How to Start a Family Office, step 7 of 12

Set a Public Profile While Protecting Family Privacy

In short. This step is about deciding whether and how your family office will communicate publicly. A public profile can help attract opportunities, peers, talent, and strategic partners, while a separate office or holding company name can help keep the family's identity private. Set clear boundaries around what information the office shares.

By Richard C. Wilson, from chapter 7 of How to Start a Family Office

A family office can be public about its work while keeping the family name and activities private. The first decision is not whether publicity is good or bad. It is what you want public communication to accomplish, and what information your family wants to keep private.

Many families prefer to stay under the radar. In some places, public attention can bring competition to operating businesses, threats to family safety, government scrutiny, or improper requests from public officials. Some families built their wealth privately and want to continue that way. Those concerns deserve a serious discussion before the office creates a public profile.

Decide What a Public Profile Is For

A thoughtful public presence can help a family office see investment opportunities earlier, connect with peers, attract team members, and build relationships with intermediaries. It can also help an office meet potential co-investors or strategic partners when considering a larger investment. Those relationships can expose the team to practices and trends it might not otherwise encounter.

In my experience, the strongest case for a public profile is practical. It can make the office easier to understand and approach. A deal intermediary may be more comfortable sharing an opportunity with an office that has a credible presence and can explain its interests. A potential hire may also have a clearer sense of the organization and its work.

That does not mean every family needs a public website or media strategy. Start with the purpose. If you want to build peer relationships, attract talent, or improve access to opportunities, decide which public channels support those aims. If you see no benefit that outweighs the family's concerns, a quiet profile may be the better choice.

Use an Office Name to Create Distance

A useful approach is to present the family office or holding company under its own name instead of the family's name. The name can describe the office or its location without pointing directly to the family. For example, a family might refer to its organization as a regional family office instead of using the family surname. This can give the office a public identity while creating a degree of separation from the family.

Consider the details behind that identity, too. The chapter describes registering a website through a holding company and keeping private contact details off the public site. Families can also review whether public records connect the office name to their own. The right structure depends on your circumstances, so talk with your attorney about legal and privacy questions before setting it up.

Public visibility and privacy are not all-or-nothing choices. You can decide which parts of the office are visible, what the website says, and which family details stay confidential. Be deliberate about how those choices fit together, since even ordinary information can identify a family when combined with other public details.

Share Enough to Establish Credibility

A public profile needs enough substance to be useful. When an office describes its holdings or activities, that information can help others assess whether it is a credible counterparty or purchaser of assets. In my experience, carefully chosen information can help secure deal flow and open the door to opportunities that might not otherwise be shared.

There is a tradeoff. The more details you publish, the easier it may be for someone to identify the family behind the office. Decide which facts support the office's purpose and which facts create unnecessary exposure. You do not need to publish a complete account of the family's assets or activities to communicate what the office is interested in.

Set boundaries before publishing. Identify who may approve public statements, what kinds of holdings can be named, and which topics stay off the website. Keep contact channels separate from personal details. Ask the people involved in managing the office to follow the same boundaries in conversations and online profiles. For related privacy practices, see how family offices protect privacy.

Make Public Relations a Deliberate Choice

Public relations is not simply a website task. It is a decision about how the office presents itself and engages with people outside the family. A profile that has no clear purpose can invite attention without producing useful relationships. A profile with a defined purpose can help the office explain what it does and make it easier for the right people to start a conversation.

Discuss the choice with the family and the people responsible for governance. Agree on the office's public name, the audience it wants to reach, and the information it will share. Decide who handles inquiries and who can speak for the office. If the family chooses to stay private, make that an intentional policy and brief the team on it.

Then review the profile as the office grows. The family's appetite for visibility may change as its activities, relationships, or concerns change. Keep the public description aligned with the office's actual purpose and the privacy boundaries the family has set. To connect this work to the family's broader decisions, revisit your family compass and family office governance. For the wider setup process, see the 12 steps to start a family office.

There are ways to be very public as a family office while staying very private with your family name and activities.