- August 28, 2019
- Posted by: Vincent Sarullo
- Category: Direct Lending, Family Office, Fund of Funds, Hedge Funds, Marketing, Private Equity / Venture Capital, Raising Capital, SMA, Tax Liens
Investors and other service providers will search a fund manager online before working with them. Getting your online reputation clean is going to be imperative to raising capital. Do not underestimate the power of the internet and other peoples’ feedback of you online. Do a Google search on yourself and dig a few pages into the search results. Make sure there is nothing negative about you or anyone in your firm. If there is something negative, especially if it is unfounded complaints, try to get those removed or changed!
Even simple gripes from an old employee you let go can be damaging and many of those complaints are posted anonymously. There are companies that specialize in repairing online reputation and can “push” positive content about individuals and entities higher up in the search results and push negative listings far, far down. These firms cannot remove any negative posts; to do that you must contact the host and get them to remove the information. These companies can do this for both individuals and entities.
By no means are we endorsing that you cover up questionable issues, if they are resulting in continuing poor feedback online. In fact, you should use this as a guideline to improve your processes. If someone has complained about you online, consider their point of view, see if you can improve upon what you do going forward. Then make an honest attempt to reach out to that individual or company to acknowledge any shortcomings you may have had and how you have pivoted to improve upon it in the future. Most times, the negative feedback will be removed or amended.