Vision. Courage. Patience.

Helping you invest in tomorrow’s champions.

Maven Funds Management is an Australian investment manager founded by Matt Joass. There are four pillars to our investment philosophy.

Finding Monsters

A small group of companies generate the vast bulk of the market’s returns. We call these companies Monsters for the way that they dominate their industries and generate potentially life-changing returns for long-term shareholders.

We exist to help you, our clients, invest in these future champions. We scour the Australian and New Zealand markets on your behalf to identify the best businesses while they are still early in their growth journeys.

Deep Research

Great investing is more than sitting at a desk studying financial statements. We regularly meet with management teams, customers, suppliers, staff, and competitors. We seek to understand whether the business has a durable advantage. When we find a business that meets our strict criteria, we develop an independent investment thesis. If the market offers us an opportunity to buy shares at a discount to our estimate of intrinsic value, we pounce.

But that is just the start of a long-term investing journey. The price of great investing is eternal vigilance, and so we continuously monitor our portfolio company’s progress and adjust position sizes accordingly. If management exceeds expectations, it is likely that our valuation will increase, and we will seek to buy more.

However, if management do not execute, and we realise our thesis is broken, we will sell quickly.

Ownership Mindset

You might be surprised to learn that few fund managers invest in their own funds. It’s a big problem in the finance industry and causes all sorts of conflicts. Maven is different.

We treat your precious capital as if we were investing our own money. That’s because we are. The majority of our Chief Investment Officer’s personal invested capital is invested in to our funds, right alongside you.

Our commitment to alignment doesn’t stop there. We search for companies run by their founders, or CEOs that act like founders. An ownership mentality is the foundation of long-term wealth creation, which is also why Maven Funds Management is 100% owned by our investment team.

You

Our greatest structural competitive advantage is you, our clients. We are creating a group of long-term investors to build wealth with us by aligning their portfolios with high quality growing businesses.

Short term traders are always tripping over themselves trying to jump in and out of ‘hot stocks’. This is not the place for them. But, if you are like us, interested in identifying outstanding businesses early, we want you with us on this journey.

Our Name

Our name comes from our passion for sharing investment knowledge.

In The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell identifies a group, known as Mavens, that are critical to the spread of a new idea or trend. A Maven is a trusted expert that is constantly seeking out new knowledge on a particular market. They are the first to notice the new trend, then seek to pass that knowledge on to others.

At Maven Funds Management our strategy is to identify small fast-growing businesses that are just tipping past what we call a fundamental inflection point. We aim to find these future champion companies early, and build a high-conviction long-term holding before the rest of the market has caught on. We then share many of our investment theses with you, our clients. Lastly, we may share some of our research with the broader market, helping them to better understand what we find so attractive.

Matt Joass, CFA

Matt is the Chief Investment Officer of Maven Funds Management.

Matt’s ideal investment is a small, fast-growing business, that is capital-light, with demand- and supply-side competitive advantages, high returns on incremental invested capital, little analyst coverage, deeply aligned management (typically founders), and that are top-dogs or first-movers in an emerging and important industry. Last but by no means least, the company must be trading at a discount to Matt’s estimate of intrinsic value.

Prior to founding Maven Funds Management, Matt was Portfolio Manager of Motley Fool Pro, a concentrated small-cap focused ASX investment portfolio. Matt is originally from New Zealand, and moved to Australia from Copenhagen, where he worked as a financial analyst in the headquarters of an international shipping giant.

Matt is a holder of the Chartered Financial Analyst designation as well as an Honours degree in International Business from the University of Auckland. When not working, Matt loves to get outdoors and is an avid sailor.

Alex Hughes

Alex is a Research Analyst at Maven Funds Management.

Prior to Maven Funds, Alex has held research and portfolio management roles at Clime Asset Management and Intelligent Investor. Alex completed a Bachelor of Commerce from Griffith University, majoring in Finance and International Business. When not working, Alex loves to surf and explore his curiosity about technology and business.