Austin, Texas-based entrepreneur Nick Gray established Tri Peak Holdings, a small family office of less than $50 million in assets under management, in 2020 after selling his interactive-tour startup Museum Hack for seven figures. Before starting Museum Hack, Gray helped his father build Flight Display Systems, an avionics equipment business, growing it from a family-run operation to a company with 75 employees and international sales, eventually selling it in 2014 to a private equity firm.
What were the factors in your decision to set up a single office rather than join a multifamily office?
After selling Museum Hack, the idea of working with a regular team and having support staff to help with my administrative work — personal and professional — was very appealing. Having been an entrepreneur and having bootstrapped businesses, the idea of running my own family office was just more native. I’ve hired and managed teams for a long time.
My risk tolerance as a 40-year-old who’s single with no kids doesn’t line up with most other multifamily offices.
How is TriPeak Holdings structured? 
I used a company called Northwest Registered Agent to set up my single-owner LLC, which was very straightforward. My tax and trust planning is simpler than most because I don’t have dependents.
I do all the due diligence on my investments. I think you need a minimum of $100 million assets under management to have a full-time investment research team where it would really make sense. I also handle all the operations and rely on my staff for administrative functions.
I know of individuals with multiple analysts and full-time investment staff; their results were largely on par with the stock market. The stock market had an amazing run through 2020, so maybe that’s not a fair comparison. I don’t know how they’re doing now, but at the time, it was an active area of discussion in terms of what’s the real reason we have family offices. I came away saying that the benefit is in staying sharp, making investments, staying connected — and it’s fun.
What’s your investment philosophy, and has it changed?
I’m largely a public markets investor, and I’m not an active trader.
My overall thesis is I buy one new stock about every two years. I’ll spend the first year researching, slowly building a position, and then I’ll watch it as I continue to build a position. I’ve done that for about three companies.
A lot of the investment advice, perhaps about a year ago when inflation was transitory, was around growth stocks and crypto as a hedge. While I don’t have any crypto investments, I went hard on growth and certainly used some of those fears of inflation to bolster my own thesis of buying into growth and tech. I’ve certainly missed out on buying the dip, being fully invested. So that’s been an interesting learning.
Many former founders seek direct access to venture or startup deals. Why have you chosen not to?
I know people much smarter than I that are basically break-even on their venture investments. There are definitely some outside-return success stories, but I don’t feel like I have a lot to add as an investor, and it takes a lot of work.
I’ve bootstrapped both businesses that I’ve worked on and exited. We didn’t raise outside investment, so it’s not an area I have expertise in, and there are a lot of people competing for these investments.
Advice for others setting up a small family office?
Ensure you have a website for your family office. It’s valuable from a purely practical stance. I do my own due diligence on investments, which means reaching out to a company’s clients, customers and former employees. It’s helpful to do so using TriPeak as my company name, rather than Museum Hack. Everybody does diligence on investors, and the first thing they do is go online. I’ve got a personal website and blog, which aren’t relevant to investing. The TriPeak website contains that part of my life.
Amy Guttman, who conducted this interview, has been covering entrepreneurs and startups since 2014. She contributes to Forbes and has been a correspondent for the PBS Newshour, BBC, Associated Press, CBS News and others. Amy also is a podcast presenter and regularly participates in tech summits around the world conducting fireside interviews, moderating panel discussions and speaking about how to tell compelling stories.