About Lumenary Research

Lumenary Research publishes analysis of founder-led companies; how founder ownership shapes company performance, how governance and control structures work in practice, and what the evidence says about long-term returns.

The methodology

Founder-led is an easy idea and a difficult classification. Ownership stakes, board control, dual-class structures, founding families across generations, and executives who founded a business but no longer run it all sit on a spectrum, and existing index frameworks have no principled way to treat them.

Lumenary maintains a classification methodology that screens a global all-cap universe of around 14,700 listed companies, assessing leadership, governance and ownership, and identifies approximately 4,500 of them as founder-led. It is the basis of the Lumenary founder-led indices and of the research published here.

What we publish

Research is published as it is completed, usually every few weeks. Work falls into four areas:

  • Evidence; what the data shows about founder-led company performance
  • Governance; ownership structures, control, and how index and benchmark frameworks handle them
  • Company analysis; individual founder-led businesses and the people running them
  • Methodology; how founder-led companies are identified and classified

About Lumenary

Lumenary is a research and investment firm that has specialised in founder-led companies since 2017. Its founder-led classification methodology screens around 14,700 listed companies globally, identifying approximately 4,500 as founder-led, and is licensed to index providers and institutional users. Lumenary also manages the Lumenary Global Founders Fund, available to Australian wholesale investors.

Author

Lawrence Lam is the founder of Lumenary and author of The Founder Effect (Wiley, 2025). He developed the classification methodology behind Lumenary's founder-led indices. His research and commentary have appeared in the Australian Financial Review and The Australian, and he has been interviewed by Morningstar's The Long View. He was previously at Deloitte, Royal Bank of Scotland, MUFG and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.

Contact

For licensing enquiries, media requests or research questions: invest@lumenaryinvest.com