What if the old playbook for family offices is quietly becoming obsolete? Most of them are built for patience measured in decades. Capital sits. Decisions move slowly. Philanthropy often arrives as a final chapter rather than a running chapter. One relatively new structure is rewriting that script in real time, and the results so far are hard to ignore.
Over the past year and a half a single family office has put nearly forty million dollars to work across high-growth companies while simultaneously committing around seven million dollars in gifts and multi-year pledges. The engine behind those numbers is deliberately simple: at least twenty percent of annual net realized profits must flow to philanthropy. No waiting for a liquidity event ten years out. No vague future intention. The rule is written into the operating rhythm of the firm itself.
A Different Kind Of Family Office Blueprint
Family offices traditionally exist to preserve and grow capital across generations. Risk is managed carefully. Time horizons stretch far. Impact is frequently treated as a secondary conversation that happens after the real work of compounding is finished. The model now taking shape under the name Great Things flips several of those assumptions on their head without abandoning discipline.
The founder is Giorgos Tsetis, the entrepreneur who helped build a well-known hair-growth brand that later sold at a multi-billion-dollar valuation. After that exit he could have chosen any number of quiet wealth-management paths. Instead he designed a vehicle that treats speed and sharing as twin operating principles. The firm invests aggressively in startups that can deliver relatively quick returns, then systematically converts a fixed share of those realized gains into charitable capital. In my view that combination is rarer than it should be.
Gabriel Cooperman, the advisor who helped structure the office, describes the core idea with unusual clarity. Essentially the classic profit-sharing interest found in venture and private equity has been redirected into a charitable-sharing interest. The mechanism is familiar to anyone who has worked around carried interest. The destination of the capital is simply different. That familiarity is part of why the structure feels sustainable rather than idealistic.
Why Twenty Percent Became The Floor
The twenty-percent minimum is not a marketing slogan. It functions as an internal governing principle. When investments produce realized gains, a predetermined slice is earmarked for giving before the remaining capital is recycled into new opportunities. A donor-advised fund sits ready as a buffer so that multi-year commitments can still be honored even if a particular year delivers thinner profits.
Most family offices talk about legacy. This one talks about solving problems while the wealth is still being created. Tsetis has said the restlessness is deliberate. Innovation is generating extraordinary concentrations of capital right now. Waiting until later to share those windfalls feels increasingly disconnected from the scale and speed of the opportunities themselves.
I have watched enough traditional structures to recognize how unusual this stance is. Many offices eventually become generous. Far fewer build generosity into the profit-recognition process itself. The difference is more than philosophical. It changes the cadence of both investing and giving.
Speed Without Outside Capital
Because Great Things answers only to its principals, decisions can move at a pace most institutional vehicles cannot match. Investment authority rests with Tsetis and one partner, Roman Kalantari. That concentration removes layers of committee process that often slow conventional family offices or funds of funds.
The practical result is the ability to enter and, when necessary, exit positions with unusual agility. Secondary-market transactions have already played a role. One notable example involved a position in a leading artificial-intelligence company that produced a seven-times return inside eighteen months. Liquidity arrived far faster than the typical venture timeline, and the twenty-percent rule converted a portion of that gain into charitable capacity almost immediately.
Looking ahead, the firm expects to deploy another sixty million dollars over the next two years if the current pace holds. That figure is ambitious for a single-family structure, yet it is consistent with the stated preference for velocity over ultra-long holding periods.
Shifting Away From Pure Artificial-Intelligence Bets
Early enthusiasm for artificial-intelligence startups has cooled into a more selective stance. Kalantari, whose career began during the original internet boom, is explicit about the likelihood of a correction. Anyone claiming the current cycle will continue without interruption has, in his view, absorbed too much of the surrounding narrative. The practical response inside the office has been to favor companies that own durable technology rather than those built primarily on third-party models.
One recent reinvestment illustrates the filter. Lila Sciences develops its own artificial-intelligence systems and pairs them with automated robotic laboratories designed to accelerate scientific discovery. The company is still young, yet it meets both criteria the team now prioritizes: proprietary capability and a value proposition that should survive a market reset.
Late-stage rounds have also become more attractive. Liquidity preferences matter when the overall strategy depends on realizing gains on a relatively short clock so that the philanthropic rule can keep operating.
Balancing Return And Broader Impact
Not every position sits comfortably inside a pure impact framework. The portfolio includes exposure to a high-profile prediction-market platform that has drawn both commercial attention and public controversy. Tsetis describes the decision as intentional. The firm wanted to participate in the potential upside while continuing to watch how the platform evolves. Because the office is not structured for permanent holdings, secondary-market liquidity remains a realistic exit path if the risk-reward profile changes.
That pragmatism is worth noting. Adding a rigid impact-investing screen to every decision could, in the founders’ view, make the overall model harder to scale. The current priority is demonstrating that the combination of rapid capital deployment and systematic giving can work in ordinary market conditions. Once the mechanics prove durable, broader adoption becomes more plausible.
I find this tension instructive. Many impact-oriented vehicles struggle with either returns or operational complexity. Great Things has so far chosen to keep the investment engine focused on conventional high-growth opportunities and to handle the social return through the fixed profit-sharing rule. The separation is clean enough that both sides of the ledger can move quickly.
How The Philanthropic Side Actually Operates
Commitments typically stretch three to five years. That horizon gives nonprofit partners planning certainty while still allowing the family office to adjust future allocations as results come in. Supported organizations range from an after-school boxing academy serving young people in the Bronx to a group focused on repurposing existing medicines for rare diseases. The common thread is tangible, near-term problem solving rather than abstract endowment building.
The donor-advised fund serves as the operational buffer. In years when realized gains fall short of pledged amounts, the fund can bridge the gap. In stronger years the surplus can either accelerate existing commitments or seed new ones. The structure therefore absorbs the natural volatility of private-market investing without forcing nonprofits to absorb the same volatility.
Perhaps the most interesting design choice is the refusal to treat philanthropy as residual. Many family offices give generously once the capital base feels secure. This one treats the twenty-percent floor as a cost of doing business, similar to the way a traditional partnership accounts for carried interest. That reframing changes behavior inside the investment process itself.
Lessons Other Family Offices Might Actually Use
Several practical takeaways stand out. First, speed and structure are not mutually exclusive. A lean decision-making core combined with a clear profit-sharing rule can produce both high deployment rates and consistent charitable output. Second, secondary-market liquidity is becoming an under-appreciated tool for family offices that want to keep capital cycling rather than locked for a decade. Third, the artificial-intelligence cycle has demonstrated that certain technology positions can compress traditional venture timelines, but that compression also demands earlier exit discipline.
None of these ideas require a multi-billion-dollar starting balance. The twenty-percent rule works at smaller absolute scales as long as the office maintains the discipline to realize gains and then allocate according to the formula. The real constraint is cultural rather than financial. Most families are conditioned to view philanthropy as something that follows wealth creation. Reversing that sequence takes deliberate design.
I have spoken with enough principals of single-family offices to know the usual objections. Some worry that mandatory giving reduces compounding power. Others prefer to retain full discretion year by year. Both concerns are legitimate. Yet the counter-argument is equally straightforward: a model that systematically shares windfalls while they are still being generated may produce more total social return over a shorter period, and it may also create a more coherent internal narrative for the next generation.
What Sustainability Looks Like In Practice
Kalantari’s caution about market cycles is worth internalizing. The same artificial-intelligence boom that delivered rapid secondary gains will eventually slow. When that happens, the offices that survive will be those that already shifted toward businesses with independent technology and clearer paths to cash flow. Great Things appears to be making that shift earlier rather than later.
At the same time, the philanthropic commitments continue. The buffer fund and the multi-year pledge structure are designed precisely for periods when investment profits temporarily compress. That resilience is what separates a temporary experiment from a durable operating model.
Tsetis has been clear that the goal is not simply to run one successful family office. The larger ambition is to demonstrate a template other families can adapt. Whether that template spreads will depend on results over the next several years. Early numbers are encouraging, but the real test will come when the current technology cycle cools and the twenty-percent rule has to operate under tighter conditions.
The Psychological Side Of Accelerated Giving
There is an under-discussed emotional dimension to this approach. Traditional family offices often accumulate capital for decades before the conversation about purpose becomes urgent. By that point the numbers can feel abstract. The Great Things model forces the conversation into the present tense. Every realized gain triggers an immediate discussion about which problems receive a share of the upside.
That immediacy appears to matter to the principals. Tsetis has spoken about the restlessness that comes from watching extraordinary wealth creation while large social needs remain unmet. Channeling a fixed percentage of profits into those needs converts restlessness into a repeatable process. Over time the process itself becomes part of the firm’s identity.
I suspect this psychological feedback loop is more powerful than many observers realize. When giving is treated as residual, it competes with lifestyle or further investment. When it is treated as a contractual cost of profit recognition, the competition disappears. Capital is simply allocated according to the rule, and the firm moves on to the next opportunity.
Comparing The Model To Conventional Structures
Most single-family offices still operate with longer holding periods and more discretionary philanthropy. Some maintain separate foundations that receive annual gifts sized to tax planning or personal preference. Others wait for a major liquidity event before establishing meaningful charitable capacity. Both approaches can work. They simply produce different timing and different internal cultures.
The Great Things structure is closer to a hybrid of a venture partnership and a permanent charitable vehicle. Investment decisions retain the urgency and selectivity of private equity. The charitable side retains the multi-year commitment horizon of a serious foundation. Bridging the two is the fixed percentage rule and the donor-advised buffer.
Whether this hybrid becomes widely copied remains an open question. Cultural inertia inside family offices is real. Many principals prefer the flexibility of discretionary giving. Others are simply more comfortable with traditional time horizons. Still, the early results suggest that a more aggressive cadence is possible without sacrificing either returns or governance.
Looking At The Numbers Without The Hype
Nearly forty million dollars invested and roughly seven million dollars committed over eighteen months is a meaningful run rate for a newly formalized office. The projected additional sixty million dollars of deployment over the following two years would place the structure in a different scale category entirely. Those figures matter less as absolute claims and more as evidence that the model can absorb significant capital while still honoring the twenty-percent floor.
Secondary-market exits have clearly helped. Without relatively liquid paths to realization, the philanthropic engine would stall. The firm’s willingness to use those paths, even for high-profile positions, is therefore central to the design rather than incidental.
At the same time, the team is already adjusting risk parameters. Pure artificial-intelligence exposure is being reduced in favor of companies that control more of their own technology stack. Late-stage preference is rising. Both moves are consistent with a strategy that needs to realize gains on a compressed schedule.
What Other Principals Should Watch Next
Three indicators will determine whether this approach proves durable. First, the realized-gain pipeline over the next twenty-four months. If secondary and primary exits continue to deliver at a pace that supports both reinvestment and the twenty-percent rule, the model gains credibility. Second, the ability to maintain multi-year nonprofit commitments through any near-term market correction. The buffer fund is designed for exactly that test. Third, the willingness of other families to adapt pieces of the template rather than simply observe it.
I remain cautiously optimistic. The combination of speed, structure, and systematic sharing addresses real shortcomings in the conventional family-office playbook. It does not require ideological purity on the investment side. It does require consistent execution of the profit-sharing rule. That combination feels achievable for a larger number of offices than current practice suggests.
The deeper point may be simpler. Wealth creation has accelerated. The mechanisms for sharing that wealth have not kept pace. A family office that treats both sides of the equation with equal operational seriousness is, at minimum, an experiment worth watching closely. The next few years will show whether the experiment can scale beyond a single determined team.
Until then, the twenty-percent rule continues to operate. Capital keeps moving into companies that can deliver relatively rapid realization. A fixed share of those realizations keeps moving outward into organizations working on concrete problems. The restlessness that started the whole design has been converted into a process. That conversion alone distinguishes the structure from most of its peers.
Family offices will keep evolving. Some will stay patient. Others will discover that patience and urgency can coexist when the rules are written clearly enough. The Great Things experiment is still young, yet it already demonstrates that a different operating rhythm is possible. Whether that rhythm becomes more common depends on how many other principals decide the traditional timeline no longer matches the world they actually live in.
