.”
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Insight
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AssertionNot checkable as stated
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AssertionPartly supported
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Opinion
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Insight
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Insight
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