The Family Office Door

The Family Office Door

Family offices can be the most flexible investors a founder or fund manager will ever meet. They invest their own money, they can move quickly and they don’t answer to a fund’s timeline. But they also don’t run open applications. Here’s what the latest data says about how family offices invest, why the early-stage door is narrower than it looks, and how to earn an introduction.

A Note on the Data

The figures below come from three sources that measure different things, so we present them separately:

  • Citi’s 2026 Global Family Office Report is a survey of 351 family offices in 41 countries, conducted June–July 2026 and released September 22. The respondents are Citi’s own clients, and the sample skews large: 54% have assets over $500M. Read its numbers as “in Citi’s survey,” not as all family offices.
  • FINTRX’s Q3 2026 Family Office Investment Activity Report (October 15) counts company transactions involving family offices, as FINTRX classifies them.
  • Dakota’s “Winning Family Office Capital” report (page dated October 6) draws on its own database of single family offices.

In Citi’s Survey: Most Invest Directly, Through Relationships

  • 75% of respondents said their family invests directly in companies (78% in North America, 79% in Asia Pacific).
  • Primary sources of direct deal flow: in-house team 69%, other families or family offices 49%, banks 40%, investment advisors 36%, networking groups or investment clubs 34%.
  • Among larger offices (assets over $500M), 57% cite other families as a source, against 37% of smaller ones.

Citi’s words: “Direct investing remains highly dependent on relationships,” and “Connectivity has emerged as a competitive advantage.”

In Citi’s Survey: The Appetite Is Growing, Mostly Later

These are stated plans for the next 12 months, not dollars invested:

  • 40% expect to increase direct investing (33% modestly, 7% meaningfully), against 11% who expect to decrease or pause. In North America, 46% expect an increase.
  • 21% expect to increase new commitments to venture capital funds, against 10% decreasing.
  • Primary direct-investing focus by stage (respondents could pick several): growth (Series C/D) 57%, pre-IPO 40%, early stage (Series A/B) 37%, startup/incubation/seed 16%. North America is the most seed-friendly region at 21%.

So in Citi’s survey, seed is the least-cited focus. That doesn’t mean family offices don’t write early checks. It means the ones that do are a smaller, more specific group.

In FINTRX’s Count: Activity by Transaction

FINTRX tracked 178 family offices completing 342 company transactions in Q3 2026. By stage, Series A led with 64 transactions, followed by acquisitions (49) and seed (43).

One important note: FINTRX counts a16z Perennial, Andreessen Horowitz’s wealth-management arm, as a family office, and it was the most active with 56 deals, five times any other. That one entity is a large share of the total, so keep it in mind when reading the numbers.

In Dakota’s Data: Preference Isn’t the Same as Action

Dakota tracks 4,567 single family offices, and “half of them already carry a stated investment preference for venture capital.” But in recent activity, only about 1 in 8 of those with that preference made a direct investment in a venture-backed company. Dakota also says seed and Series A together are “roughly half of all family office-backed direct venture deals” in its data. These are Dakota’s own approximations.

Put the three together carefully. In Citi’s survey, large offices say they’re focused on growth. In FINTRX’s and Dakota’s counts, plenty of early-stage deals still happen. They’re different measures, and both pictures can be true.

Two Examples

Universal Quantum (announced October 8). The UK quantum-computing company raised over $100M in a Series A co-led by DCVC and Firgun Ventures, with participation from Artal, which Altss Research identifies as a European family group, among others. Nauta, an early backer, says co-founder Sebastian Weidt spoke at its Investor Day in 2018, before the company existed. Nauta then backed the pre-seed. At its May 2026 Investor Day, Weidt spoke to Nauta’s LPs again, with “many of our LPs getting the incredible opportunity to invest directly via a dedicated SPV.” (Self-reported by Nauta; the SPV’s size and terms aren’t disclosed.)

ONYA (late September). The Bengaluru lab-grown diamond jewellery startup, founded in 2024, raised ₹12.5 crore in a pre-Series A led by Divisa Family Office, the investment office of entrepreneur Dr. Sanjeev Juneja, per Family Office Daily. Zeropearl VC, which led ONYA’s ₹5.5 crore pre-seed in November 2025, invested again. (Company-reported; Divisa’s share isn’t disclosed.)

Two very different stories, one pattern: the family capital came through relationships that were already in place.

What Founders Can Do Now

  1. Ask your investors who they co-invest with. “Which family offices do you invest alongside?” is one of the most useful questions you can ask.
  2. Find the right kind of office. Look for families whose founder built something like your company, and offices that actually make early direct investments.
  3. Build a credible base. ONYA’s family-office lead came after a VC and angel pre-seed.
  4. Model, test, adjust. Start with one or two warm introductions, learn what each office cares about, and refine before you go wider.

What GPs Can Do Now

  1. Start with co-investment. Dakota advises offering family offices co-invests as a “lower-commitment way to start a relationship” before asking for a fund commitment. Nauta’s SPV is one version of that.
  2. Get into the peer loop. In Citi’s survey, peers are the top outside deal source. Ask happy family office LPs to introduce you to other families.
  3. Focus on the active few. Per Dakota, only about 1 in 8 offices with a venture preference recently made a direct deal. Spend your time on the ones writing checks.

The Door Opens from the Inside

Family offices don’t run an inbox. They run a network. The way in is through someone already inside: a co-investor, a peer family or an advisor they trust.

Much of that map is public. Form D filings list related persons, Form ADV shows advisers and their funds, and fund portfolios and board seats show who invests alongside whom. ConnectLab.live maps those paths alongside your own contacts, so you can see who in your network already knows a family office.

Connection is the currency of the 21st Century.

If a family office called your lead investor to ask about you, what would they hear?

If you’d like help with that, here’s an open invitation:

Sources

About Ken McArthur

Ken McArthur is the founder of ConnectLab.live, an AI relationship-intelligence and warm-intro platform that helps founders who are raising find the funds that fit and the people who can introduce them, and helps fund managers connect with the founders they back. He was recently accepted into Harvard Business School Foundry. He also writes Raise Smarter, a daily newsletter on what's really moving in early-stage fundraising. Ken challenges us to realize we ALL have an impact, whether we want to or not, on thousands of people we touch in our day-to-day lives, and he shows that simple things make a HUGE difference. ConnectLab.live grew out of that belief. Connection is the currency of the 21st Century, and the right introduction can change a company's future. Long before ConnectLab, Ken was the popular host of live events that brought together top-level marketers, entrepreneurs, business owners, corporations and non-profit organizations to build multi-million dollar joint venture relationships. He has managed product launches ranked in the top 400 sites on the Internet and is regularly asked to speak at leading marketing events. He created AffiliateShowcase.com, a pioneering affiliate program search engine and directory. He also founded the MBS Internet Research Center, which conducted the world's largest survey ever attempted on creating and launching successful information products. Ken was the official mentor for Sterling Valentine as he took his launch from zero to over $100,000 in less than 8 days, a proof of concept documented in Info Product Blueprint. Today he puts that same skill for connecting people and launching ideas to work for founders and the investors who back them.

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