Fractional COO · Independent Books & Records · SMAs · Legacy Ops Retooling
“A ship is safe in harbor. That is not what ships are built for.”
Twenty years as the operational principal funds call when something must be built with no template: from a Nobel-laureate-founded macro fund's fund administration spinout, grown to $22B+ in assets under administration with a top-tier macro fund as anchor client, to a global custody bank's hedge fund services team supporting a $175B+ institutional mandate, to co-founding a digital asset manager and standing up five audited Cayman fund structures, 24 legal entities, and 30+ institutional provider relationships from inception. One senior operator with the full launch-to-steady-state stack, traditional and digital asset, at a fraction of the cost of dedicated headcount.
Emerging and seeded managers ($20M–$500M), digital asset and traditional; seeders and platforms onboarding managers; funds needing administrator oversight, interim ops leadership, or a structured assessment of legacy operational infrastructure.
Structure coordination with counsel, service-provider selection with fee benchmarking for principal sign-off across admin, audit, custody, PB, and banking; regulatory coordination with counsel (CIMA, NFA CPO, Singapore); day-one operating model, treasury architecture, investor onboarding workflows, and investor readiness: data room, DDQ, and ODD preparation. Traditional and digital asset, including multi-custodian crypto stacks (BitGo, Coinbase Prime, Fireblocks, Copper, sFOX, FalconX).
For allocators launching managed accounts, and for seeders and platforms integrating new managers: execution of the structure the client selects with counsel (SMA or fund-of-one), operational implementation of the IMA as negotiated, custody and counterparty onboarding, trading authority and guideline monitoring, fee and performance calculations, and daily independent books via read-only feeds. Includes full counterparty network build-out: exchanges, banks, custodians, fund administrators, prime brokers, and compliance providers. Proven across 10+ manager allocations and 62 accounts and wallets on a live multi-manager platform, including two seeded managers built from scratch.
Standing operational principal for emerging managers: treasury (fiat + crypto), NAV and fund accounting oversight in partnership with your administrator and controller, investor services, process automation and legacy ops modernization, audit and tax project management, regulatory filing coordination, and board and investor reporting, all run on a production-grade COO dashboard your team keeps.
An independent shadow book maintained in parallel to your administrator, reconciled line-by-line each close: two-tier master-feeder recs, position, cash, and LP-allocation checks against read-only custodian feeds, management-fee verification with inception-to-date NAV tracking, break reporting with documented resolutions, and a management dashboard, with each close validated by an independent fund controller (CPA). Applies equally to commingled funds, funds-of-one, and SMAs. This is the oversight control allocators ask about in ODD, built rather than promised.
For managers inheriting, outgrowing, or never properly building their operational infrastructure: end-to-end assessment of existing workflows, technology stack, provider relationships, and control environment benchmarked against institutional standards; gap analysis with a prioritized remediation roadmap; and hands-on retooling — replacing manual processes with automated pipelines, renegotiating or replacing underperforming providers, implementing institutional-grade controls, and standing up the reporting and oversight layer the fund's current scale demands. Covers both traditional and digital asset operations, including multi-custodian environments, manual NAV workflows, and fragmented treasury setups.
Fixed-scope launch, onboarding, or remediation with defined deliverables.
Monthly COO or oversight capacity at a fraction of the cost of dedicated headcount.
Structured ops audit with prioritized gap report, followed by hands-on remediation to institutional standard.
Scope note: Deep Keel is the operating principal, not the accounting function. NAV production, fund accounting, and financial statement preparation remain with your administrator and controller. Deep Keel selects, directs, and independently verifies that work, and places the controller when you need one.
Chief Operating Officer for a multi-entity digital asset fund complex, personally covering the middle and back office function a properly staffed fund spreads across a team: operations, treasury, investor services, regulatory coordination, and primary point of contact for administrators and underlying managers.
Co-founder and Head of Operations; built five fund structures across 24 legal entities, spanning three regulatory regimes.
Led a filing-ready IPO preparation package, coordinating big-four audit and top-tier outside counsel, delivered in 90 days.
Day-one team member growing a fund administration platform from zero to 19 clients and $22B+ AUA, through to acquisition by a global custody & trust bank.
Led Clearing & Settlements for a $175B+ institutional hedge fund mandate.
Founding operations hire under a former Co-President of a bulge-bracket investment bank.
Six tools built for fund clients — live, interactive, and ready to click through. Each demo below runs on illustrative data for fictional clients and reflects the reporting infrastructure stood up during an engagement.
Single-pane operating dashboard for a management company — fund directory, treasury, live PnL vs NAV, realized fees, monthly close, and compliance calendar across entities, with daily ops and execution in one pane.
Open demo →Management and incentive fee dashboard tracking admin, estimated, and variable fees across funds — reconciled to admin NAV packs, built to flag drift before it hits the P&L.
Open demo →Fund-by-fund shadow NAV reconciliation against administrator marks — work-paper extraction, two-tier recs, break detail, and inception-to-date management fee reconciliation, with preliminary/final status tracking.
Open demo →Full allocator workstation — portfolio modeling, order execution, subscription register and investor reporting, manager allocations, and performance/risk analytics in one system.
Open demo →Read-only multi-custodian balance sync across entities and wallets — entity-level cash and balance oversight with expected-flow tracking, grouped by legal entity.
Open demo →AI-assisted operational due diligence workflow — ingest manager documents, work a structured section checklist, and produce a rated ODD report and briefing package for hedge fund and digital asset managers.
Open demo →Fund launch, manager onboarding, fractional COO capacity, or a legacy ops assessment — reach out to talk through scope.
info@deepkeeladvisors.com