There is a quiet assumption among many high-net-worth individuals and family office principals that staying off the radar is the safe option. No website. No social presence. No interviews. Nothing that draws attention.
It feels cautious. In reality, it is a risk.
When a counterparty, prospective partner, or introducer searches your name before a meeting - and they will - what they find shapes the conversation before it begins. A fragmented picture, an outdated filing, or simply nothing at all is not neutral. It hands narrative control to whoever did bother to put something out there.
Two individuals are getting this right. In very different ways.
Steven Bartlett - Full Signal
Co-founder of Social Chain. Host of The Diary of a CEO - ranked among the top five most listened-to podcasts globally on Spotify in 2025. Investor and BBC Dragons’ Den panellist. Estimated net worth: £70 million.
It would be easy to dismiss Bartlett as a social media personality who got fortunate. That would be wrong.
He built Social Chain from scratch into a global marketing agency working with Apple, McDonald’s and Amazon. He identified the creator economy before most people had a name for it. He has backed genuinely strong businesses through Dragons’ Den and his own investment vehicles, including an early position in PerfectTed which reached a valuation of £140 million by 2025.
The substance was always there. What Bartlett understood - earlier and more clearly than almost anyone in his space - is that personal brand amplifies real value. His visibility did not create his success. It multiplied it.
In late 2025, his holding company Steven.com closed a funding round at a $425 million valuation, with analysts attributing a significant portion of that figure to the audience and personal brand sitting behind the business. Investors looked at what he had built, then looked at who was behind it - and priced both accordingly.
His personal brand is not a byproduct of success. For Bartlett, it is part of the asset itself.
For most HNWIs and family office principals, full Bartlett-mode is neither necessary nor appealing. The scale of output, the constant presence, the total openness - that is a specific strategic choice that works because his brand and his business are one and the same.
But the underlying principle is transferable: your digital presence either supports the value of what you have built, or it quietly leaves that value on the table.
Tej Kohli - Enough Signal
Chairman of Kohli Ventures, a London-based single family office deploying personal capital across deep tech, AI, robotics, real estate and philanthropy. Co-founder of the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation, working to eliminate cataract blindness globally.
He is not Steven Bartlett. He does not need to be.
Kohli has a personal website. He blogs under the #TejTalks banner on Medium and Ghost. He writes columns for CityAM, Project Syndicate and the World Economic Forum. He is present on social media as @MrTejKohli. He gives press interviews when there is something worth saying. He has a clear, consistent narrative - technology, impact investing, blindness philanthropy - that runs across everything bearing his name.
None of this is excessive. None of it is performative. But when you search Tej Kohli, you find a coherent, credible, well-maintained picture of who he is, what he has built, and what he stands for.
He owns his narrative. He did not leave it to chance.
In a world where AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity now surface information about individuals before a traditional search result is even clicked, that coherence matters more than it ever has. These platforms do not apply recency bias. They surface what exists. If what exists is thin, incomplete, or framed by others - that is what gets returned.
Kohli’s approach quietly says: I do not need to dominate every channel. I need to be findable, credible, and in control of my own story. That is enough.
The Template That Actually Applies
For the majority of family office principals and UHNW individuals, Kohli is the more relevant template - not because Bartlett’s approach lacks merit, but because it was built for a different purpose. Kohli demonstrates that intentional, low-maintenance digital presence is both achievable and sufficient.
The question is not whether to have a digital presence. It is whether the one you have - or the one that exists about you without your input - is accurate, coherent, and working in your favour.
In most cases, it is not. Not because anything has gone wrong. Simply because no one has made it a priority.