Behind the Scenes of a Family Office
Originally posted on SME Tech Leaders on LinkedIn with this link.
Idriss Dahbi’s path into investment and portfolio management began not with a plan, but through lived experience first as the son of Moroccan entrepreneurs in Vienna, then as a close advisor within the Studen family’s international agribusiness. What started as a front-row seat to a founder’s journey evolved into a broader role shaping the family’s diversification strategy and helping build their family office from the ground up.
Today, Idriss leads with a pragmatic mindset shaped by early lessons in direct investing and a growing focus on risk-managed, values-aligned capital allocation. He balances fund-of-funds, public markets, and thematic strategies in areas like health and food, while actively engaging with a peer network of family offices across Europe. For him, it’s not just about investing, it's about building legacy through thoughtful, long-term decision-making. Read on to find out more about his journey.
What first drew you to the world of investment and portfolio management especially through the lens of a family office like Studen & Company?
I’d say my interest in entrepreneurship really started when I was a kid. I grew up in a migrant family from Morocco. My parents worked their way up and eventually built a solid living through a gastronomy business in Vienna. My sister and I were lucky enough to attend a private international school and later study abroad.
Even though I had some experience in big corporations, I was always more drawn to the entrepreneurial side of things. When I moved to Dubai in 2013, I reconnected with an old high school friend who was the second generation of the Studen & Co Group and that’s really where it all started. What attracted me to the company wasn’t the agricultural commodities business itself, but the entrepreneurial nature of the family setup.
I had the chance to become the right hand to the founder and CEO in Dubai, which gave me a front-row seat to his story. He started the business at 25 in a war-torn region and built it into a group with over 40 companies. That experience gave me this broader, top-down view of the holding company: the history, the current challenges, and the long-term vision.
That exposure got me interested not just in building one company, but in thinking about a portfolio of businesses. So it wasn’t a deliberate move into the investment or family office space at first but it kind of evolved naturally from this portfolio mindset.
Because of my close relationship with the family and the oversight I had into the group, I ended up taking on the role of helping diversify beyond the core business. And that’s how I ended up in portfolio management. It wasn’t the plan, it just grew out of the circumstances.
I’m still learning as we go. We try to avoid repeating the mistakes others have made, though of course, we make our own too. With limited in-house capacity, we often have to work with fund-of-funds and do fund selection, which is a bit more abstract and less hands-on with individual companies. But it’s still interesting, and it helps us manage risk and return across the portfolio.
Can you give us a bit of history about the company and what it is you do today?
Sure. So the group was founded back in 1992, right after the fall of Yugoslavia. The Studen brothers moved to Vienna around that time. Initially, the principal was studying there, but he saw an opportunity when strategic reserves in the region, especially key agricultural commodities, hit a low point.
He started sourcing commodities from the big consolidators in Austria and supplying the region. At first, it was small trial shipments, but over time that turned into a steady trading operation. That’s how they built up core competencies in trading and risk management these commodities could also be hedged on the exchange, which is quite complex, but they learned it through hard work and persistence.
About ten years later, once things stabilised in the region, they were well-positioned to start privatising factories and eventually invested in greenfield projects as well. That allowed them to slowly build out a vertically integrated supply chain.
Today, the business serves two main customer segments. One is bulk non-packaged goods for industrial buyers. The other is retailers, mainly with private-label products.
Once the regional market became too small, they started expanding internationally moving east toward Turkey, Israel, and the Gulf region. Now the group operates global trading networks, sourcing from places like Brazil, India, and Thailand, and distributing across 14 countries.
There are around 1,000 employees, and they move about 700,000 tons of agricultural commodities each year, generating over a billion in turnover through the core business. Alongside that, they’ve built out a service segment mostly in logistics and freight forwarding, but also in other areas closely tied to the core business.
And I think, alongside the entrepreneurial spirit that really drives the family, there’s also this strong sense of giving back to the region. Legacy matters to them. That’s something they’re working to carry forward not just through the business itself, but also through the family office we’re building now.
Can you walk me through what a typical week looks like inside a family office? What does your week usually involve?
I mean, it really varies. It's a mix of a lot of different topics, as you can imagine. And honestly, the way my week looks now is pretty different from how it looked at the beginning of this three-year journey. I’m sure it’ll look different again next year. That’s just the nature of it, especially because we still have an active core business.
So compared to family offices that have already exited their operating businesses or ones that are more institutionalised, maybe already in their third or fourth generation we still give less priority to the family office side.
Right now, we're focused less on long-term strategy and more on executing a few deals that were agreed upon in Q4 last year. Since we already allocated quite a bit to VC, we’re now working to fill some of the gaps in other asset classes.
For example, we’ve been doing quite a bit on the public markets side. We work with an advisor, and that involves a weekly check-in, usually an hour or so where we discuss portfolio strategy, rebalancing, and reviewing our positions. We have around 40 positions there, so the follow-up and execution can take quite a bit of time.
Then there are similar processes happening in other asset classes. With real estate, it depends on the stage. Sometimes it’s still sourcing, which means a lot of coffees, breakfasts, intro meetings. Other times it’s more desk work: digging into data rooms, doing first-level screenings, and trying to make sense of it all. Comparing deals that are rarely apples to apples, and figuring out which ones offer the best risk-adjusted return.
And beyond VC and real estate, we’re also looking at more abstract private markets things like hedge funds, private credit, PE, and fund-of-funds. It's the same kind of work: evaluating managers, running comparisons, doing reference calls, and deciding what’s worth digging deeper into.
So yeah it’s a lot of conversations, a lot of digging into data, and quite a bit of decision-making. Plus, there’s the usual mix of networking events and the occasional conference.
And on top of all that, there’s the internal part aligning with different stakeholders, getting their buy-in, and also doing a bit of education internally. Some of them are still quite far removed from this world, so part of the job is just helping them understand what we’re doing and why.
One thing you mentioned was making mistakes. Looking back, can you share what some of those were? Maybe an example?
Yeah, I’d say the biggest mistakes were around direct investments. Mainly because we didn’t have the internal capacity or experience at the time.
We had defined a few areas we were interested in, where we saw potential, and we started doing our own sourcing. But pretty quickly, we realised that we just didn’t have the bandwidth to properly source, screen, and select companies.
That’s where we made some missteps. A few of those investments are still in the portfolio and either struggling or just hanging in there. The hit rate isn’t terrible and we’ve got two that are doing alright but we definitely underestimated the effort it takes to do this well, especially on the VC side.
We also went in without a clear investment thesis and just some broad ideas around sectors and stages and after about a year and a half, it became obvious that the approach wasn’t working. We just weren’t set up for it at that stage.
It doesn’t mean we’ll never go direct again, but at that early point in the family office journey, we simply weren’t ready.
You mentioned earlier that you’ve shifted more toward fund-of-funds rather than direct investing. So how many direct VC investments have you made, and how many fund-of-funds are you in at this point?
Yeah, so just to clarify—we’re only talking about VC here, which makes up around 5 to 10% of our current portfolio. And as our AUM grows, that’ll likely settle closer to 5%.
Right now, we’ve made four direct VC fund investments. On the fund-of-funds side, we’ve committed to one main vehicle where we’re actually an anchor investor. That one gives us exposure to three vintages, each investing in about 10 to 15 VCs.
So pretty quickly, that’s going to bring us to around 45 VC funds through the fund-of-fund structure—plus the four direct ones. So yeah, we’re close to 50 VC fund positions overall, mostly indirect.
And honestly, it made sense from a portfolio perspective too. Health tends to be less cyclical, more resilient. So we’ve tried to invest in that space in a way that aligns both with return expectations and with the family’s preferences.
One of the direct VC funds you’re in is āltitude. So why did you decide to invest in us? What stood out about what we’re doing?
So the whole topic of succession has been on our radar for a while. We’ve always known that SMEs are really the backbone of the European economy, but we never quite had a clear angle on how to approach the space.
It was actually through another LP in your fund that introduced us that we first got a proper look at your thesis, and we found it really compelling. The way you structured and communicated the opportunity over the next decade just made a lot of sense to us.
We saw where you believe value can be created, and we felt it was a strong, well-thought-out approach.
I speak to a lot of fund managers, and they often say that when they pitch to a family office, there’s always this extra step of getting buy-in from the principal. So I’m curious how much autonomy do you actually have when it comes to making investment decisions?
Yeah, that’s a good question. So at the beginning, it was all pretty informal just conversations now and then with the principal and the second generation.
But now things have evolved a bit. We’ve added a new team member to the core family office who’s added a lot of value, and they’re now part of the investment process as well.
So the way it works now is that we have a first internal round, basically the two of us on the family office team plus the second-gen family member. All three of us have to give a green light before anything moves forward. That’s already after screening and some level of due diligence.
If it passes that internal filter, then it goes to the IC stage with the principal for the final approval. At that point, the case is usually well-structured and clearly aligned with the broader strategy, so in most cases we do get the green light but of course, there can still be pushback depending on the specifics.
So, overall, we do have a good amount of autonomy, but there’s still a structured sign-off process that includes the family, especially at the final stage.
At Studen & Co., you seem to strike this balance between building legacy and embracing innovation which I think a lot of family offices are trying to do. So how do you decide which tech sectors or business models actually fit with your investment thesis?
Yeah, so for us it’s a mix of things. On one hand, we look at broader macro themes; we're generally quite macro- and fundamentals-driven, though I won’t go too deep into that here.
On the other hand, we also look at where there’s strategic alignment or potential synergies with the core business. That’s how we landed on a few search fields within the food industry, where we tried to source some direct deals that made sense for the group long-term.
Then there’s another angle, which is more personally driven by the family’s interests. Health and health tech, for example, are areas the family is really passionate about. That part wasn’t as strategically tied to the core business; it was more about values and long-term interest.
Looking ahead, what are some of the trends or areas you're most excited about for the future of Studen & Co?
So one thing we’ve realised is that during the major transitional period basically after the fall of the Iron Curtain the Studen brothers were still really young. And that period, where a lot of Eastern European and other formerly socialist regions shifted toward what you could call social capitalism, created a wave of entrepreneurial success stories.
But unlike in the West, there wasn’t much of an institutional setup to support that transition no real structures around family offices, governance, or long-term wealth planning.
In the region where we mainly operate the Western Balkans we still see that gap. And we believe there’s an opportunity to take a leading role in building that institutional foundation. Not just for ourselves, but by creating a broader network of family offices in the region.
We’ve talked a lot about your journey becoming a family officer and about the investment thesis of Studen & Co. How often do you actually work with other family offices?
All the time. For us, they’re really the best sparring partners.
When we started out, we didn’t even know we were going to become a family office. We just knew we were a family business and wanted to diversify and put surplus profits into new areas. But as I started attending conferences, especially in those early days, I realized that other family offices often a few years ahead of us were the ones we could relate to the most.
So I started building a network of peers at first just acquaintances, but now many of them I’d actually call friends. We exchange ideas regularly. Depending on shared interests, we’ll share deal flow, discuss strategies, governance approaches, lessons learned. It’s a really open and supportive community.
Honestly, it's been the most valuable source of exchange and learning for us so far.
Which conferences would you actually recommend for family offices?
I mean, there is just one that I like. I've been to quite a few. But there is one where we draw the biggest value from, and that's the SFO week from SFO alliance that's taking place in London every year in May. And it's been growing over the last few years.
CEE Wealth Summit is an important conference for us as well given the regional focus which aligns with our core business. I’ll be speaking there on the topic of “Setting up a Family Office”.
We are also co-organising a Family Office Retreat in Croatia in August together with our friends at KCG Advisory. Having attended a few of these retreats in the past I thoroughly enjoy the intimate nature and close bonds that have been built through this immersive experiences in beautiful locations around Europe
There’s so much content out there especially around tech and investing. Is there anything you’d recommend? A favorite podcast, book, or something that’s really stuck with you?
Yeah, I’ve been trying to read and listen to as much as I can but honestly, it’s not always easy to find really great material, especially when it comes to family office-specific stuff. That’s still a bit of a niche.
But in the broader investing world, there are a lot of interesting reads. For podcasts, I really enjoy Odd Lots. It’s fun, not too long, and touches on a wide range of topics. It’s easy to pick up, and you always learn something. I also used to enjoy Lex Friedman’s older episodes some of those are golden. It’s gotten a bit too commercial for me lately, but if you go back a bit, there’s great stuff that’s still relevant. I like that his topics are a bit all over the place sometimes that randomness brings unexpected insights you wouldn’t get from more focused, investment-specific content.
In terms of books, The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio really stood out to me. Actually, most of Dalio’s work has been insightful. Another one I liked is The World for Sale. It gives a fascinating look into the world of commodities trading.
I also loved A Man for All Markets, which is about the background of Renaissance Technologies and how it came to be. Super inspirational if you’re into the hedge fund world or just finance history in general.
Thank you so much Idriss for your insights and looking forward to seeing how the family office goes from strength to strength.