In a landscape defined by rapid innovation and competitive pressures, EFSI has carved out a distinctive space since its launch in 2017. Founded by Joseph Levato and his business partner, the company was born from a shared belief that emerging hedge fund managers were underserved—not just in terms of product offerings, but also in client service. From the start, EFSI prioritized a relationship-driven model, focusing on adaptability and deep industry knowledge. Today, the firm balances steady technological integration, a flexible leadership style, and an unrelenting work ethic to meet the demands of a fast-evolving market. In this interview, EFSI’s co-founder reflects on the company’s entrepreneurial path, the role of innovation, and the guiding principles behind their ongoing growth.

Can you describe your entrepreneurial journey and the motivation behind starting your business?

EFSI launched in 2017, with an initial focus on the emerging manager hedge fund space. Both Joseph Levato, EFSI’s co-founder, and I felt this market segment was underserved, not only from a product perspective, but just as importantly, from a client service one. We weren’t trying to solve a problem, per se; more that we believed there was an opportunity to better assist the smaller, emerging asset manager to grow and manage their hedge fund business.

How do you stay ahead of technological advancements in your industry, and how has this impacted your business model?

EFSI has been with our primary technology supplier since we began, and they are constantly rolling out new features and improvements to their service applications. Currently, we have no plans to change technology service providers, and the impact to our business has been wholly additive – having a primary supplier that proactively innovates helps us in turn with providing our customers with a high quality product and service. Through our industry networks, we’re always learning of new technologies that could be complementary to our own, and when that happens, we’ll look into it. We are committed to improving our service model, of which a significant portion depends on technology, which in turn improves customer experience. But we are already well plugged in to the broader technology ecosystem, in particular, cybersecurity technology, so while there might not be a specific or defined innovation strategy, we feel that we have structured our business so that we can absorb innovation quickly into our processes when something useful happens.

What role does artificial intelligence play in your current operations or future plans?

We take a largely reactive approach to incorporating AI into our business. Obviously, we have technology suppliers of all types in our own back office that are implementing some kind of AI functionality, and where we think that’s additive, we’ll implement it.  And as I mentioned earlier, our primary software provider, and those complementary ones, are continuously innovating themselves, so again, when we think it’s additive, we’ll look to incorporate it.

Can you share a significant challenge you’ve faced in your business and how you overcame it?

The main challenge has been evolving from a niche, emerging hedge fund and private equity fund manager specialist into a generalist and being able to keep up with the pace of growth we have been fortunate to enjoy in the past few years. Juggling the hiring and onboarding of talented staff is arguably a full time job on its own, so doing that while still maintaining a high level of customer service has meant evenings and weekends for Joe and I. Frankly, however, we don’t see this as a challenge per se – it’s a privilege, that requires hard work and long hours to ensure we’re staying on point.

How do you approach strategic planning and decision-making in your organization?

That depends on the decision itself and who has the most applicable experience. For example, Joe might drive a decision on implementing a new process or technology in our middle and back office, because operations is his domain, and while I have input to a certain degree, he’s the expert, not me. And the same goes for audience development, marketing and sales; I manage the front office, so I take the lead, and Joe will leave certain things to my discretion, and others he might want to be more involved in. We run the business on a case-by-case basis, as opposed to having a more rigid structure like a very large company might have.

What is your approach to leadership and fostering a positive company culture?

I’m a big believer in leading by example. That means, mostly, working hard and in situations where something might look like something else – for example, golfing with clients – communicating internally to ensure that the leadership team knows why I’m doing it. Additionally, we involve the senior staff in certain decisions, as all good leadership teams do, and we don’t micro-manage – we are all adults, and most people genuinely want to put the effort in and produce good work, so we try to give them the space to do that.

How do you ensure your business remains adaptable and responsive to market changes?

Again, our case-by-case basis approach to decision making supports our ability to adapt to any environment, market or regulatory changes. Our lack of rigidity is a strength, especially for high-growth businesses like EFSI; it’s not always possible to categorize or compartmentalize, and while things might be frenetic at times, it’s the right approach for us at this stage of our evolution.

Can you discuss a recent innovation or project that has been particularly successful for your company?

I would not use the term ‘innovation’ but in the past 24 months we have implemented a more defined audience development plan, encompassing digital content, including a monthly newsletter, and sponsoring and producing events, both in-person and online (webinars). This was always on the radar, but we wanted to spend the formative years of EFSI building a customer roster and a staff before we felt comfortable really pushing our business. We firmly believe that, when potential clients engage with EFSI, or any potential vendor, they are further down the decision-making process because of the sheer amount of information available to them.  Our audience development initiative is designed to maximize EFSI’s chances to be present at the onset of the customer journey, as that is one of the ways we believe provides EFSI with a good opportunity to win business.

What are your long-term goals for your business, and how are you working towards achieving them?

There are none, for the very simple reason that we believe in the American Football theory of ‘one play at a time’. We think that we need to come into work every day and do our best. Hard work is the number one driver of success in any field. So, we take it one day at a time – one play at a time – and by focusing on the here and now, we think we will win in the medium term. Where that takes EFSI, I don’t know.

What advice would you give to emerging entrepreneurs in your industry?

While EFSI is a fund administrator, we are actually in the private funds industry. And there is a huge amount of intellectual capital across a vast array of subsets of this space, all of which make the day to day enjoyable, and most of them have room for other participants. And many jobs have transferable skills, so if a new venture doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world.

But what is required to succeed are two things – a solid network and a strong work ethic. You are unlikely to succeed without both. While hard work is a pre-requisite, EFSI would not be where it is today without assistance from those relationships within our broader network. While customers pay the bills, do not underestimate the value of referrals or advice from those who are not, and may never be, clients. The private funds industry is network-heavy, so even if you don’t enjoy networking, you will likely have to overcome that in order to succeed.