Investor first, in practice
"We invest our own capital alongside" can sound like a slogan. It isn't.
Sobu is run by a former multi-asset portfolio manager whose broader-family capital is already deployed across Australian private markets: roughly twenty-two positions with nineteen managers, generating a blended projected yield of around 11% per annum. The portfolio is predominantly private credit (the income engine), with a meaningful private equity sleeve and a selective venture allocation. The income orientation is real; most positions distribute monthly in cash.
Several manager relationships are multi-position, backed two or three times across different funds and entities. That repeat-conviction pattern is what distinguishes a selector's portfolio from a platform user's: conviction sized up over time.
Opportunities shared with our network are ones Sobu has assessed for the family's own capital first. If a manager or a deal doesn't clear that bar, it doesn't reach the network. The opportunities an investor is invited to commit to are, in most cases, ones we have already invested in ourselves.
Alignment matters because it imposes a real cost on misjudgment. We pay for our own mistakes alongside our network. There is no version of the model where we win on flow while our network loses on selection.
What gets shared, and what doesn't
Most things get a no. That's the design.
The path is consistent. A manager, warm-introduced or inbound, opens a conversation. We engage as an investor: ask substantive questions, request the materials we would want for our own capital, and run the diligence we would run for ourselves. If the opportunity is one we would commit family capital to, on terms that hold up for the end investor, we proceed. If not, we decline: no entanglement, no obligation, no pressure to pursue a referral we don't believe in.
When something does proceed, sizing reflects conviction. Family positions span a wide range, from exploratory tickets well under one percent of the portfolio to materially larger commitments when the analytical basis warrants it. Our network sees the same signal, how Sobu sizes into an opportunity reflects the strength of the call.
We are also honest about realised mistakes. One early family position, pre-Sobu, was taken on the strength of a "double-digit income" promise via proximity, with no diligence
and no governance access, and it ended up close to zero. It is the exact failure pattern Sobu's process exists to prevent. (The full case is in our onboarding materials.)
