Usually, Stacy Havener is the one asking the questions.

Not this time.

Stuart Alexander of Ascender Fund Partners recently put Stacy in the hot seat, and the conversation was too good not to share with our Billion Dollar Backstory listeners.

Because if you've ever wondered why getting that first allocator meeting is so freaking hard (or why a meeting that went great never turned into a second one), Stacy has some thoughts.

After raising more than $8 billion for investment boutiques, she's learned a thing or two about what actually gets people to pay attention, trust you, and eventually invest.

And a lot of it comes back to three things: storytelling, behavioral science, and personal brand.

In this episode, Stacy gets into how those three things show up in the real world, from getting your foot in the door to making the most of the meetings you actually land.

Listen in to hear:

• Why Stacy believes in “give, give, give, ask” (and what most fund managers get backwards)
• Why your salesperson shouldn't just introduce the PM and then sit there taking notes
• What the real goal of your first allocator meeting should be
• Why your pitch deck should be a prop, not the center of the universe
• How to get an allocator talking first, and why that changes the whole conversation
• Why you can't take a company logo out for coffee (and what that means for your LinkedIn strategy)
• The simple test Stacy uses to figure out whether your differentiators actually make you different
• Why your messaging should repel some prospects, not just attract everyone
• What the 12–18 month sales cycle means for your fundraising expectations

About Stuart Alexander:

Stuart Alexander is the CEO of Ascender Fund Partners and a longtime leader in fund distribution. He has spent decades in the funds industry, working with some of Europe’s largest asset managers and helping firms navigate the challenges of distribution and growth.

In 2009, Stuart founded GemCap, which later merged with MC Square to form Ascender Fund Partners.

Outside of work, he’s a mountain climber, gardener, beekeeper, and environmentalist.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

If you’re pitching an allocator who’s already seen 35 decks that look just like yours, what’s going to make them remember you?

Ryan Boothroyd put out a tender for a global equity manager and got 120 responses. Similar AUM, track records, investment teams, fees. According to Ryan, you could’ve shuffled those presentations around and the PMs probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Ryan is Head of External Management at Border to Coast Pensions Partnership, the UK’s largest pensions asset owner, with about £120 billion in collective assets. He joins Stacy Havener to get into what actually makes a manager stand out when everyone looks pretty darn good on paper.

Listen in to hear:

➤ The pitch Ryan hears over and over again that tells him almost nothing about what makes you different

➤ Where your firm’s real edge might come from (hint: it’s probably not what you’re leading with)

➤ The advantage boutique managers have that some of them are actually hiding

➤ Ryan gets 50 thought pieces a week and reads maybe one or two. What makes yours worth opening?

➤ What he looks for in your pitch deck, including one slide almost nobody includes

➤ Stacy’s trick for getting managers to finally explain what makes them different (even if she has to make them a little mad)

➤ The operational due diligence red flags that could take you out of the running, even with a great investment team

More About Ryan Boothroyd:

Ryan is responsible for external manager relationships at Border to Coast Pensions Partnership, one of Europe’s largest asset owners. His team directly manages more than £20 billion in externally managed public market investments, spanning global equities, multi-asset credit and other asset classes. Ryan joined Border to Coast in 2018 as one of the founding members of the investment team and has played a key role in building the organisation from a standing start into a £120 billion asset owner. Prior to this, he worked in multi-asset investing roles at Legal & General Investment Management and Janus Henderson Investors. Ryan lives in North Yorkshire with his wife, two children and their Shiba Inu. Outside work, you'll usually find him reading, camping or drinking more coffee than is probably advisable.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

“What do I do with a prospect who went cold two years ago and I still think they’re a fit?”

Stacy’s first reaction?

Two freaking years?!

Said with peace and love, of course. She’s not laughing at the person asking, but she does have a few questions about how we got here.

Like, Why do you still think they're a fit? And more importantly, do they agree with that notion?

In this Story Snack, Stacy gets into what to do when a prospect has gone cold, why you might need to rethink how you’re nurturing prospects in the first place, and the framework she teaches clients to help them get a solid yes or no sooner (so they aren't chasing lukewarm prospects for years).

Listen in to hear:

• How often Stacy thinks a cold prospect should actually hear from you
• How to tell whether the reasons they liked you two years ago still matter today
• The problem with letting a “maybe” sit in your funnel for too long
• What “fill or kill” means and why Stacy uses it when a deal goes co

This is Story Snacks, a bite-sized series for fund managers who want to get better at strategic storytelling in under 20 minutes a week.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

Real quick: what’s the meaning of life?

Okay, It's not exactly a quick question. And you probably don’t have an answer ready to go.

But the good news? You don’t need to book a yoga retreat in Bali to figure it out.

Turns out, what makes life feel meaningful might be a whole lot less mysterious than we make it.

Dr. Daniel Crosby just turned in a manuscript exploring what makes our lives feel meaningful.

And after digging into the research, he found himself coming back to three things: believing, belonging, and becoming.

Which has more to do with building a brand and earning trust than you’d expect.

Today, Daniel is back with Stacy Havener to connect the dots between what makes a life meaningful and what makes people, brands, and relationships stand out.

Listen in to hear:

➤ The three Bs that give our lives meaning
➤ Why the best brands in this industry are already doing all three, whether they realize it or not
➤ Why sending someone your fact sheet doesn’t count as a meaningful give
➤ The Gallup question that can tell you a whole lot about whether someone’s going to stick around at work (and no, it’s not about raises or offering random incentives)
➤ What Daniel calls “emotional graying"
➤ Why playing it safe is the worst thing you can do if you’re looking to build a meaningful life and/or a successful business

The scientist and the storyteller are back for another conversation that’s fascinating and surprisingly practical.

And despite the very gray office Daniel’s calling in from, he makes a pretty good case for being anything but.

About Dr. Daniel Crosby:

Dr. Daniel Crosby is a psychologist, behavioral finance expert, and New York Times bestselling author who helps organizations understand the intersection of mind and markets.

He’s a father of three, fanatical St. Louis Cardinals fan, and amateur hot sauce chef.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

“Keep me posted.”

Sounds promising. But also... what does that actually mean?

In this Story Snack, Stacy Havener breaks down one of the vaguest phrases in fundraising, and why “keep me posted” should be the start of the conversation instead of your cue to sit back and wait.

Because if an allocator wants you to keep them posted, your next job is figuring out what they actually want updates on.

Listen in to hear:

• The question to ask so “keep me posted” actually means something
• Why waiting until you hit the magic number could mean starting the relationship over from scratch
• How often to follow up (Stacy has a number)
• What to send when there isn’t a huge update to share
• How to stay top of mind without becoming the person they stop opening emails from

This is Story Snacks, a bite-sized series for fund managers who want to get better at strategic storytelling in under 20 minutes a week.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

"The key to business is biting off more than you can chew, then figuring out how to chew it."

Manish Khatta has been running that play for a while now.

Last time he was on the pod, back in 2023, Potomac had just crossed $1B and he was pretty sure they were only getting started.

Three years later? They're past $5B.

And the lessons got a whole lot bigger with it.

Manish is back for a next-chapter conversation about what happens after the growth starts working. When the revenue finally catches up. When hiring gets harder than raising assets. And when the job starts asking you to stop being the operator and actually become the CEO.

In this episode, Manish and Stacy get into:

• Why hiring and stepping into the CEO mindset is infinitely harder than raising assets
• The question Manish asks advisors who say they “can’t grow”
• How firms can actually build relationships and land meetings on social media
• His new marketing strategy (and why he doesn’t believe in chasing concrete ROI)
• Why caring what other people think is the biggest roadblock to creating good content
• A pretty wild 2027 announcement Potomac gets to share for the first time

About Manish Khatta:
Manish Khatta is a quant who has spent his entire career creating and refining technical trading strategies. A lifelong Potomac employee since 2002, he programmed the initial work behind Potomac's mechanical trading systems and now runs the firm as CEO and CIO, where he's known for driving innovation across investments, technology, and brand growth.

He's also a father of four and spends his free time playing tennis and being on the water.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

This conversation was too good to leave in the archives.

In this encore of our Ask an Allocator series, Stacy sits down with Bill Harding, CIO of Jackson National, who oversees $200B in assets and $29.8B in directly managed fund-of-fund assets.

Bill gives us a look inside the mind of an allocator and shares what he’s actually paying attention to when evaluating fund managers, because past performance is only part of the story.

In this episode, Bill and Stacy discuss:

• Bill’s backstory, from financial analyst at a cheese manufacturer to CIO at Jackson National
• What fund managers need to get right when pitching a potential partnership
• Why past performance alone isn’t enough to earn an allocator’s attention
• Why Bill sees culture as a real source of alpha
• The questions fund buyers are asking behind the scenes (and why the most important ones aren’t always quantitative)

If you’ve ever wondered what really matters on the allocator side of the table, this conversation gives you a pretty good look behind the curtain.

About Bill Harding:
Bill Harding, CFA, is Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer at Jackson National Asset Management (JNAM), where he leads asset allocation, portfolio construction, sub-adviser monitoring, and manager research.

He joined JNAM in 2012 after serving as Head of Manager Research for Morningstar's Investment Management division, and has more than 30 years of experience across JNAM, Morningstar, and Leprino Foods. He holds a B.S. from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an MBA from Loyola University Chicago.

Bill graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business. He holds an MBA from Loyola University Chicago and is a CFA charterholder.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

In the world of M&A, deals tend to get reduced to spreadsheets long before anyone asks about the story or the actual people underneath.

Emily Blue built her whole career on believing maybe we’ve got that backwards.

She started out as a nursing major (until an anatomy syllabus sent her running ), failed the CFA before she passed it, and eventually found herself sitting across the table from some very fancy investment bankers. Then one afternoon, she was standing in an airport after a pitch that had gone really well... wondering why she felt so flat.

A phone call with her friend Ryan Halls changed everything. Eventually, that conversation became Hue Partners, an M&A advisory firm that works exclusively with sellers.

In this episode, Emily and Stacy get into:

➤ The airport phone call that turned into a firm

➤ Why Hue said no to every buyer who wanted to hire them

➤ What happened when a banker called Emily "soft" (and Ryan’s PERFECT comeback)

➤ Why younger, fast-growing firms are exploring partnerships earlier, and why waiting too long can cost you

➤ The real estate analogy that makes a pretty freaking good case for having someone in YOUR corner when you sell

➤ Why wealth firms are starting to look at boutique asset managers as a talent strategy

➤ The "messy middle," and what happens when the story that got you HERE stops fitting where you want to go NEXT

This one is about M&A, but it’s also about relationships, story, and knowing what you actually want to build. And what happens when the way it’s always been done doesn’t feel like the way YOU want to do it.

About Emily Blue:
Emily Blue, CFA, is a math nerd turned M&A disruptor and the co-founder of Hue Partners. She cut her teeth in M&A integrations, pushed back on traditional valuations, and led corporate development, and through every deal one thing stayed true: the best transactions aren't about multiples. They're about people. So she built Hue to put founders first, with no corporate fog and no empty promises, just real partnership before and after the deal.

Outside of work, Emily serves as Board Chair of the Girl Scouts of Northeast Kansas and Northwest Missouri, and advocates through Big Brothers Big Sisters and Newhouse. She has traded Kilimanjaro for toddler trails for now, and lives a chaotic, joyful life with her husband Harrison, their kids, and two doodles.

---
Running a fund is hard enough.
Ops shouldn’t be.
Meet the team that makes it easier. | billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus