A crucial part of the process of course is having a panel of expert judges with the experience and knowledge to assess the entries. We will therefore be profiling the judges taking part in coming weeks.

Here is Joseph Reilly, founder of The Mill, a family office networking group based in Greenwich, CT.  Formerly Reilly ran investments for a family office in New York, and was the co-founder and founding president of the Family Office Association.

"Let's look at the two groups producing wealth in the US today:  tech entrepreneurs and alternative asset managers.  All of the fortunes in the US up until recently were created by building and selling a business.  This typically took years, and capital, which was provided by investment banks.  There was always an intermediary between you and the capital.  Now fortunes are being created by folks who are used to raising and deploying capital themselves.  They are used to thinking like an investment management firm.  They typically do not have the depth to manage their own finances properly, however," Reilly says.

He adds: "Individuals also have access to more information and more ways to deploy capital than ever before.  Something very few people notice is the growth of angel groups in the US over the last ten years.  In fact, almost as much money is deployed by angels in the US than by venture capital firms.  These are very savvy folks who are investing in start-ups and often leading rounds that only venture capital firms had the ability to do previously.   Their children are grown, they are retired (often in their 50s) and are very actively pursuing angel investing as a second career.  Bread and butter wealth management doesn't quite know what to do with these folks.  They can be demanding as clients, but for the most part they know what they want but don't know the best way to go about getting it.  They need good advice on taxes and trusts, and are very interested in protecting the capital they are not using in their direct investing.  There are hundreds of thousands of these folks, and their numbers will continue to grow as long as wealth is created in the US."