The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 58 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
AI Has Ended Hourly Billing Models for Law and Consulting Firms
“Law firms, consulting firms, hourly billing businesses that have armies of people doing things that the machines can do are That's over.”
Jennifer Prosek: Private Markets Firms Recognize Brand Impacts the Bottom Line
“Now there is not one private markets firm on the planet that doesn't believe that brand and story and being on the offense doesn't hit the bottom line. It creates efficiencies across this rubric we call talent, deals, and capital.”
Jennifer Prosek: Rockefeller Capital Offers Unmatched Hospitality in Wealth Management
“Does anyone else in wealth management do that? The answer is no.”
Prosek: LPs now require years of relationship building before writing checks
“And one thing that has definitely changed a lot is the math is all that counted in the past. Meaning if you were performing, you didn't even have to really talk to your LPs. They were writing checks. Now I interview LPs on panels and I ask them for the GPs in …”
Working Mothers Often Perform Better By Eliminating Non-Essential Work Tasks
“And frankly, a lot of my gals come back better after having kids because they separate the nice from the necessary and they know how to laser focus into what they need to do, not what all the other noise.”
Prosek: Firm Culture Does Not Need Uniqueness, Only Unique Packaging
“No, I think it has to be uniquely packaged.”
Prosek: Companies Can Pay Less If They Treat Their Employees Better
“I think firms can pay a little less if they behave a little better, because people care about it.”
Prosek: Elite financial PR agencies ignore brand building for crisis management
“Luckily a lot of elite firms in our space never focused on what I would call the brand building side. They always focused on issues and crisis management. So we're one of the only firms that really does the brand building side.”
Prosek: Originating Employees Receive 10% Client Revenue for Life of Employment
“So the rule is basically if you bring a relationship to the firm that becomes a client, you get 10% of that client revenue. For the life of the client and the life of your employment.”
Prosek: Only a Handful of Hedge Funds Will Build Surviving Brands
“Do I think they'll be successful at building institutional brands that will survive into the future? Yes. I think there will be a handful that does, and there will be all kinds of other peril in the ones that don't.”
Prosek: Gen Z will be grittier and stick to jobs more than Millennials
“Gen Z was raised predominantly by Gen X, so apparently the Gen Z's are going to be very gritty and tough and stick in their jobs because they were told not everyone gets a prize, and you may not always win”
Prosek: Millennials will quit without a safety net over misaligned values
“They are so brave, meaning if they don't like what you stand for and it doesn't align with their beliefs, they just walk out. And they walk out with no safety net.”
Prosek: Uninteresting conference speaking creates a reputational backfire
“We believe it's a reputational backfire to get on stage and not be interesting, not be memorable. If you're memorable in the other way, he really had nothing to say. That's just not worth doing.”
Prosek: Long-Form Newsletters on LinkedIn Outperform Deal Announcements
“Most people use LinkedIn just to show the momentum of their firm. This thing happened today. This deal happened. We hired this person, and that's great, but the next level is really writing longer-form content in a newsletter fashion.”
High-Value Executive Gatherings Require Under 22 People and No Keynote Speaker
“I'm not a big fan of, we're having the speaker. Just because I feel in my events, every person in the room is a star. And people want to hear from each other and get to know each other. So I like small intimate rooms, under 22 people, where the food is amazing…”
Prosek: Financial clients will adopt hospitality as a core strategy
“And where I see this going is that My clients who never really thought about hospitality as a strategy will”
Prosek: Many LPs use conferences to batch meetings while working from home
“And what's happened in the world of the LPs is I think a lot of LPs have decided I rather work from home
And then go to the conference and bang out a lot of meetings and then go back work from home.”
Most CEOs Attend Industry Conferences Without a Plan for ROI
“But what we learned was most CEOs are knocking around these conferences without a plan.
No one's really thought about how do we get the value.”
Prosek: Prosek Partners only attends networking events with measurable ROI
“We do not go and mingle and spend money on that unless we monetize it, and I've always known the day after what was my immediate ROI and what is my ROI six months later, a year later.”
LPs Claim to Ignore GP Brand but Heavily Reward Brand Proxies
“Now, if you asked an LP, do you care about the GP's brand? They'll say no, but when you unpack it, do you care that they have a great culture? Do you care that they have distinct advantages? Do you care that so-and-so wrote this amazing op-ed piece that you to…”
Alts Managers Massively Underestimate Consumer Marketing Costs for Private Wealth
“Almost none of my clients understand the amount of money and time it will take to do true consumer marketing.”
Jennifer Prosek: Prosek Partners hires exceptional talent over planned budgets or needs
“I do not hire people Often when I need them, I hire them because someone's very special comes across my desk and I'm like, this was not in the budget, but I'm doing it because it's all about the people.”
University Endowments Focus on Personal Brands Amid Treacherous Media Attacks
“They care about their personal brands. They've been under fire. A lot of the university endowments have had to face really treacherous media and attacks.”
Prosek: Leaders who have a 51% good day are succeeding
“The 51% rule means if you're in a leadership position and you have a 51% good day, you are killing it because your job is chief problem solver.”
Private Markets Communications Sector Has About 10 Years of Growth Left
“I think the emerging market of marketing has maybe 10 years left, so that's a growthy 10 years, and that's exciting.”
Prosek: Alternative Asset Managers Are Adopting Sophisticated Marketing Tactics
“More firms and private equity alternatives, hedge funds, asset management are getting into what I would call sophisticated marketing and reputation management. And that's been accelerated by COVID too”
Prosek: Private Equity Doubled Down on Digital Marketing During COVID
“Especially in areas like private equity, they doubled down on digital, they doubled down on video, they doubled down on audio, and they realized they really couldn't get the job done without a lot of these call it marketing things.”
Prosek: 60% of Asset Management Annual Meetings Will Remain Hybrid
“I'd predict about 60% of them stay at least in a hybrid model because it's been so effective and so efficient.”
Prosek: The Biggest Digital Marketing Mistake Is Posting Tone-Deaf Content
“The quality of video, like, you know, all of those obvious things I think are trip ups, but the big, big trip up is being tone deaf. There is so much going on in the world operating in volatile times, right? Do you put something on social channels on the day t…”
Prosek: Pre-Marketing Lets Managers Have the 'Second Meeting' First
“You don't want to have the first meeting and spend the entire time explaining who you are, what you stand for, what you do. You want to have that second meeting in the first meeting, which is like getting right to the point of what your goal is.”
Prosek: Brand Credibility Shifts Business Development to Inbound Client Demand
“The quality of our work really hasn't changed from when we were small to when we're large, but what has changed is our credibility and our reputation. So, and how much does that accelerate my goals? It's huge. I mean, in the old days, I had to knock on every d…”
Prosek: Brand and Process Differentiate Asset Managers When Products Overlap
“Everybody's got products that overlap, but there's a belief or a believability about certain brands that they do it better, their process is better, the way they get to the result is better, and then, of course, the performance has to prove it all out.”
Prosek: Expanding Across Multiple Office Floors Disrupts Cohesive Company Culture
“I'll tell any CEO founder, like once you go to two floors, you got to work so hard on keeping a cohesive culture. Like that physicality is huge.”
Prosek: Firm Shares All Internal Data With Staff Except Salaries
“I always say at ProSec, you can know anything about anything outside of someone else's salary. That's it. Everything.”
Prosek: Pandemic Employer Behavior Will Trigger Widespread Talent Movement
“And like I said, I'm predicting there's going to be a lot of talent movement. We already see it based on how firms behaved in this crisis.”
Prosek: Small companies need formal policies and rules, not just family culture
“When you're small, you think you're a family, and that's great, and there's a lot of good that comes out of that culturally, but it is a place of business, and you do need policies and rules”
Prosek: Emerging Funds Have an Advantage Starting Brand Building from Scratch
“We're seeing emerging startups take marketing seriously right out the gate, and they have a huge advantage even up against large firms, because the large firms are sort of like retooling and getting there, and the startups are starting with a gorgeous website …”
Prosek: Asset Management Marketing Must Be Measured by Sales Cycle Efficiency
“I think at the end of the day, measurement should be about business impact. So I talked to you about accelerating success, right? So if you're a new client, and we're doing our job right, and you go to a meeting, instead of you educating the prospect, or the i…”
Prosek: Glassdoor reviews serve as a leading indicator of internal leaks
“Your employees are usually the leakers, but I look at a client or potential client's glass door page. I don't know if you've heard of that, and I can tell you what's going to happen based on the entries in that glass door page. People like to poo-poo it, and e…”
Prosek: Building a brand around one founder creates severe succession problems
“Well, let me tell you create as much of a problem as you solve by having a brand grow up around one person, and we are hired, especially in private equity and hedge funds, many times because the brand has grown up around one person, and they create a successio…”
Prosek: Blackstone successfully built an institutional brand beyond Stephen Schwarzman
“Yes, there's a Steve Schwartzman brand, and he definitely built the Blackstone brand using that. But I think no one would say that Blackstone would not move on as an institution. So I always say, I think they pulled it off from a brand perspective.”
PR firms cannot kill legitimate negative stories, but can negotiate context
“You don't kill a real story when it's bad, and it's real. But what you can do is add context around it, neutralize it, negotiate with a reporter.”
Prosek: Negative fund performance almost always leaks to the press
“Negative performance almost always leaks to the press, so it's how do you deal with that, and how do you contextualize that, and how do you put forth the data about the performance over time, right, so that the reporter actually gets the story right, and it's …”
Educating financial reporters off the record yields more accurate coverage
“A lot of our clients actually invest a great deal of time educating reporters about the industry so that they can get it right, and that is usually repaid In spades.”
Prosek: LinkedIn Shifted From Job Board to Thought Leadership for PE
“One thing that has happened since the pandemic, for instance, is that LinkedIn went from being perceived as a job seekers space to a real thought leadership news breaking platform to serious business people, partially because the pandemic forced us all to find…”
Orlando Bravo and Mark Lipschultz Drive Growth Through Active LinkedIn Use
“If you look at LinkedIn, check out Mark Lipschultz, check out Orlando Bravo. They are very active and sophisticated on LinkedIn. Because they know it's helping the bottom line.”