The 'Founder Factor' in a Portfolio Strategy: Founders 100's Investing Approach

Michael Monaghan, Partner and Portfolio Manager of the Founders 100 ETF (FFF), makes the case that most portfolios are missing exposure to a factor with three decades of supporting data: founder leadership. Monaghan spent over 20 years across Goldman Sachs, Carlyle/Riverstone, Sanford Bernstein, and UBS before founding Beartooth, a defense technology company building wireless networks that operate without cell service. That founder experience shaped the strategy. He and partner Lauren Cassidy, CFA — named Chief Investment Officer of FFF in July 2026 — spent four months building a dataset from 30 years of historical filings, because no comparable founder-led dataset existed at Bloomberg or FactSet. Their research across 11,000 stocks found founder-led companies outperformed by roughly 4% annually. Bain & Company's analysis of the 2014 S&P 500, measuring indexed total shareholder return from 1990 to 2014, found founder-led companies delivered 3.1x the broader market. The construction is systematic. Each quarter the team screens all US-listed stocks for founder-led status — a strict definition requiring the original creator to still be the executive running the company — narrows to the 200 largest, then applies a factor model built on cash generation, valuation, balance sheet quality, and other quality metrics to select 100 names. Weighting is modified market cap with a hard 7.5% position ceiling at rebalance. The result spans 10 of 11 GICS sectors, 21 industry groups, and 35 industries, with roughly 80% active share versus the S&P 500. By comparison, Monaghan notes the S&P 500 carries about 15% founder-led exposure and the Nasdaq-100 about 20%. Holdings discussed include Palantir, Nvidia, Dell, Meta, CrowdStrike, Oracle, Shopify, Blackstone, BlackRock, and Salesforce. Monaghan describes FFF as a long-term, dollar-cost-average strategy for investors with a five-year-plus horizon who can tolerate drawdowns, and notes he seeded the fund personally and expects most of his liquid net worth to remain in it. Important Investor Information: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation of any security or investment strategy. Investors should carefully consider an ETF’s investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses before investing. This and other important information is contained in the fund’s prospectus, which should be read carefully before investing. The views and information presented are those of the featured presenter and ETF sponsor. 👉 To learn more about RedChip and to read our disclosures, visit: https://redchip.news/4gKB5hm #FFF #Founders100 #FounderFactor #FounderLed #ActiveETF #Palantir #Nvidia #GrowthInvesting #ETFInvesting #FactorInvesting #SmallCapStocks #InvestorEducation #StockInterviews #PortfolioStrategy