Francois Botha
Francois is the founder of Simple. He comes from an academic background in strategic business and brand management, and grew up working in a family-owned luxury travel business in Cape Town, South Africa.
- Region
- United Kingdom, Switzerland
- Based in
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Interests
- Art, Digital, Impact Strategy
- Services
- Business transformation, Strategic foresight, Technology advisory
Francois is the founder of Simple. He comes from an academic background that lies in strategic business- & brand management, but more importantly, he grew up and worked in a family-owned luxury travel business in Cape Town, South Africa.
Francois knows firsthand the unique dynamics inherent in working with family members and wants to help other family-owned firms make the most of their strong points while skirting common problem areas faced by family offices.
He's also a Senior Contributor to Forbes, writing a weekly column on family office strategy, and is a frequent speaker at wealth management, FinTech and related events and conferences.
Insights Francois Botha has written
Open source crosses the frontier (and yes, we called it)
AIThe open-weight moment finally arrives: Kimi's K3 shifts the frontier on cost and capability, an open model contains a frontier model's attack, and why now is the moment for family offices to stop sitting on the sidelines. Plus London, and our Trusted AI report.
How to Evaluate Family Office Software in 2026
OperationsMost guidance on family office software is published by the vendors themselves. This guide sets out a vendor-neutral process for small family office teams: how to set and sort your requirements, map the stack you already have, use a vendor directory to build a defensible shortlist, and compare platforms on asset class coverage, workflow fit, governance and control, and reporting complexity. Includes a weighted scoring approach, a vendor question bank and a five year cost model.
The new Simple, and a breakfast in Berlin
CompanyA new andsimple.co, a breakfast for 47 family offices above the Tiffany's store in Berlin (no, not in it), and two new papers on Trusted AI and the Paris Closed Door Sessions.
Closed Door Sessions: From Capacity to Consequence
The Closed Door Sessions 2026 brought together 40 participants and 10 moderators across five tables to examine how contemporary societies can convert capacity — awareness, capital and technological capability — into legitimate, accountable and socially useful action. This executive summary presents the central proposition, six principal findings and eight unresolved questions from the inquiry.
Closed Door Sessions, Paris: forty leaders, three questions
EventsForty family office principals and advisors gathered in Paris for our latest Closed Door Sessions. Three questions, candid conversations, and a white paper in the making — plus AI signals, Berlin and London events, and a joint MSCI webinar.
The AI dividend, and the model that changes the security calculus
AITim Brown and IDEO publish the AI dividend argument in full, this month's AI signals (including the Mythos raise), a note on hiring our CTO, and upcoming workshops.
The Copenhagen Gathering: what we heard
EventsA recap of our April 2026 gathering in Copenhagen — who joined us, what we discussed, and the four themes that defined the two days: governance, AI implementation, next-generation priorities, and data sovereignty.
OpenClaw, the SaaSpocalypse, and the white-collar bloodbath
AIAn open-source agent goes from side project to 60,000 stars overnight, 800 billion dollars evaporates off software stocks in a week, and the head of an AI lab warns about the jobs his own technology is coming for.
Notes from Davos: ownership beats model quality
AIReflections from Davos, where the AI conversation finally moved past models and demos and onto the things that are harder to fake: ownership, integration, and the very physical limits of energy and grid.
The Simple View on Trusted AI for Family Offices
AIA research agenda for the structural shift in how family offices operate, govern, and build.
Looking ahead to 2026: the 10% that stays yours
AIOur Looking Ahead report finds that every big shift drags a counter-shift behind it, and that the real question for 2026 is not which 90% of your work AI can take, but which 10% you refuse to hand over.
Launching our AI Hub, and the shift to the application layer
CompanySimple launches its AI Hub and the Simple Signals Substack, in a month where the AI bubble kept not popping and the real opportunity quietly moved up to the application layer.
Cutting through the AI hype in Midtown
AIAI billboards on every Midtown corner, a trillion dollars moving in a suspiciously tight circle, and why sitting on the sidelines is not the neutral position a lot of family offices think it is.
Named in the Sifted 100, and the two-hour tax on AI work slop
CompanySimple is named in the Sifted 100: Nordics & Benelux, and a look at why outcome-focused teams quietly get more from AI than the task-focused ones burning two hours a time cleaning up "work slop".
Closing a funding round, and the industrialisation of intelligence
CompanySimple welcomes new investors to the cap table, and a look at the strange month where 95% of enterprise AI projects "failed" and shadow AI quietly outperformed all of them.
AI for family offices: Strategy & governance
GovernanceComprehensive guide to AI strategy and governance for family offices, with insights, practical steps, and safeguards for responsible adoption.
From prompt engineering to context engineering
AIThe better you get at AI, the less it turns out to be about the perfect prompt. It is about context, plus early signs of "vibe coding" walking into the enterprise, and the 2025 Security & Risk Report.
What happens when 80% of your work is agentic?
AINotes from a New York Tech Week session for 50-plus family office professionals. Agentic tools are quietly eating tasks, not teams, and the real leverage is moving from doing the work to designing it.
Two visions of AI: Google I/O and The Way of Code
AITwo very different pictures of what AI can become landed in the same month, from Google I/O's foot-to-the-floor acceleration to Rick Rubin's quieter Way of Code. What the gap between them means for family offices.
Family Office Market Size: How many family offices are there?
BenchmarkingEveryone seems to have a different number for how many family offices exist worldwide. Estimates range from 3,500 to 20,000, depending on who you ask. Deloitte’s 2024 report pegs the number at 8,030, growing at 4.8% annually to reach 10,720 by 2030. The Problem with Family Office Estimates Here’s the thing: family offices are private, […]
