high-net-worth
(22)
HNW sold banks a better way to talk to the rich
Money can buy attention. Trust is a more awkward purchase. From 2001 to 2016, HNW combined research, creative work and communications software to help wealth firms earn a more personal hearing.
The Rudin Group Put the Lighthouse Out of Work
April Rudin built a consultancy around a small, stubborn observation: rich people are still people, and financial brands should stop talking to them like marble buildings. The result is a specialist firm that turns technical expertise into language clients might remember.
Newport Put the Family Balance Sheet Before the Portfolio - and Turned Private Markets Into a $6 Billion Pitch
Most wealth firms begin with a portfolio. Newport begins with the family - then builds an endowment-style mix of public and private assets around the life that money is supposed to fund.
NorthRock Built a $12 Billion Firm Around the Rich Person's Worst Job: Coordination
Wealth creates options - and an absurd amount of administrative work. NorthRock's bet is that affluent clients will pay one team to make the investment manager, CPA, estate lawyer, insurance adviser and philanthropy plan behave like one system.
True North Built a $5.86 Billion Wealth Firm by Refusing to Sell the Usual Stuff
Scott Wood and Mark Gehlbach left product-tied Wall Street advice behind, built the alternative-investment shelf they wished existed, and waited 24 years before taking outside capital. Now comes the harder trick: scaling a family office without turning trust into a product.
The $4 Billion Freedom Bet: How XML Financial Group Built a Wealth Firm by Refusing to Build Alone
XML Financial Group escaped the big-bank playbook, then discovered that independence works better with infrastructure. Its repeatable trick is equal parts personal advice, succession planning and culture-first M&A.
The $6 Billion RIA Built to Make Complicated Money Feel Boring
Ashton Thomas sells a scarce luxury: one coordinated view of a wealthy family’s messy financial life. Its post-2023 expansion shows how a regional adviser can add offices, specialists and assets without sanding away the local teams clients hired in the first place.
The Richmond Firm That Manages $4.9 Billion by Managing Memory
A former KPMG tax partner built a Richmond multi-family office on a stubborn premise: the hardest part of managing $4.9 billion isn't the portfolio - it's the paperwork, the people and the memory behind it.
Gratus Capital Built the Anti-Wall-Street Wealth Firm - Then Chose a Bigger Bench
Hank McLarty left the wirehouses to put tax, estate and investment specialists on one team. Nineteen years and roughly $3.8 billion later, Gratus made the counterintuitive move: surrender the stand-alone firm to expand what clients could get.
The Chicago Firm That Sold Wall Street's Playbook to Families Who Aren't Endowments
Two Chicago traders spent a decade turning hedge-fund tactics into a wealth business for families who aren't endowments. In 2026 they sold it - $5.6 billion later.
The Private Bank Built for Wealth That Hasn't Turned Into Cash Yet
Citizens used the regional-bank shock of 2023 to assemble a relationship bank for founders, fund partners and families with complicated balance sheets. By the end of 2025, the two-year-old unit held $14.5 billion in deposits and $10 billion in client wealth assets.
Bernstein Private Wealth Management
A research house that started by publishing uncomfortable truths now spends its days on the harder question wealthy families rarely say out loud: who gets it, and will the money outlast the people who made it.
Douglas Elliman Real Estate
The 114-year-old New York brokerage sells the top 5% of the housing market - and is now betting a leadership shake-up, a global alliance and a hard turn toward profitability can keep it there.
AYC Fund
AYC Fund is an AI-native crypto hedge fund out of Y Combinator's W22 batch, founded in 2021 by MJ Kim in Seoul. It builds systematic, rules-based trading engines for digital-asset markets and now runs a private, invite-only program for qualified clients - high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and advisors - where capital stays in the client's own exchange account and the fund trades through read-and-trade API access rather than taking custody.
Aidentified
Aidentified is a Boston-area AI company that maps who is wealthy, who they know, and when they come into money. Its platform combines 300M+ consumer and professional profiles with relationship graphs covering 16 billion first-degree connections to help financial advisors, wealth managers, insurers and nonprofit fundraisers find high-value prospects and reach them through warm introductions rather than cold outreach. Founded in 2017 and backed by financial-data giant FactSet, it delivers its wealth-and-relationship intelligence through a web app, CRM integrations, an API and data-as-a-service pipelines.
Farther
Farther is a New York-based technology-driven wealth management firm that pairs human financial advisors with a proprietary 'Intelligent Wealth Platform.' Founded in 2019 by Taylor Matthews and Brad Genser, the company gives advisors an all-in-one digital ecosystem for financial planning, investing, tax optimization, and estate planning, while offering clients a family-office-style experience. After a $150 million Series D led by General Atlantic in 2026, Farther has grown to roughly $23 billion in recruited assets and ranks among the fastest-growing financial services firms in the United States.
Harness (Harness Wealth)
Harness (Harness Wealth) is a New York fintech that pairs software with a curated marketplace of vetted tax, financial and estate advisors, aimed at people with complex finances - startup founders, equity-holding employees, business owners, crypto investors and other 'builders.' It combines a vertical SaaS platform that powers collaboration between tax advisors and their clients, a marketplace to discover specialist firms, and consumer tools for tracking equity and net worth. Founded in 2018 by David Snider, the former CFO/COO of Compass, the company has raised roughly $40M and grew revenue by more than 1,500% between 2021 and 2024.
Ellevest
Ellevest is a New York-based financial company built by and for women. Co-founded in 2014 by former Wall Street executive Sallie Krawcheck and Charlie Kroll, it launched a gender-aware digital investing platform in 2016 designed around the realities of women's financial lives - longer lifespans, earlier salary peaks and the persistent pay gap. After selling its automated-investing (robo) business to Betterment in 2025, Ellevest now focuses on wealth management and financial planning delivered by an all-women team of advisors for clients investing $500,000 or more.
OLarry
OLarry is an AI-powered, year-round tax firm built for high-net-worth individuals, founders, and businesses. It pairs certified public accountants with proprietary AI that handles document collection, data classification, and extraction, so its CPAs can focus on proactive, strategic tax planning rather than paperwork. Sold as a flat annual membership, OLarry aims to bring the kind of always-on tax advice once reserved for the ultra-wealthy to thousands of clients across the United States.
duPont REGISTRY
duPont REGISTRY is a luxury automotive lifestyle brand and digital marketplace that has connected affluent buyers and sellers of exotic, classic and collector vehicles since 1985. What began as a glossy print catalog of fine automobiles has grown into an omni-channel ecosystem - marketplace listings, a long-running magazine, exotic-car financing, insurance, editorial content and events - serving high-net-worth enthusiasts. Now part of duPont REGISTRY Group (Driven Lifestyle), the company facilitates billions of dollars in luxury vehicle transactions each year from its base in Clearwater, Florida.
Equi
Equi is part hedge fund, part technology platform - an alternative investment manager that gives high-net-worth individuals, wealth advisors and family offices access to the kind of uncorrelated, absolute-return strategies that were historically reserved for institutions and billionaires. Founded in 2020 by Tory Reiss, Itay Vinik and Jeremy Smith, the company pairs Wall Street investing expertise with Silicon Valley software, screening thousands of private funds to build diversified portfolios designed to perform across market cycles. Equi reached roughly $100M in assets under management within its first year and has raised about $25M in venture funding.
John Paul
John Paul is a Paris-based premium concierge and customer-loyalty company that operates white-label services for luxury brands and enterprises. Founded in 2007-2008 by David Amsellem, it pairs human concierges with a proprietary CRM platform to manage the relationships brands have with their most valuable clients and employees. After merging with US rival LesConcierges in 2015, it was acquired by AccorHotels in 2016 and now runs as a business accelerator inside the Accor group, serving clients such as Visa, Hyundai, Orange and luxury houses across automotive, finance, fashion and travel.