The largest funds usually make the most noise. This means many other managers remain hidden from investors, according to Michael Wang.

In response to this, the founder and CEO of Prometheus, one of the newest alternative investment platforms, wants to unearth the gems in alternatives and bring them to individual investors.

‘There are roughly 15,000 alternative managers out there. The problem is, the vast majority of these fund managers never get discovered regardless of what their performance is. That’s because 100% of net inflows of capital in our industry go to the big guys,’ Wang said.

‘That leaves the rest fighting for scraps. Part of the reason why those inflows go into larger funds these days is today the limited partners of these funds are generally large institutions, which only put money with the large guys. So, the large guys get larger, smaller guys get smaller, despite the fact that smaller managers generally outperform the larger guys.’

Prometheus’s founder shares the same vision as the founders of other platforms like Moonfare or Titanbay. But there is a twist.

In addition to a marketplace for investors to access alternative funds from as low as $25,000, Wang created what amounts to a social media platform where investors can connect with and follow fund managers.

The aim is to allow them to get to know managers and see what they are thinking in real time. In essence, using content as a means of lead generation for the managers.

The platform has been active for about three months and currently has 15 funds on it, and is in the process of approving another five for inclusion. The firms featured include Blue Duck Capital and Marathon Resource Advisors. In time, Wang will look to create a fund-of-funds vehicle as well to allow investors to deploy capital across multiple strategies at once.

‘I know a lot of people and a lot of funds and people always introduce me to new clients, almost on a daily basis,’ Wang said. ‘There’s a lot of demand to get on our marketplace because this is a distribution channel that’s never existed before. We’re giving these fund managers an opportunity to build an audience, a chance to have a megaphone. And we’re doing it in a way that is very modern and we’re doing it digitally. If you think about our industry today, it’s equivalent to brick-and-mortar retail of 20 years ago. Things are still processed manually.’

Accredited investors can sign up directly and do not need to go through a wealth manager or financial adviser.

Prometheus doesn’t charge them a fee and instead takes a cut from what the fund manager receives through its broker-dealer.

‘We want there to be no friction and no excuses not to transact on our platform,’ Wang added.

There are about 30 people working at Prometheus currently. Most of its resources are targeting growth in the US, but the platform is available for investors in the UK and Western Europe as well.

The content can be accessed by anyone, not just investors.

‘Whether you’re accredited or non-accredited, you can join and consume content directly from the professionals. Most people on Wall Street don’t really post content on social media platforms like Twitter. There are a few reasons for that, and one is compliance. That’s why we built compliance gates into our platform.

‘The second issue is it’s very difficult to build an audience on Twitter today because you’d be competing against a million other topics. When a fund manager posts on Prometheus it hits a very targeted demographic, from high-net-worth investors to family offices,’ Wang explained.

Fund managers get to choose who sees their content and can post exclusively for a certain category, such as accredited investors.

The big challenge in building Prometheus was making sure it was intuitive and user-friendly while staying on the right side of regulations. If there is a lot of friction involved in joining the platform then it would make the experience more painful.

Before setting up Prometheus, Wang was a managing partner at LA-based The Cypress Funds and prior to that, he was a founding principal at Tourbillon Capital Partners.

When asked about the firm’s name, Wang said: ‘In Greek mythology, Prometheus was the god who took fire from the heavens and brought it down to humans. The analogy is we are taking something only in the purview of the ultra-wealthy and the largest institutions and taking it to retail.’

Citywire Amplify will cover private market platforms every fortnight. Read the previous entry in the series, on Private Markets Alpha, here and see below for a comparison between the platforms we have covered so far.