“To whom much is given, much is expected.” — JD Montgomery
JD Montgomery leads the Family Office division at Canterbury Consulting and is a seasoned advisor with nearly four decades of experience serving prominent families with a focus on strategy, organization and measurement. Based in Newport Beach, he serves a select group of multi-generational families and helps them navigate the complexities of wealth, purpose, and legacy. Mr. Montgomery partners with his clients to help them optimize the allocation of their resources across generations. Over the years, Mr. Montgomery has developed a deep network of relationships in the venture capital industry. He has helped his clients gain meaningful exposure to venture funds and direct investments and develop relationships with leading innovators and investors globally. He is a Managing Director, shareholder, and board member at Canterbury Consulting. He graduated from Stanford University and holds the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designation.
You can find JD on his socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jd-montgomery-6161341b/
And in case, you’re curious about my reactions during and after recording that episode, you can find my thoughts here on Superclusters After Hours.
You can also find Part 1 of JD Montgomery here.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
OUTLINE:
(00:00) Intro
(02:00) The definition of family offices
(03:01) Generation 1 vs 2
(06:25) Building a family office at Gen 1
(07:48) The 3 considerations for succession planning
(11:14) The “why” of succession planning
(12:59) Building self-esteem in children
(17:14) How do you help children choose their long-term passions?
(20:16) When should next gen of family offices know how rich they are?
(23:35) How do next gen family office members first get exposure to VC?
(32:25) When do you give next gens influence over the family’s capital?
(35:28) What % of the family capital should you give a next gen?
(37:42) The ask
(38:09) The hard and soft issues of wealth
(42:41) How often do next gens inherit their parents’ support system?
(46:35) How does a GP know how sophisticated an FO is?
(53:43) How does an advisor know an FO’s sophistication?
(59:10) Sophisticated simplicity
(59:50) When’s the last time JD’s OS changed?
(1:05:23) Post-credit scene: Time is a construct
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Canterbury Consulting
- Ram Dass
- Ikigai
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Andre Agassi
- Groucho Marx
- Groucho Marx’s infamous rule
- Stanford University
- Starbucks
- Verve Coffee Roasters
- Y Combinator
- SpaceX
- Palantir
- Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS)
- Fred Wilson
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“[A family office] is a living, breathing organism that is built around people—a family—that’s there to serve them to accomplish their missions.” — JD Montgomery
“There are three considerations: When do I give the next generation visibility? When do I show them all of the zeros? Secondly, when do I give them influence? And lastly, when do I give them control?” — JD Montgomery
“To whom much is given, much is expected.” — JD Montgomery
“It’s impossible to wealth-transfer self esteem. There is some level of wealth that allows next gen to be able to do anything, and there is some level of wealth that allows the next generation to do nothing.” — JD Montgomery
“I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.” — Groucho Marx
“I don’t view venture as an asset class. I view it as a methodology to allocate capital to every sector on the planet that’s changing. And oh, by the way, every sector on the planet is changing right now.” — JD Montgomery
“I call it the hard and soft issues of wealth. The hard issues are tax and legal and the economic side. The soft issues really relate to people. Is this individual mature in the development? Have they launched? Are they ready to be a good steward?” — JD Montgomery
“We do surgery with chainsaws, and just hire people to clean up blood.” — JD Montgomery
“Time is something man invented to be able to coordinate action. It doesn’t exist otherwise.” — JD Montgomery citing something a Navy Seal once taught him