Family offices are getting choosier. Citi Wealth surveyed 351 of them across 41 countries for its 2026 Global Family Office Report and found direct investing still rising, with offices growing more selective about where their money goes.
J-P Conte runs his own family office, investing his personal capital, and he laid out how he approaches the job in a column for Forbes Business Council. He opened with his parents, who came to the United States with no capital.
"My parents came to the United States to build," he wrote.
What Changes When the Capital Is Your Own
Conte is the founder and managing partner of his family office, Lupine Crest Capital. He has spent decades at a private equity firm investing in healthcare, software, financial services and industrial technology companies. His family office puts personal capital into those same sectors.
Staying close to familiar ground is the first of three takeaways he offered business leaders, under the heading "Deploy what you know." Investors who build lasting value, he wrote, are "going deeper into sectors where they've spent years building real knowledge."
"After more than 30 years, the most valuable thing I've accumulated is experience," he wrote.
That experience lets him size up a management team quickly, according to the column, and it means founders are more likely to call him first.
Direct investing is common across the industry. Seventy percent of the 346 offices in Citi's 2025 survey said they were engaged with direct investments, and four in 10 of those had stepped up that activity over the prior year.
What Stays the Same
J-P Conte argued that the fundamentals of good investing don't change with the structure. Relationships still come before transactions.
People come first. Conte has watched good markets fail to rescue weak teams. A clear read on who is running a company is needed before any money moves.
"Before you commit capital, commit to an honest assessment of the people because they are what you're really backing," he wrote.
His shorthand for it: "Find the right people, back them fully, give them room."
He told Authority Magazine two of the questions that are asked about any company: "Who's running this?" and "Can they execute?"
Discipline ranks high on his list, too. He said it is what he looks for in the people he backs, in business and in philanthropy alike.
"Talent gets you started, but discipline is what carries you," JP Conte said.
How J-P Conte Says Patience Drives Success
Experience is one half of his approach. Patience is the other.
"Patient capital isn't passive capital," Conte wrote. "It's the decision to give a great company the time it needs rather than the time that's convenient."
Timing gets the same treatment. "Knowing when to hold is as important as knowing when to move," he wrote.
He thinks in long stretches. "We have the freedom to take a longer view, to be patient," he told Authority Magazine, and he always considers the thought of " will this still matter in ten years?"
Where the Long View Comes From
He closed the column where he started. His parents, Conte wrote, arrived in the United States without money but with "conviction about what was possible and about the value of building something that lasts."
He has traced his time horizon back to them as well. "My parents didn't think in quarters," he told the magazine. "They thought in generations."
"My family office is an extension of that idea," J-P Conte later followed in Forbes Business Council.
