Why We Built Harbor Ridge: Lessons from 27 Years on the Front Lines of Investing
Starting a new financial services firm from scratch is, on paper, completely irrational.
Fewer than 10% of new financial advisory practices survive long-term, and 77% of all industry assets are controlled by a tiny handful of massive mega-firms. The standard playbook says to stay at a large institution, collecting fees while managing assets under someone else’s playbook and brand. Launching an independent investment firm isn't just hard—it looks more than a little nutty on the surface.
So why do it? Because after 27 years in investment management, I realized that the traditional system wasn't just rigid; it was fundamentally leaving intentional investors with an uncomfortable compromise.
Early in my career, I worked in traditional asset management. Fourteen years ago, I pivoted to mission-oriented and values-aligned investing because I believed—and still believe—that how we deploy capital shapes the world around us. Yet as the industry grew, I kept running into three major structural flaws that nobody else was solving.
The first was a lesson in accountability.
Years ago, while leading a new division at a sustainable investment firm, I was responsible for onboarding clients and allocating their investment to sub-advisors—including high-profile family offices and foundations. I remember working closely with a prominent family foundation whose mandate was crystal clear: every dollar needed to align with a strong gender-equity lens and remain 100% fossil-fuel-free.
To build their portfolio, we allocated capital across approved sub-advisors and strategies. I had learned about each of their negative screening processes, they were all approved by our Investment Committee, and I trusted that their published guidelines would be followed. But when the foundation’s very first quarterly statements arrived, my heart sank. Right there on the page were two major natural gas pipelines.
Two separate sub-advisors had let those companies slip through the cracks of their generic negative screens, they had been held in the client accounts for more than two months, and nobody at the sub-advisory firms noticed. It was a painful moment, but a defining one. Relying on third-party black boxes meant clients weren't getting real alignment—they were getting broken promises and, at best, passive oversight.
The second lesson was about human nature and portfolio construction.
Later in my career, while managing concentrated, innovation-focused strategies, I saw another reality: even the most brilliant long-term investment thesis fails if it’s too difficult for an investor to live with day-to-day.
When a portfolio experiences high levels of short-term volatility, the emotional toll is real. It doesn't matter if a strategy is mathematically "right" for a ten-year horizon if the journey is so wild that an investor feels forced to abandon it at the worst possible time. True wealth management isn't just about picking great companies; it’s about constructing a portfolio resilient enough—and balanced enough—that you can comfortably stay the course.
The third lesson was about the power of genuine choice.
In traditional wealth management, clients are almost always forced into someone else's framework. Most asset management firms prescribe which values you are "allowed" to invest in—usually governed by the worldview of a Chief Investment Officer. To make matters worse, most investment options aren't even transparent enough in their reporting for you to truly assess whether those off-the-shelf themes align with your values. You're essentially asked to trust a label on a black box.
Building a truly customized portfolio historically required tens of millions of dollars, leaving most intentional investors without the ability to express their real hopes—or hedge against their specific fears—for the future.
The power of choice is powerful indeed, and nobody was giving it to everyday clients.
These lessons formed my operational blueprint, but they matched another half of the puzzle. My co-founder, Jason Britton, came to the exact same conclusion from a different angle. For years, Jason felt a deep, nagging frustration running portfolios for clients while looking closely at the financial institutions that employed him. Virtually none of them were actually run in a way that would pass the rigorous investment criteria he applied to client portfolios.
He wanted to build a firm that would pass its own "sniff test"—a firm managed with such operational integrity, ethical alignment, and stakeholder discipline that if it were a publicly traded company, it would comfortably earn a spot in the very portfolios we construct for our clients.
When Jason and I joined forces to co-found Harbor Ridge, we combined those exact principles: institutional rigor, total accountability, and true investor agency.
We didn't set out to launch a firm just to say we did it, or to repackage standardized funds. We built Harbor Ridge to hand control back to the investor through a three-part approach:
True Precision & Accountability: By utilizing direct indexing and our proprietary S.E.E. analytical framework (Stakeholders, Environment, Ethos), we inspect every single holding under the microscope. You never have to wonder if a screening failure is quietly undermining your values.
Resilient, Tailored Portfolios: We engineer portfolios through rigorous financial analysis and smart optimization, balancing high-conviction sustainability with risk controls designed to help you comfortably hold through market cycles. Crucially, our optimization step comes last for a reason. After using the initial investment analysis states to strictly determine which companies earn a place in the portfolio based on our S.E.E. framework and financial fundamentals, our proprietary optimizer then fine-tunes the individual position sizes. By configuring the optimizer to target a beta at or below the benchmark, we actively minimize tracking error without ever compromising on the integrity of what you actually own.
Uncompromising Customization & Access: Because we own our underlying technology and patents, we can build custom, values-aligned portfolios scalably and at significantly lower account minimums than traditional firms. You get to define what matters to you—not a CIO.
We build portfolios for clients who refuse to settle for surface-level promises or rigid off-the-shelf funds. You shouldn't have to choose between genuine values alignment, institutional rigor, and true personal agency.
If you’ve outgrown generic funds and want a strategy built with complete transparency and long-term resilience, we’d love to start a conversation.
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Harbor Ridge Investments (“Harbor Ridge”) is a specialty division of Reflection Asset Management (“RAM”), which is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. SEC registration does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the Commission, nor does it indicate that the adviser or investment adviser representative has attained a particular level of skill or ability.
Past performance is not indicative of future results. The material above has been provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal or investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security or strategy. The investment strategy and themes discussed herein may be unsuitable for investors depending on their specific investment objectives and financial situation. Information obtained from third-party sources is believed to be reliable though its accuracy is not guaranteed, and Harbor Ridge makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, which should not be used as the basis of any investment decision. Information contained on third party websites that Harbor Ridge may link to is not reviewed in their entirety for accuracy and Harbor Ridge assumes no liability for the information contained on these websites. Opinions expressed in this commentary reflect subjective judgments of the author based on conditions at the time of writing and are subject to change without notice. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without express written permission from Harbor Ridge Investments. For more information about Harbor Ridge Investments, including our Form ADV brochures, please visit https://adviserinfo.sec.gov or contact us at bmoszeter@harborridgeinv.com.