We are building Third Attractor to bring families together to fund and support practical work for a more resilient and flourishing future.
We help a family work out where it can contribute, assess the people and projects doing credible work, and bring together what that work actually needs.
Start a conversation.
Bring one priority or question your family would like to help move forward. We will explore whether there is useful work to do together.
Third Attractor is in development. We are preparing the first complete cases and testing how the proposed service works in practice. Page nine sets out what exists today and what we still have to prove.
It is time to take a stand for a potential third. Our children will inherit whatever we make normal, and the work is to make that third a real possibility for them and their children to live into.
The work is to make the third basin deep enough to fall into. The work done in the next few years decides whether a third outcome is still possible at all.
Families have useful resources: capital, operating companies, relationships, expertise, land, influence and time. Most of it is more useful than money and most of it is not pointed at anything in particular. The challenges that matter are hard to read, because information is abundant and contradictory and the questions cross several fields at once. And a sound idea still needs an owner, customers, governance and the right kind of finance, so when one of those is missing, capital on its own does not supply it.
The first question is therefore not where to invest. It is what needs to become true, and where your family could genuinely help. That second question is slower, and it allows the honest answer to be a grant, an introduction, a piece of governance, or nothing at all.
Any family can hire research. What takes years to build is the shared intelligence, a view on which kind of capital actually fits, and the ability to see who else is already moving on the same question.
What is really going on in the area you care about, what the evidence supports, and where we are still guessing. Short, with the sources attached.
Where could this family do something that would not otherwise get done? A written answer in your own words, concrete enough to act on and concrete enough to be proved wrong.
What should happen, who is responsible, and what would stop it. Often the right step is a customer, a chair or a commitment rather than money.
Those four capabilities are what the membership pays for. They are also the reason a second family costs less to serve than the first, and why the work is worth doing as a group rather than one family at a time.
| Document | In plain terms | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Field view | A concise view of the issue, with sources and the uncertainties stated. | Replacing impressions with something specific. |
| Leverage note | The few points where a modest action could change the direction, and why the others would not. | Stopping effort being spread evenly. |
| Written priorities | Your family’s choice, in your words, including what you have decided to leave alone. | Giving the next generation something to inherit. |
| Assessment | What survives scrutiny, what does not, and what would have to be true for us to be wrong. | Taking a real decision rather than a hopeful one. |
| Action memo | Who does what, with what, by when, and who can stop it. | Making sure something happens after the meeting. |
| Evidence review | What changed against the baseline, including what did not work. | Deciding the next move on evidence rather than mood. |
You keep everything produced, whether or not you continue with us.
Deciding to wait is a real result, recorded the same way as a decision to act.
Scope, timing and cost are agreed in writing before work starts.
Not where you could write a cheque, but where your family is one of the few that could actually move something.
A useful answer is usually one or two places rather than eight, and sometimes the right answer is to wait.
Some work suits a single family. Other work benefits from several families contributing different strengths alongside an operator or a specialist. One family might bring industry knowledge, another a customer relationship, another funding. Each family chooses its own involvement. There is no pooled vehicle, no shared governance structure and no obligation to invest alongside anybody else.
Capital is rarely the scarce thing you hold. Convening power, a long horizon, an operating company and a name people will take a call from are all harder to buy.
Who takes part is your decision. Some families want to do this together across generations, others want one person to carry it. Both work.
What you will not do is the most useful line on this page. It narrows the search faster than anything on the left-hand side.
This loop runs continuously rather than once per mandate, and the last step is the reason the first step improves. The mechanism is chosen last, because it should follow the mission.
A regional food producer asks for growth equity, because that is what is usually offered. Looking at the situation first shows the binding constraint is not capital but committed customers. The useful response is a procurement commitment from a family that owns distribution, plus a small amount of transition finance. Equity would have priced in a risk the founder could have removed first. Illustrative, and not a completed engagement.
Third Attractor. We produce the understanding, the assessment and the proposed next step, and we say where we are uncertain.
Your family. Whether a priority is yours to carry, and whether to proceed, is your decision alone. We cannot overrule it.
The operator. Whoever carries the consequence runs the work. We help assemble what it needs and review what happened.
Six things have to be in place before money helps. Where one is missing, the useful contribution is usually to supply it rather than to fund around it.
Somebody named and accountable, rather than a committee, and not us.
The right kind of finance for the risk actually being taken.
Who decides, and who is able to say no.
The people who will do the work, with the time to do it.
What is true today, measured before anything is spent.
What would cause this to stop, agreed in advance and in writing.
Is the case real? The causal account, the sources, and what we considered and rejected. Ours
Does the family choose it? A conversation, not an assessment. Yours alone
Is the work good enough? Applied in writing, including where it scored badly. Ours
Can it be delivered? The six items above, each named rather than assumed. Ours
Are the right people deciding? Who holds the decision, and the record of them taking it. Theirs
Work that stops because the family decides it is not theirs to carry is covered by the agreed fee in the normal way, and you keep the research. There is no additional or success-related payment, because the structure contains none. Where a separately commissioned piece of work stops early, the unperformed portion is not charged.
The operator owns delivery. We help identify the constraint, test the case, assemble the right support and review the result. If the work proves weaker than it looked, stopping it early is the outcome we would want, and the conditions for that were set at the start.
This is the question families ask first. The roles below are what the service requires, and one of them is filled.
| Role | Accountable for | Status | Filled by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founder | The mission, the family relationships, and the shape of the organisation. | Filled | James Hodges |
| Operating lead | Delivery, the engagement process, and whether what is promised actually happens. | First hire | In discussion, not appointed |
| Research lead | The field views, the evidence standard, and saying where we are uncertain. | Open | Not appointed |
| Software and data | The platform, shared records and the technical side of coordination. | Via partner | Symviosis, proposed agreement |
| Specialist depth | Family governance, investment management, legal, tax and implementation. | Bought in | Engaged per piece of work |
| Organisation | What they would contribute | What Third Attractor earns if you use them |
|---|---|---|
| Symviosis | Software, shared records, technical capability. | We share part of your membership with them. Continuing, and the largest of these. |
| Amphibian Capital | Investment management and selected capital strategies. | Nothing directly, but the founder of Third Attractor owns it. Page eight explains what we do about that. |
| WAIC, Bespoke, Supernova, All-Win | Family governance, founder relationships, public-market exposure. | Nothing. You contract with them directly. |
| Flourishing Futures Foundation | Philanthropy, public-benefit research, catalytic work. | Nothing. It receives donations, including a pledged share of profit from us. |
| Your existing advisers | Whatever they already do well for you. | Nothing, and we would rather you kept them. |
Capacity is limited until the operating lead is appointed. We can carry a small number of engagements well, or a larger number badly, and we intend the first.
You would contract with a named entity rather than with a group of organisations. That entity and its governance are being settled now.
No claim made by any organisation above has been verified by a named external checker, and their regulatory positions are matters of public record you can check yourself.
You can do the work yourself, ask us to do it, or do neither. The third option matters, because without it the first two would be a sales process.
| You decide | We decide | Neither | |
|---|---|---|---|
| You pay | A flat annual membership. | Fund fee and carry, above a minimum investment, to a separate regulated manager. | The membership, or nothing at all. |
| You get | Research, all of our deal flow, and access. You execute through your own family office. | Discretionary management within an agreed mandate, so somebody else does the work. | Understanding, after which you act elsewhere with your own people. |
| We earn | The flat fee, and nothing else. | Nothing in Third Attractor. The founder’s interest sits in the manager. | The flat fee, or nothing. |
| We do not earn | Anything from what you choose, or from how much you deploy. | Any referral fee, from this or any other partner. | Anything at all, which is the point of including it. |
The fee may depend on who you are. It should never depend on what you decide.
$100,000 to $150,000 a family a year is the working number. It can be priced on the people and entities served and how many priorities you want taken through the work. It is never priced on how much you invest.
Included: shared research, help choosing where to focus, initial assessment of people and projects, introductions and light coordination, selected gatherings, and the decision record.
Commissioned separately: full diligence on a named opportunity, project design and implementation, deep governance work, and anything needing sustained specialist time. You approve the scope and fee before it starts.
The founder of Third Attractor also founded Amphibian Capital, so we are connected rather than independent, and we do not claim otherwise. What we claim is narrower and checkable: Third Attractor does not raise the subject of products the group owns, nothing we write recommends them, anyone holding both roles steps out of that selection, and for anything in that category we name at least two credible alternatives we hold no interest in. A separate note, How the pieces fit together, sets out the full structure and is available on request.
Not a commitment, not a membership, and not a funding request. Before any of that, here is honestly where we have got to.
Three questions to bring. What does your family want to help change? What can you contribute beyond capital? Where could working with others make a difference?
What we would do with that. Come back with an honest view of whether there is useful work here, where your family looks unusually well placed, and where we are not the right people.
If there is a fit. We agree the question, the scope, who is responsible, the outputs, the timing and the cost before anyone commits to anything.
Separately from any family engagement, Third Attractor is taking one priority through the full sequence over ninety days to test whether the service works as described. That is our validation plan rather than a programme every family is asked to fund. You are welcome to follow it, or to be the case, but neither is a condition of talking to us.
Help create a more resilient and flourishing future.
hello@thirdattractor.com · thirdattractor.com
Where the detail lives. This brief is the front document. A short note, How the pieces fit together, covers the relationship between Third Attractor, Amphibian Capital and the Foundation. The working business model covers membership economics, partner terms and the capital plan. A forty-nine-page working paper holds the underlying evidence. No claim in any of them has been independently verified by a named external checker, and the family feedback behind them was simulated rather than collected from real families.