TIA's Structure Serves our Strategy

TIA is all about providing investment expertise to its clients—rather than style. You won't find extravagant offices when you come for a visit. You won't be assigned a fancy "investment advisor" or commisioned account manager trying to sell investment inventory. (Sorry, no limosines or international cruises either!) Chances are, however, when you arrive at our offices, you will meet with Dr. Tiemann and talk with him directly about what is on your mind about your account.

This is service by design. TIA is a small, highly efficient business that offers a premium service by leveraging technology and inverting the traditional investment business model. The old model utilizes salespeople to sell third-party investment products through a distribution channel—which is just not the investment help that clients actually need. TIA inverts this model entirely. There is neither a sales nor a marketing group at TIA. TIA sells no products. The modest fees our clients pay go primarily towards paying for true investment expertise. Our interests are aligned with our clients'. We work on your behalf and uniquely create the portfolio you need. That is our strategy.

Valerie Gardner, Co-founder, Principal and Business Manager

When Dr. Tiemann was considering the need in the marketplace for an investment firm that provides true expertise to its clients, he was encouraged to launch TIA by Valerie Gardner, a former high-tech CFO and General Counsel, who believed both in his vision and his ability to provide the type of service that investors really need. Whereas Dr. Tiemann's expertise was in the investment realm, Ms. Gardner's was in launching new ventures to meet a need in the marketplace, and she agreed to work with him in this endeavor.

Ms. Gardner brings over fifteen years of business start-up and small business management experience to TIA's formation. Ms. Gardner holds a Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law and an MBA from the Yale School of Management, where she was most focused on entrepreneurial studies. In 1986, she was co-founder, CFO and General Counsel of Willow Peripherals, Inc., where over six years she helped a team of engineers grow to launch seven award-winning multimedia products including VGA-TV (that was bundled with the release of Autodesk's Animator program), Publishers' VGA, VGA ColorTV, LaptopTV and more.

Ms. Gardner subsequently moved to Silicon Valley and was recruited to join a start-up venture called Artemis Research, then just a team of three engineers, as its CFO. Less than a year later, they announed the WebTV service and emerged on the market as WebTV Networks. Ms. Gardner helped WebTV raise three over-subscribed rounds of venture and corporate financing, grow to over 100 employees and garner multi-million dollar revenues from an award-winning product and service. WebTV was acquired by Microsoft in late 1997. Ms. Gardner remained for several more years with Microsoft before retiring at the end of 2000.

In the wake of the collapse of the Internet bubble beginning early in 2001, many friends and colleagues experienced near financial ruin as a result of poor investment advice. Having been spared this fate by the wise advice and investment support she received from Dr. Tiemann, Ms. Gardner urged Dr. Tiemann to move forward in creating a business to offer his brand of institutional caliber service for high net worth individuals. Together, they designed the business to showcase investment expertise at the core of the business and built the operations to leverage technology to control overhead and operating expenses.

TIA maintains its low cost structure by aoiding unnecessary overhead and is well served by many existing commercial products from established businesses that provide great efficiency and extensive leverage to TIA's operations in areas such as back-office accounting, client account management, securities trading and reporting, thus allowing TIA great flexibility in its control over its services, its operations and its costs. In addition, TIA has continually invested in the development of its own proprietary investment IP by designing proprietary programs or applications to assist in its continuing endeavor to analyze, build and report on completely custom portfolios in an efficient manner.

TIA Serves Investors

Today, TIA serves the real investment needs of discerning individual investors with true expertise, stand-out operational efficiency and low fees. In addition, Dr. Tiemann also stands as a constant advocate for the highest of ethical standards owed by advisors to their clients, frequently pointing out in scrupulous detail the less-than stellar standards demonstrated all too often in the market through his free-distribution newsletters. Dr. Tiemann places a bright spotlight on the many lapses of standards and behind-the-scenes self-serving methods, and intentional lack of transparency among many providers still prevalent in the brokerage and private investment management worlds and on Wall Street.

In an era where many well-heeled investment banks such as Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers have abruptly failed, more and more investors are beginning to question the prudence of the traditional approach and are starting to look for real investment expertise. With the market turbulence of recent years, more people see the wisdom of an investment management approach that eliminates layers of unnecessary commissions and fees, reduces overhead and leverages technology. Ever since founding TIA, Dr. Tiemann has taken this approach. He knows that the more leveraged and efficient he can make his business, the less his clients have to pay for his services and the better their overall returns. This is wholely engrained in the TIA approach to its business, where we care about your after-tax return. We strive to make your wealth work for you (not the other way around)!

We know investment management, we know your portfolio and we know you.  This is the TIA difference.