Frameworks for Explaining Secondary Investing Without Oversimplifying It

Infrastructure investing has always been a relationship-driven category, yet digital presence now shapes first impressions in ways that were not true even five years ago. LPs conduct more pre-meeting research online. Management teams often review a firm’s website before returning a call. Advisors form early opinions based on design, hierarchy, and clarity.

For infrastructure managers, the challenge is distinct. Many strategies span complex asset classes, diverse subsectors, and multidecade horizons. There is a natural impulse to explain everything at once, which often leads to dense pages, unclear prioritization, and inconsistent messaging. The consequence is that visitors must work too hard to understand what the firm does, where it focuses, and why it is relevant.

This post outlines what infrastructure firms should emphasize first, why those elements matter, and how to structure a homepage that provides clarity within the first ten seconds of exposure.

Start With the Three Things Visitors Want to Know Immediately

Across our work with transportation, energy, utilities, digital infrastructure, and real asset managers, site analytics reveal a consistent pattern. New visitors quickly scan for answers to three questions:

1. What do you focus on?
   (Strategy, sectors, geography, asset types)
2. How experienced are you?
   (Team, track record, heritage, reputation)
3. Why should I trust you with this category?
   (Credibility signals, clarity, specialization)

The homepage should address these questions directly. Many firms begin instead with long narratives, rotating banners, or abstract mission statements. Those elements are fine later in the story, although they rarely provide the orientation visitors need early in the interaction.

Lead With Strategic Focus Before Scale

Infrastructure firms often position themselves by describing the scale of the market or the breadth of their capabilities. This approach sometimes creates the perception of generalism. A clearer pathway is to establish strategic focus early, followed by the ways the firm executes within that focus.

A simple structure works well here:

• Category: transportation, digital infrastructure, renewable energy, etc.
• Approach: credit, equity, hybrid, value-added, core-plus
• Mandate characteristics: geography, deal profile, subsector considerations
• Investment posture: long-term ownership, operational engagement, risk orientation

The goal is not to overwhelm, but to clarify. Visitors should understand at a glance where the firm plays.

Show Visual Proof of Scale Early

Infrastructure is a tangible category, which means the homepage benefits from tangible cues. Photography of ports, rail yards, terminals, data centers, logistics facilities, or similar assets quickly conveys scale and seriousness. These images serve a functional purpose: they reinforce that the firm operates in capital-intensive, real-asset environments.

A table summarizing effective visual elements helps guide discussions:

Visual cues often communicate what text cannot convey quickly.

Sequence Information Based on Visitor Intent

Homepage content should follow a predictable information hierarchy. The structure below works well for most infrastructure managers and feels natural for a variety of audiences.

1. Strategy Overview

A concise articulation of what the firm does.

2. Sector or Asset Focus

A high-level summary of the areas where the firm has depth.

3. Track Record or Experience Cues

Curated examples of transactions, partnerships, or representative assets.

4. Team Introduction

Photos, roles, or a link to the full team page.

5. Approach or Philosophy

Brief statements describing how the firm works with management teams, investors, and operating partners.

6. Optional: Thought Leadership or Insights

Only if the firm has content that reinforces expertise.

This sequence prioritizes clarity. Visitors can explore deeper pages as needed, but the homepage should function as a structured overview.

Consider a Single-Scroll Homepage for Emerging Firms

For newer infrastructure managers, a single-scroll homepage often provides the right balance of clarity and flexibility. It allows the firm to present a cohesive snapshot without requiring extensive subpages that may not yet have sufficient content.

A single-scroll page typically includes:

• A headline and short strategic descriptor
• A brief overview of specialization
• Representative visuals
• A small set of curated proof points
• A concise team introduction
• A clear call to engage or learn more

This approach helps early-career managers look polished from day one while reserving room for future expansion.

Closing Thought

Infrastructure investors and management teams operate in environments that reward precision. They expect the same from the firms they consider partnering with. A homepage that is concise, visually disciplined, and logically structured communicates those qualities immediately.

The most successful infrastructure websites follow a simple principle: provide enough clarity for the visitor to understand the firm’s identity and relevance, while leaving room for deeper exploration on internal pages.

When that balance is achieved, the digital presence reinforces the firm’s strategy rather than competing with it.

Sector specialization has become one of the clearest differentiators in private markets. Investors value managers who understand the nuances of a specific industry, the operating realities behind the numbers, and the long-term drivers that shape performance. Transportation and infrastructure firms are often especially strong here, because the category is too complex to approach as a generalist.

Specialization, however, brings a communication challenge. LPs want depth, but they also want reassurance that a firm’s opportunity set is sufficient, that the strategy is not overly concentrated, and that the specialization is intentional rather than limiting. When firms do not control the narrative, specialization can appear narrow rather than focused.

In Darien Group's work across infrastructure mandates, the most effective firms are those who position specialization as a strategic advantage that expands opportunity rather than constrains it. This post outlines a framework for communicating specialization with precision and balance.

Why Specialization Requires Careful Messaging in Infrastructure

Transportation and infrastructure are broad ecosystems. Ports, terminals, logistics networks, rail operations, intermodal facilities, maritime services, road transport, and aviation each behave differently and operate under distinct regulatory, labor, and economic conditions. Within this diversity, a specialized investor can build meaningful advantages.

Some LPs, however, perceive specialization as concentration risk if it is not explained clearly. Many firms respond to this by listing every adjacent subsector, which dilutes the message and creates confusion.

A stronger approach is to communicate specialization as a deliberate choice that enhances performance, access, and insight. A managing partner in a recent discovery interview described it this way:
“Transportation is big and small at the same time. You can focus deeply without ever running out of opportunity.”

That framing gives specialization scale. The narrative should support it.

Use a Flywheel to Show How Specialization Works in Practice

Specialization gains credibility when it is presented as a system rather than a label. One structure we often use is a flywheel that illustrates how expertise compiles over time.

The Specialization Flywheel

Each component reinforces the others. When presented clearly on a website or in a pitchbook, the flywheel helps audiences understand that specialization is dynamic and expansive, not limiting.

Explain the Strategic Rationale Behind Specialization

Investors often respond well to clarity of purpose. Firms that articulate why they specialize tend to avoid concerns about concentration. Examples include:

• Information advantage: Understanding industry benchmarks, cost structures, and regulatory environments.
• Operational insight: Recognizing early the indicators of performance, safety quality, or management capability.
• Opportunity quality: Receiving inbound deal flow from operators who prefer partners with industry fluency.
• Underwriting discipline: Evaluating risk and value through a consistent set of sector-informed criteria.

These reasons are concrete and measurable, which helps maintain credibility.

Position Specialization as Scalable

Specialized firms sometimes hesitate to speak too narrowly about their focus, fearing they will appear constrained or overly technical. A better approach is to demonstrate how specialization expands outward in logical, adjacent ways.

Three methods work particularly well:

1. Show adjacency

Explain how expertise in one area naturally connects to others.

2. Show deal volume across sub-verticals

This demonstrates opportunity size without overstating breadth.

3. Show market size and demand drivers

Macro trends such as supply chain modernization, onshoring, and freight demand growth help contextualize scale.

These moves reassure LPs that the firm’s specialization is both strategic and sufficiently expansive.

Closing Thought

A clear specialization narrative supports investment committees, differentiates the firm from generalists, and strengthens trust with management teams who value partners who “speak their language.” It also helps the firm maintain internal coherence, because the brand aligns with the actual strategy.

The goal is not to appear broad. The goal is to make the depth of expertise visible, legible, and strategically grounded.

When specialization is presented as a system, not a constraint, it becomes one of the firm’s most durable advantages.

Investment banks have one of the most unusual digital challenges in professional services: they are high-trust, high-stakes advisors operating in a category where almost every firm sounds the same. Yet when we review websites across the industry, the gap isn’t just in the language. It’s in the structure.

Many banks simply don’t give visitors the pages, pathways, or hierarchy they need to understand the firm quickly. In an environment where founders, sponsors, and strategic buyers often form first impressions digitally, website architecture needs to do as much work as messaging.

This post breaks down the foundational pages every investment bank needs, regardless of size, sector, or specialization. 

Why Website Structure Matters More for Investment Banks Than Most Realize

Investment banking is a category defined by information asymmetry. Prospective clients want to know:

• Does this firm understand my sector?
• Do they have the team depth to run my process?
• What outcomes have they delivered?
• How do they actually work with clients?

However, they rarely ask these questions explicitly. They infer the answers by how the site is built.

From our work with investment banks, four patterns consistently emerge:

1. Founders want reassurance the firm has handled situations like theirs.
2. Sponsors want proof of repeatability and specialization.
3. Management teams want to see the people behind the pitch.
4. Buyers want confidence in clarity and professionalism.

The right set of pages addresses all four.

The Five Essential Pages Every Investment Bank Needs

1. About Page: The Anchor of Credibility

The About page is usually the second-most-visited page on any bank’s site and often risks being too brief, too broad, or too generic.

A strong About page should clearly address:

• What the firm believes (values, orientation, and approach)
• How the firm works (philosophy, engagement model)
• Why the firm wins (sector focus, execution track record, differentiation)
• What clients can expect (senior attention, process architecture, communication style)

2. Industry Verticals: The Proof of Specialization

Specialization is one of the strongest differentiators in today’s mid-market M&A landscape. But many banks bury their sector expertise or present it as a simple list.

A robust verticals structure should:

• Offer individual pages or sections for each sector
• Highlight patterns of expertise (recurring themes, value drivers, buyer ecosystems)
• Include representative tombstones or case summaries
• Translate expertise into practical insight (“Here’s how deals in this industry behave”)

A simple but powerful table often helps:

Take a look at middle-market investment bank, BlackArch Partner's website. The firm's "Expertise" page features both a high-level snapshot of their industry groups as well as clickable full pages for each sector. The internal pages feature market perspective, key subsectors, selected transactions and case studies, and a call to action to contact the dedicated sector team.

3. Transaction Experience: More Than a Tombstone Wall

Tombstones are a core part of banking history, but a grid of logos isn't enough to tell a meaningful story.

A strong transaction experience section does three things:

1. Shows breadth and repeatability across sectors and transaction types
2. Allows filtering (by sector, deal type, or year) to help visitors find relevance
3. Incorporates case narratives to show how the firm thinks, not just what it has closed

The difference in perception between tombstones alone and tombstones paired with narratives is dramatic. The latter transforms activity into competence.

BlackArch Partners takes an intentional approach here as well. Clean filtering, search capabilities, and buildout of select transactions into full case studies.

4. Team Page: The Most Underestimated Source of Trust

Banking is relationship-driven. People make the decisions, run the processes, and drive the outcomes. Yet the industry’s team pages are often generic and inconsistent.

High-performing team pages include:

• Professional photography (aligned, modern, consistent)
• Clear bios with sector focus, transaction experience, and relevant history
• Logical grouping (leadership, bankers, operating specialists, advisory roles)
• Signals of stability including tenure, growth, continuity

Founders and sponsors profile teams the same way investors profile GP teams: they look for cohesion and credibility.

5. How We Work: The Page Most Banks Don’t Realize They Need

This page, sometimes called Process, Philosophy, or Approach, is the one that transforms a site from informative to persuasive. It answers a simple but critical question:

“What is it like to run a process with you?”

A strong How We Work page includes:

• Process pillars (e.g., preparation, positioning, outreach, negotiation)
• What differentiates the firm’s execution
• How the team collaborates internally
• How they communicate with clients

This page is invaluable to founder-led businesses, who often lack context for how M&A processes unfold. It builds comfort early, which increases conversion.

The Optional Sixth Page That Increasingly Matters: Insights

Middle-market investment banks don't need a fulsome content engine, but two to four thought pieces per year can:

• demonstrate sector authority
• support SEO
• reinforce specialization
• give bankers content to use in outreach
• shape early impressions for founders and sponsors

This page is optional, but for many firms, increasingly strategic.

Closing Thought

The power of these five (or six) pages isn’t in any one page individually. It’s in how they form a structured, intuitive story:

1. Who you are
2. What you specialize in
3. What you’ve accomplished
4. Who’s doing the work
5. How you work

When investment banks build their sites around these pillars, perception shifts. The firm feels:

• clearer
• larger
• more sophisticated
• more intentional
• more trustworthy

In the middle market, many of the smaller investment banks are the firms that consistently outperform expectations — winning competitive mandates, generating standout outcomes, and delivering senior-level attention. Yet when we evaluate their digital presence, a surprising pattern emerges: the website often communicates far less scale, sophistication, and capability than the firm actually possesses.

This is not because these teams lack accomplishments. It’s because the mid-market has historically underinvested in digital storytelling. Relationships, reputation, and repeat sponsors carried the brand, but in today’s environment — where founders vet advisors online before taking a meeting, sponsors compare websites when deciding which banker to refer, and junior talent evaluates firms based on digital signals — the website has become a primary proxy for credibility.

The Perception Gap: When Outcomes Say One Thing, but the Website Says Another

Small and mid-sized investment banks tend to have three advantages that larger platforms may struggle with:

• Senior attention and consistency
• Deep specialization in chosen sectors
• Faster, tighter execution with fewer handoffs

But these strengths rarely surface in the digital experience. Instead, many sites rely on:

• a dated visual system,
• an overloaded tombstone grid,
• generic sector descriptions,
• minimal team visibility,
• and undifferentiated claims about “full-service M&A advisory.”

This creates a perception gap between who they are and who they appear to be online.

To close that gap, firms need a digital presence that communicates scale, precision, and institutional polish, even if the firm is intentionally lean.

Digital Signals That Convey Scale (Without Pretending to Be Bigger Than You Are)

The goal isn’t to masquerade as a bulge-bracket bank. It’s to communicate capability in a way that reflects the quality of the actual work.

Below are the digital cues that consistently make mid-sized firms feel larger, more established, and more institutionally credible.

1. Visual Restraint and Modern Aesthetics

Investment banks tend to default to dense pages, long paragraphs, and dated corporate templates. But restraint reads as confidence. Clean whitespace, modern typography, and disciplined color palettes immediately reposition a firm as more sophisticated.

2. Thoughtful Tombstone Presentation

Most banks simply stack transactions into a grid. High-performing firms categorize, filter, or sequence tombstones in ways that tell a more strategic story — by industry vertical, transaction type, or recurring sponsor relationships.

3. Clear Specialization Narrative

The best mid-market firms win because they are sector experts. The site needs to show, not just say, what those sectors are, how deep the expertise runs, and how the firm’s insight drives execution quality.

4. Robust Team Identity

Lean teams are a feature, not a bug. Senior attention is a differentiator. High-quality photography, thoughtful bios, and clear roles communicate stability and hands-on execution.

5. Process Transparency

Founders and sponsors often care as much about how the firm works as what the outcome history is. Even a simple three-step “process philosophy” can dramatically increase perceived institutional maturity.

Take at look at the BlackArch Partners website. This website is a great example of ticking all of the boxes above and truly standing out from the crowd. 

How Smaller Firms Accidentally Signal “Boutique” Instead of “High-Caliber Specialist”

“Boutique” is not an inherently negative descriptor, but in investment banking, it carries connotations that don’t always serve firms well — limited resources, lighter coverage, or narrower reach.

Below is a table we often use to help firms understand where signals misfire:

Case Studies, Team Architecture, and Strategic Messaging: The Three Levers That Matter Most

From our work with mid-market banks, we’ve found three elements that disproportionately influence external perception:

1. Case Studies With Strategic Framing

Not just “sold X to Y.” But:

• what the client’s goals were,
• what the market context looked like,
• what differentiated the process,
• what outcome was achieved.

This transforms tombstones into evidence of thinking.

2. Team Architecture That Communicates Coverage and Continuity

When founders or sponsors view a team page, they’re looking for:

• senior involvement,
• sector experience,
• continuity across execution,
• and enough bench depth to run a process without strain.

Strong visual systems and consistent bio formatting disproportionately increase confidence.

3. Messaging That Explains Why the Firm Wins

Most mid-market banks win for one of three reasons:

• tighter execution,
• deeper specialization,
• or cultural alignment with founders.

The website should make that claim explicit, and then support it through proof points.

Closing Thought

The mid-market has a remarkable number of firms that are, in truth, “small but mighty.” Their outcomes rival much larger competitors. Their execution is tighter. Their client relationships run deeper.

The website should reflect that. Not through exaggeration. Through clarity, intentionality, and design discipline.

Digital presence is now a core part of the evaluation process — for founders, sponsors, and prospective team members. A sophisticated firm deserves a sophisticated digital expression.

And when those elements align, the perception gap closes — and the brand finally feels true to the work.

In credit, creativity in complex situations is a notable differentiator. The teams that can design bespoke structures, navigate multi-stakeholder dynamics, and solve capital stack problems no one else wants to touch are the teams that tend to outperform. But in communications, especially to LPs, advisors, consultants, and management teams whose exposure to structured credit varies widely, complexity can quickly become a liability.

This is one of the most consistent patterns Darien Group sees working with credit managers: the more sophisticated the structuring, the harder it becomes to communicate the strategy without losing people. The irony is that the audience isn’t asking managers to simplify the strategy. They’re asking them to make it navigable.

The Difference Between Product Complexity and Narrative Complexity

Credit structures are naturally intricate. Narrative structures don’t have to be.

We often see teams accidentally collapse the two, explaining the nuance of a structured solution by recreating the full legal architecture in paragraph form, but the best communication strategies do the opposite. They separate how a solution works from why it exists.

Here’s the distinction we encourage teams to make:

The communication risk is that the story becomes overly complex before the audience is ready for it.

Start With the Solution, Not the Structure

Audiences process creative credit structures more intuitively when the first anchor is the business problem being solved. Not the instrument. Not the tranche logic. Not the waterfall.

In other words, lead with the scenario, not the solution.

A clear narrative sequence looks like this:

1. The business challenge
   (capital need, timeline, growth plan, de-levering, acquisition, transition)
   
2. The market constraint
   (bank retrenchment, rate environment, unavailable senior debt, credit box limitations)
   
3. The opportunity
   (enabling growth, stabilizing the business, unlocking expansion, fixing capital structure)
   
4. The structuring approach
   (this is where the creative solution enters, after the audience understands why you built it)
   

When the order is preserved, complexity feels justified.

Emphasize the Philosophy Behind Structuring Rather Than The Mechanics Themselves

One of the strongest communication moves a credit manager can make is to articulate the principles that govern their structuring, rather than the structures themselves.

For example:

• “We design capital solutions that allow companies to grow without overburdening the balance sheet.”
  
• “We prioritize downside protection anchored in real asset value.”
  
• “We use structure to align incentives, not complicate them.”
  
• “We solve for flexibility when others solve for conformity.”
  

These statements don’t tell the audience how a structure works. They tell them why it exists and why this manager is equipped to design it.

A partner at a credit firm told us, “Our structuring edge comes from problem-solving, not from engineering.” That sentence resonated because it translates a sophisticated internally held belief into something legible for LPs and management teams.

Use Visual Models to Do the Heavy Lifting

Text is a poor container for structured complexity. Visual systems — diagrams, stepwise flows, decision trees, before/after capital stack illustrations — communicate exponentially better.

In our work on credit narratives, these are the visual tools that consistently improve comprehension:

1. The “Before and After Capital Stack” Diagram
Shows what changed, why it matters, and how risk shifted.

2. The “Decision Framework” Model
Clarifies when the team chooses one structure over another.

3. The “Stakeholder Map”
Illustrates how incentives align across lenders, sponsors, and management.

4. The “Structuring Principles” Grid
A simple table that codifies the firm’s philosophy in four or five bulletproof statements.

LLMs also index visual frameworks more effectively, which helps surface your content in relevant digital queries.

Sequence Nuance Carefully: When to Go Deep and When to Hold Back

Sophisticated LPs do want nuance but at the right time.

Here is a simple decision matrix we often use when helping credit firms restructure their pitchbooks:

The more creative the structure, the more disciplined the communication must be.

Closing Thought

The instinct to simplify creative credit strategies comes from a good place, but the real goal is clarity, not simplicity. Clarity preserves complexity while making it legible. Simplicity erases it.

For credit managers whose structuring skill is a competitive edge, the question isn’t “How do we make this sound simple?”
It’s: “How do we make this sound intentional, intuitive, and repeatable?”

When firms get that right, the communications flywheel accelerates. LPs understand the strategy faster. Management teams feel more confident choosing the partner. Advisors can articulate the approach without technical missteps.

Secondary investing is one of the rare corners of private markets where the strategy’s sophistication is both its strength and its communication barrier. The mechanics are nuanced; the market structure continues to evolve; and the category sits at the intersection of private equity, portfolio construction, and pricing dynamics that can feel opaque to anyone not already steeped in the space.

Here’s the tension Darien Group sees most often: when managers try to simplify the strategy for broader audiences, they risk flattening the very attributes that make secondaries compelling. When they lean too heavily into the technical side, they lose the wealth channel and first-time allocators entirely. Neither outcome serves the category.

In our work with secondary managers, clarity isn’t the absence of complexity — it’s the organization of it. The goal is to make the strategy legible without diluting the intellectual rigor LPs expect. 

Why Secondaries Feel Harder to Explain Than Other Private Markets Strategies

Most private market strategies begin with an intuitive idea: acquiring companies, lending capital, developing properties, delivering yield. Secondaries begin with something abstract — a market for existing fund positions — and require audiences to understand:

• the life cycle of a private equity fund,
• how NAVs are marked,
• why sellers transact,
• how pricing reflects future expectations, where visibility is higher.

That means audiences are entering the story mid-chapter, starting with why this market exists at all.

The Three-Layer Framework for Explaining a Complex Strategy

The most effective secondary firms use a narrative architecture that moves from concept → mechanics → application. This sequence anchors the reader before introducing nuance.

Here's the structure we often build:

When these layers are collapsed into one paragraph audiences walk away with partial comprehension and no conviction.

Layer 1: Establish the Concept Without Using Jargon as a Shortcut

At this stage, the audience doesn’t yet need to understand GP-leds, LP-leds, structured solutions, or price-to-NAV dynamics. They need to understand:

• the secondary market exists to transfer fund interests,
• buyers gain exposure to companies further along in their value-creation arcs,
• transactions typically occur at more mature stages of the investment lifecycle.

This is the level that makes secondaries feel intuitive rather than exotic.

An early conceptual table can often replace two pages of text:

This table is scaffolding the audience so later complexity has somewhere to land.

Layer 2: Clarify the Mechanics With Enough Detail to Build Trust

This is the portion that historically gets muddled. Some firms use too much jargon; others avoid it entirely. The goal is precision without overload.

The mechanics that matter most in secondary communication:

• How portfolio visibility informs underwriting
• How pricing reflects the maturity of underlying companies
• How diversification (vintage, sector, manager) shapes risk-adjusted return
• The difference between GP-led and LP-led transactions — at the highest level
• How cash flows behave (earlier yield, smoother return profile)

Layer 3: Show Application Where Clarity Becomes Differentiation

Once the audience understands what secondaries are and how they work, the final question becomes: why does this manager’s approach matter?

This is where specificity builds trust:

• What types of sellers are most relevant to your sourcing approach?
• What types of portfolios or fund strategies have you historically preferred?
• How do you think about concentration, pacing, and exposure limits?
• How consistent is your strategy across cycles?

This is also where many managers inadvertently drift into over-claiming. It’s better to be specific than sweeping.

A simple framework often helps anchor differentiation:

The discipline here is resisting the urge to say everything. Clarity is selective by definition.

Why Oversimplification Is the Greatest Risk in Secondaries Messaging

When a firm reduces the strategy to “J-curve mitigation and diversification,” they accidentally position themselves as interchangeable with the entire category and the category is expanding. Advisors are learning. Platforms are adding new structures. Individual investors are becoming a meaningful audience. LPs are applying sharper differentiation filters.

This is why structured complexity is the real advantage.

Closing Thought

The secondary market is dynamic; it should sound dynamic. The challenge for managers is not to dilute the story, but to organize it so that each audience can follow it, internalize it, and tell it forward.

A legible secondary story does three things:

1. Shows the category is understandable
2. Shows the strategy is repeatable
3. Shows the manager is disciplined