2026
Cardo Holdings
ASSIGNMENT
Finance — Private Markets Advisory
OVERVIEW
Cardo Holdings is an independent private-markets advisory firm. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Herzliya, Israel — with a presence in New York — Cardo connects global investment managers with institutional capital, advising on capital formation, strategic growth, and market access across private equity, infrastructure, real estate, and private credit.
Their existing site read like a brochure: generic stock photography, soft copy, and no structure to grow into. For a firm that runs on trust and discretion, the website had to do something harder — signal institutional credibility in the first three seconds, without shouting. AGR Studio was brought in to redesign and rebuild the site from the ground up in Framer, and to hand Cardo a content platform they could actually run themselves.
Positioning before pixels
We started with the question most advisory firms dodge: what makes you different when everyone claims "relationships" and "expertise"? For Cardo the answer was specificity — a real track record ($4B+ in transactions, 350+ institutional investors), a genuine Israel-to-global bridge, and a founder, Ron Shoham, with two decades of credibility. We anchored the messaging to three words — Access. Intelligence. Execution. — and let the rest of the site prove them.
An architecture that scales
Instead of a static brochure, we mapped a CMS-first structure: Services, Track Record, Leadership, and a Perspectives engine for market intelligence and client announcements. Every section was designed to be updated by the team — no designer in the loop.
Quiet confidence
The visual language is deliberately restrained: a near-black canvas, off-white type, and a single gold accent used sparingly. We paired Frank Ruhl Libre — a serif with Israeli heritage — with Public Sans for a tone that feels both rooted and global, designed a custom monogram mark, and built a system of architectural, dusk-lit imagery that signals scale without resorting to handshake-photo clichés.
Editorial, not corporate
Considered type sizes, generous whitespace, and gold hairline dividers give the long-form pages an editorial rhythm. The site reads like a point of view, not a sales deck.
Fully CMS-driven in Framer
Everything that changes lives in the CMS: six collections powering Services, Track Record, Leadership, Perspectives, Categories, and Legal — each with dynamic detail pages. We built bespoke sections (an animated stat band, asset-class track-record cards, a leadership profile with an advisory-network module) and wired them to the CMS so the site stays current without dev work.
Details that earn trust
We rebuilt ten real client logos as clean white SVGs for a credibility wall, sourced and isolated the founder’s portrait, and populated a launch-ready Perspectives feed with market-intelligence and deal-announcement content. Responsive behaviour was tuned across four breakpoints.
Built to be found — by people and AI
Beyond per-page meta titles and descriptions, we added Organization and WebSite JSON-LD schema and authored an llms.txt, so answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity can describe Cardo accurately. SEO and AI-search readiness were part of the build, not an afterthought.
Cardo went from a generic brochure to an institutional-grade platform that looks the part and runs itself. The team can publish market intelligence and client announcements, refresh their track record, and manage leadership — all from the CMS, no code required.
It launched search- and AI-ready out of the gate: structured data, clean metadata, and an llms.txt that puts the right facts in front of both Google and the LLMs increasingly used to vet firms. For a business built on credibility, the website finally matches the calibre of the work.
