Juniper Square: Maevlo is growing up.
There have been a lot of big strides in the life of Maevlo lately, not least among these being the rollout of our investor portal, Juniper Square. If you're a seasoned real estate equity investor you've probably come across this service before, but for many of our partners it's a new thing and, for us, it feels like a significant step. It's good to mark big moments in life, so let's take a moment to talk about this step with Juniper Square!
What it does for our partners
If you dabble in investing outside the user-friendly spheres of Fidelity or Schwab, you'll find pretty quickly that you've got irons in a lot of fires. Each one is at a different phase of its lifecycle with managers who all communicate differently (or not at all). You get emails here or there, distributions of capital now and then, capital calls who knows when, and a K-1 hopefully by the extended filing date. You've got it all in your inbox, DropBox, a shared drive of some kind, or on your countertop paper stack . . . . somewhere, right?!. This is where Juniper Square stepped in and built a system to be a one-stop portal for private market investors & managers to maintain connection. It was originally developed with real estate equity in mind but, hey, mineral royalties are just underground real estate, right?
As an investor or even someone who is interested in becoming an investor with Maevlo, you'll be able to find links to all of your active investments with us as well as our active offerings and subscription details related to new funds & opportunities. On each investment page are charts about performance, links to statements, reports, cash calls, and any other documents, all thoughtfully organized, and saved securely for your access alone. When we have new offerings you'll find those documents there too, along with links to DocuSign where you can do the entire subscription process online, if any of them strike your fancy.
What this means for you is clarity, simplicity, and transparency in a world that has been historically pretty opaque and confusing for investors.
What it does for us at Maevlo
Practically, for us, it is a huge leap forward in efficiency. We've got the system beautifully integrated with our accounting system and website. The platform is set up for existing & new potential partners expressing interest. From here we can disseminate new opportunity offerings, subscription documents, capital calls, as well as capital distributions. This inherently allows for greater organization for every partner's capital account and maintains a level of accuracy that’s a Maevlo standard.
It's hard to understate what this means for me and for Maevlo. There comes a point in every startup's life where you just can't do it all yourself anymore on the back of the napkin. I can't tell you how much time I've spent working up distributions and cash calls to get the first three funds running and our investors' returns back to them. Eventually, you have to take a deep breath, enlist the services of the big guns, and become a real company.
I could have built out the team and hired people to do this who I would have to teach, oversee, check up on, and manage. Instead, I'm keeping things lean and nimble, leaning into technology and a company with breadth and horsepower to grow alongside us, and even help advise us on the items we need; when we need them. This frees me up to do what I love, which is to build great partnerships with great people and find great oil and gas deals for them.
Getting the system up and running was a huge pull for a few months last fall and into this year. The folks at Juniper Square did a great job combing through our data and getting it into such a simple and usable format. And now we are set up to soar.
What It's All About, Really
At Maevlo we talk about family being one of the pillars of what we do but there are a lot of different kinds of families out there. There is the kind that says, "Hey, we're family, trust me, I'll get your money back to you. Don't worry, distributions are coming, trust me, didn't I just send you one?" But nothing of the sort happens. And because you're "family," it's pretty hard to put your hand up and say, "Hey, we've not heard anything about this investment in months. What's going on?"
We're aiming for a different kind of family at Maevlo, one that says "I'm going to give you as much access and info as I can. I'm going to hide nothing from you because you're family and that's what trust is built on. I'm going to make this confusing market and your investment in it as easy to understand and manage as is humanly possible.”
Mulching Season at Maevlo
Growing strong stewardship branches from deep partnership roots requires good gardening. That means keeping the soil rich and the conditions right for thriving. This past year, I've been putting systems and partners into place to help me do just that. Along with Juniper Square, we've enlisted the heavyweight accountants at Encompass Business Solutions, keeping the numbers tight and distributions on time (thank you Kim and Erica!), as well as the creative minds at Pivotol who help translate my jumbled wild thoughts into a website that speaks our heart and write content that keeps you in the loop of what we're doing and thinking (I tip my hat to Ben & Danny, make sure to visit their site).
For those of you who know me, my tendency is to run hard and fast, often with my hair on fire, from one thing to the next. I love getting things done and starting new things. In some senses, slowing down to get these foundational things right is torture for me, but pulling experts and systems to do the things I'm not the best at is wonderfully freeing. It lets me do what I love, that which our investors have trusted me to do.
