JP Conte Outlines Three Takeaways on Running a Family Office

JP Conte’s latest Forbes Business Council column was published on Oct. 8, 2026. Its subject is the move from private equity into a family office, and what that move does and does not change for an experienced investor.

Conte is the founder and managing partner of his family office, Lupine Crest Capital, which launched in March 2025. He has spent decades in private equity, and the firm he founded is based in Aspen, Colorado. Three takeaways for business leaders close the column.

Deploy What You Know

“Deploy what you know” heads the first of them. Experience, JP Conte wrote, is what a long career leaves behind, and it cuts the time needed to judge a team or a market.

Lupine Crest Capital follows four sectors: healthcare, software, financial services and industrial technology. Conte has worked in those fields for years. His advice to other leaders is simple. Stay close to the industries you have already studied in depth.

Put People First

The second instruction, “Put people first,” concerns leadership teams. Conte argued that a strong market cannot make up for weak management, and he asked readers to judge the people before they judge the opportunity.

“Before you commit capital, commit to an honest assessment of the people because they are what you’re really backing,” JP Conte wrote.

Understand What Patience Actually Means

Family offices are often called patient investors.

“Patient capital isn’t passive capital,” Conte wrote.

Waiting, in his account, still demands close attention. A company should be given the time its plans require, and the decision to hold should be made as deliberately as the decision to act.

The Family Behind the Column

Jean-Pierre Conte opened and closed the piece with his parents. Neither arrived in the United States with money, and he wrote that they carried something else with them: a belief in what could be done and in making things meant to last.

He tied his family office, Lupine Crest Capital, directly to that history. The connection appears in his other columns as well, including a December 2025 piece on education that drew on his years as a first-generation student at Colgate University.

A Growing Body of Writing

Conte has contributed to Forbes Business Council since 2025, and mentorship, education, wildfire preparedness and outdoor adventure have all been covered in those columns.

His March 2026 column described his years at sea and his first attempts at surfing, both of which came after decades in finance. J-P Conte wrote in that piece that risk tolerance can be developed over time through practice.