Zack Richner’s grandparents founded Richner Communications, one of the largest owners of newspapers in the New York area. Richner founded Arrandale Ventures to create new sources of revenue through advertising swaps with startups in exchange for equity.
How did your family create success?
My family owns a group of newspapers in New York, mostly Long Island. My grandparents were accountants. My grandma, back in the 1950s, was working in the professional world, and one of their clients owned a small newspaper that he put up for sale. My grandparents bought it thinking it would be a hobby, and within a year, they were working on it full time. They ran the newspaper until 1987 and grew it to a handful of newspapers on Long Island that my father and my uncle took over and expanded to about 24 local newspapers, all print and digital.
What’s your background?
When I graduated from college, I worked in government for about seven years. I thought it was very important that my first job not be in the family business, so I understood what it meant to have a boss who wasn't a family member and so there wasn’t any whiff of potential nepotism if I became involved in the family business. Working in government gave me a lot of responsibility at a very young age. I was managing multibillion-dollar projects and dozens of people. Not only did it teach me a lot about managing others, but when I provide input to the family business, I have the experience and credentials to back it up.
How did you come up with the idea for Arrandale Ventures?
I set out to find a new business model for local media because advertising revenue from local retailers has declined. We have a trusted and well-known brand. We have steep, long-standing relationships with both consumers and businesses. We have unique marketing channels, and we have engaging content. I was hearing from people in the startup world time and time again that they were frustrated that marketing channels were limited to big tech platforms. I suggested advertising in traditional media, which they had never thought about. It can be difficult to place advertising at scale in traditional media.
I set out to connect nondigital media with startups. It works like a barter — a startup gets X amount of free advertising in exchange for equity. For example, we may offer $10,000 worth of advertising across our network for $3,000 in equity. We started with our family-owned newspapers and now have thousands of multimedia outlets — print, radio, television, digital.
How do you and your family work to preserve your legacy?
It’s very important to us to make an impact in our communities. We think that having a robust, healthy local news business is the first step. We seek other community-oriented businesses where we can leverage our audience and marketing — like local lacrosse camps, as an example.
On the philanthropic side, we take a very hands-on approach. Most of the things we’re passionate about, we want to help with strategizing, operating and offering connections and positive influence, rather than financial-based giving.
My parents sit on various boards. My mom worked at MoMA for 20 years. She speaks all over the country on how to incorporate arts into a STEM curriculum and also works with formerly incarcerated individuals. I sit on the Merging Leadership Council at the 92nd Street Y in New York, which promotes Jewish values — but not only to the Jewish community. In New York, a lot of people utilize the resources of the Y, whether it's classes, preschool or headline events. I also sit on the board of America's Newspapers.
Advice for next-gen family office members based on your experiences?
It's important to prove yourself outside of the family business — in business or nonprofit work. The goal is to demonstrate that you can make wise decisions and be responsible stewards of capital and of time, because time is probably the most finite resource.
Impact investing is something many of us are interested in, but you need to make a business case so that it makes financial sense. I would not discount the quantitative piece of supporting your passion with numbers and data.
Every family has different dynamics. But having experience, whether conceiving and executing initiatives or managing teams, outside of providing financial support, is critical.
Safeguarding wealth and well-being: Cybersecurity best practices for family offices

By RICK SNYDER
Cybersecurity has become an important element in our professional and personal lives, as cybercriminals target both individuals and organizations on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, family offices are one of the most appealing targets for cybercriminals. The reason is simple: Family offices possess extremely valuable information on high-worth individuals and have significant financial resources. Also, family offices have likely not taken all the preventive actions to reduce their cyber risk profile.
Place yourself in the shoes of a cybercriminal. Does it make more sense to attack a large organization that has dedicated cyber personnel and tools, or a small office that doesn’t?
Here is some practical advice for family offices:
Build a layered defense: Implement strategies to help prevent, detect, respond to and recover from cyberattacks.
Best practices in prevention and detection:
- Written cyber policies that are explicitly communicated and enforced.
- Require complex and unique passwords. Never reuse a password! If this is too challenging, get a password manager program. They work. Your organization can set up password managers for your entire team.
- Turn on or implement multi-actor authentication (MFA). Many programs and sites have an option to use MFA. MFA typically involves receiving a text or email containing a clickable link or code, in addition to entering your password.
- Keep your software and hardware up to date. At a minimum, make sure you have automatic updates turned on.
- The biggest risks faced by a smaller organization come from humans, not technology. Clicking on a button in or opening an attachment to an infected email is often the path to big trouble. To help with this category, provide cybersecurity awareness training and phishing exercises for all your staff.
- If you have people working remotely due to your office policies or travel, have them use a virtual private network (VPN) when they join a nontrusted network. It is an additional layer of software that helps protect them while on Wi-Fi. Going on Wi-Fi at an airport or other public place without a VPN is an invitation for cyber trouble.
- Additional considerations: external vulnerability scanning, firewall protection, Wi-Fi settings and physical security measures.
Response and recovery measures: Please do these few things at a minimum!
- Develop and test an incident response plan that details what you are going to do if you experience a cyberattack. This is a frequently overlooked item. When I ask business leaders whether they have a fire evacuation plan or response plan for a natural disaster like a hurricane or tornado, most of them say “yes.” Then, I ask whether they have an incident response plan, and the response is either a blank stare or “no.” Which of these items is most likely to happen? Draft your cyber incident response plan today.
- Do backups on a regular basis, and test restoring your backups. If you get hacked, having the ability to quickly restore your data is critical.
- In addition, consider getting cybersecurity insurance. It is another layer of your defense protection strategy. But be careful — these policies are complicated, so make sure you properly fill out the application and understand what is covered and for how much.
Identify responsible resources: Designate which internal and external resources are responsible for helping manage your cybersecurity needs. Know who is monitoring, helping manage and reporting on your cybersecurity profile. Cybersecurity is a complicated and alien topic to most people, and it is only going to become more challenging. Ad hoc or part-time attention to this topic is not a sufficient model. Also, remember that information technology and cybersecurity are different topics.
Cultural integration of cybersecurity: The most important step on this list is to integrate cybersecurity into the culture of your organization. While cybersecurity will only be your No. 1 priority when you suffer a cyberattack, it needs to be on your list of cultural priorities well before that happens. Everyone in the organization should be cyber-trained and use best practices. Often, senior leadership is the problem; in a number of cases, I’ve had to call out an organization’s top people for not doing their cyber-training sessions. Regular executive briefings on cybersecurity status and issues can help contribute to this cultural shift.
The analogy that I give people about cybersecurity is that it’s similar to having diabetes: It’s a chronic condition with no cure. If diabetics take their insulin, watch their diet and exercise, they can live a full and normal life. If they ignore these items, they are on a path to tragic consequences.
If you follow cybersecurity best practices, you can feel safer and sleep better at night, so you have the energy to focus on your top priorities. If you don’t, your days before a devasting attack are likely numbered.
Remember, while you can never guarantee 100% safety from cybercrime, with the proper cultural attitude and technical expertise, you can be safer.