A Baton Rouge native with a finance degree from LSU, Ryan Thibodeaux is no stranger to entrepreneurship. His first foray into running his own business came while he was in college, when he created an Internet company with his roommate.
As Business Report details in its new Entrepreneur feature, Thibodeaux put that early experience to use in 2012, when he left a position he’d held for nine years as an equity analyst for a Louisiana-based hedge fund to form Goodwood Capital Management.
“I’ve always kind of had that itch,” Thibodeaux says.
His former hedge fund colleague, Josh Pesses, joined Goodwood in 2013, and together they launched their own mutual fund, the Goodwood SMID Cap Discovery Fund.
“Our story plays into the fund,” Thibodeaux says. “Based on our background, the complexion of our portfolio looks different from our competitors.”
The boutique firm now manages more than $100 million in client assets.
With only two other Louisiana-owned and -managed mutual funds in the state, Goodwood does not compete with other investment advisers in Baton Rouge. In fact, those advisers are actually potential customers of Goodwood. Direct competitors are mostly large mutual fund families in New York, Boston and other major money cities.
“We’ve had the most success attracting adviser clients in cities with a culture of entrepreneurship that have seen boutique mutual fund firms thrive over time, such as Memphis, Denver, Minneapolis, Dallas and New Orleans for that matter,” Thibodeaux says.
However, in a business that relies on relationships, marketing to customers on a national scale is a constant challenge.
“Like most businesses, we are selling the people,” Thibodeaux says. “We are the processes and the product.”
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