A human look at the people our customers sell to—what their weeks actually look like, what they worry about, and how they process information.
Asset managers are our customers. Allocators are their customers. To be credible with GPs, we need a felt sense of what the allocator side of the table lives every week.
If we see the world the way allocators do, we can help GPs show up smarter, more aligned, and less generic.
Head of Infrastructure at a $70B+ public pension. Highly public role, consultant-driven workflows, heavy board oversight, frequent conference appearances.
Investment Associate at a $5B university endowment. Lean team, broad remit, memo-driven influence. Lives in GP diligence, references, and conferences.
CIO of a $3B family office. Tiny team, concentrated decisions, deep trust-based relationships. Cares about multi-decade resilience and reputation.
Multi-asset portfolios spanning public equity, fixed income, PE, VC, infra, credit, real estate, hedge funds. Capital is plentiful; attention and political capital are scarce. Every GP competes for a sliver of bandwidth.
Constraints include boards, beneficiaries, donors, families, consultants, regulators, and media.
Back-to-back GP meetings, internal committees, memo drafting, monitoring existing managers, conferences, and peer networking—often simultaneously.
Their scarce resource isn’t capital—it’s attention and defensibility.
Winning their attention requires meeting them where they are mentally: fiduciary risk, information overload, and pressure to justify every decision.
Build and manage a multi-decade infrastructure portfolio across transportation, digital, and energy assets. Deliver inflation-linked returns to beneficiaries and keep boards comfortable.
“I’m a fiduciary whose decisions could end up in headlines.” Filters everything through risk buckets, cash flows, governance, and public defensibility.
Pride in funding retiree benefits and building real-world assets. Fear of public embarrassment or political fallout from a bad GP call.
Be the disciplined, forward-looking allocator peers cite on energy transition and infrastructure governance.
| Day | Morning | Afternoon |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Review infra metrics; scan consultant updates. | Team pipeline meeting; triage GP requests; prep IC items. |
| Tuesday | Diligence calls with GPs (existing + new). | Memo drafting; coordinate with consultants on ratings/references. |
| Wednesday | Risk/ESG committee; scenario analysis. | Board staff prep—slides, Q&A anticipation. |
| Thursday | Investment committee/board meetings or final prep. | Follow-ups: action items, GP questions, next steps. |
| Friday | 1:1s with staff; performance review. | Admin, conference planning, clearing backlog, weekend reading. |
Most Maria meetings involve explaining, justifying, or defending decisions in public forums.
Maintain infra manager pipeline, coordinate with consultants, write memos, monitor performance, manage ESG/governance topics, prep for committees, speak at conferences.
Consultant reports, GP decks, risk dashboards, public hearings, conference notes. Filters everything through governance and defensibility, synthesizes into memos and Q&A prep.
“Can I justify this manager to a skeptical board?” “Are we ahead or behind peers on energy transition?” “Are GPs aligned on fees and risk-sharing?”
Triangulates GP claims with peer remarks, hearings, and historical experience. Builds a coherent infra narrative peers respect.
CIO, asset-class heads, risk/ESG/legal, staff analysts, investment committee, board members.
Consultants (Aon, Meketa, Mercer), GPs, other public plans, industry bodies, occasionally media/public hearings.
Osmosis helps by surfacing peer comments and early warnings from spoken forums.
Generalist covering multiple asset classes, first-pass filter for managers, memo writer whose analysis drives CIO decisions.
“My job is to separate signal from noise and turn conversations into actionable recommendations.”
Pride in tight memos and spotting hidden risks. Fear of missing red flags or being seen as sloppy.
Promotion to Investment Officer, eventual CIO path—or jump to a top-tier GP.
| Day | Focus |
|---|---|
| Monday | Agenda review, triage GP requests, 1–2 update calls, quick portfolio checks. |
| Tuesday | Deep dive on managers, heavy reading, memo drafting, clarifications with GPs. |
| Wednesday | Internal portfolio meeting, pacing discussion, conference content catch-up. |
| Thursday | GP meetings, references, IC prep with CIO. |
| Friday | Finalize memos, update trackers, plan weekend reading. |
Daniel constantly battles for uninterrupted analysis time amid nonstop inbound.
Screen managers, run references, read decks/DDQs/letters, build models, draft memos, track portfolio pacing.
GP materials, legal docs, conference transcripts, peer commentary, past memos. Converts qualitative inputs into structured buckets (Team, Strategy, Edge, Risks).
“Which managers are truly differentiated?” “Are we overweight a risk factor?” “Am I missing red flags?”
Builds thematic libraries, cross-references allocator comments with GP claims, comfortable recommending “No.”
CIO, senior PMs, ops/risk, other associates sharing intel informally.
GPs, peers at other endowments/foundations, consultants/data providers, reference contacts.
Osmosis gives faster context, proof points for memos, and targeted alerts.
Oversee entire $3B portfolio for a single family. Preserve and grow capital over generations while aligning with family values.
“My edge is judgment across decades. I need a handful of high-conviction relationships, not 200 managers.”
Pride in protecting the family. Fear of permanent impairment or reputational misalignment.
Build a resilient, values-aligned portfolio that weathers any macro regime and earns long-term trust.
| Day | Focus |
|---|---|
| Monday | Performance dashboards, risk/liquidity check, small-team sync. |
| Tuesday | GP relationship meetings; trust calibration. |
| Wednesday | Thematic work (energy transition, AI infra, deglobalization); reading and thinking. |
| Thursday | Selective events/panels; triage new ideas. |
| Friday | Strategy review with team; decide which ideas move forward; prep communications for principals. |
Sarah may take only a handful of new GP meetings per quarter. Every minute must matter.
Set asset allocation, decide which GPs to back, communicate with principals, maintain deep relationships, monitor macro themes.
Team summaries, direct GP conversations, peer CIO roundtables, selective conferences, podcasts.
“Which relationships deserve long-term capital?” “Are we overexposed to certain people or styles?” “What are we not seeing?”
Says “no” quickly, integrates qualitative signals with numbers, keeps a stable core while evolving edges.
Principals/family, tiny investment team, operations/legal/tax partners.
Long-term GPs, selected new managers, peer CIOs, specialized advisors.
Osmosis surfaces allocator/GP sentiment so she can stay ahead of reputational shifts.
| Dimension | Maria (Public Plan) | Daniel (Endowment) | Sarah (Family Office) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time Horizon | Multi-decade, public accountability | Long-term but career incentives | Multi-generational family lens |
| Decision Speed | Slow, committee-driven | Medium (memo + CIO) | Fast, concentrated |
| Transparency | Highly public | Private but peer-aware | Very private |
| Main Pain | Defensibility & scrutiny | Overload & synthesis | Time & judgment |
| Emotional Risk | Public embarrassment | Missing key risk | Permanent capital loss |
GPs often pitch the same story to all three, but each persona is running a completely different mental program.
| Today | With Osmosis |
|---|---|
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Maria, Daniel, and Sarah are all trying to answer the same question: Where should scarce, long-term capital go—and how do we justify those decisions?
Their weeks are full of committee prep, memo writing, board politics, and cognitive overload. Spoken content from allocators, consultants, and GPs is everywhere but rarely structured.
Osmosis makes that content findable, synthesized, and persona-specific so GPs can show up better prepared, aligned, and trusted.
“We help capital formation teams speak the allocator’s language because we capture what those allocators are actually saying.”