Yesterday I read about GQG Partners, a mutual fund company that has grown from ~$0 in assets in 2016 to ~$100B today. An equity investment in the GQG Partners management entity returned ~65x in that time frame (not the funds GQG manages, to be clear).
While reading about it, I posted an abbreviated version of the above on Twitter. Within 15 minutes two people wrote to me about why not to invest in the management entity (it recently went public). While I agree with them, it was very helpful to receive fully crystallized thoughts while I was chewing on how to articulate it.
As mentioned on my post on asset manager business models via Michael Vranos, public securities asset manager businesses can implode when things go bad. Investors can redeem all of their money in very short order and a business can go from managing billions to almost nothing quickly. In contrast, private fund asset managers have management fees locked in for the majority of the fund life (so secure they are being securitized) and can often contractually force additional capital calls if it needs. Extremely different business models for investors effectively performing a similar function.