registered-investment-advisor
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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 $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.
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.
Eaglebrook
Eaglebrook is a New York-based crypto investment platform built for wealth managers. It gives registered investment advisors (RIAs) and their clients direct, tax-optimized exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets through separately managed accounts (SMAs) held at institutional qualified custodians. As an SEC-registered investment advisor, Eaglebrook operates one of the largest crypto SMA platforms in the market, integrating with advisors' existing portfolio-management and reporting systems so they can offer, trade, bill, and report on digital assets inside their normal workflow.
Pave Finance
Pave Finance is a New York-based fintech building an AI-powered, institutional-grade wealth management platform that lets financial advisors customize, personalize and automate portfolio construction for their clients. Combining an alpha-scoring algorithm, an optimization engine and an integrated trading platform across 10,000+ global securities, Pave brings tools once reserved for hedge funds and ultra-high-net-worth desks to everyday advisors - offering direct indexing, tax-loss harvesting, values-based screens and concentrated-position management. In September 2025 the company closed an oversubscribed $14M seed round.
Stirlingshire
Stirlingshire is a New York-based financial services company building an advisor-first investment platform. Operating through SEC-registered, FINRA-member subsidiaries Stirlingshire RIA LLC and Stirlingshire BD LLC, it offers a full-service broker-dealer and advisory model with a sharp twist: advisors keep 100% of their asset-management fees and commissions with zero firm expenses and permanent work-from-home flexibility, while clients can self-direct at zero commission and call on a professional advisor only when they want one. Founded in 2020 by Steven Woods, the firm pitches a 'third way' between fully managed portfolios and pure DIY investing.