Rise Growth Partners, the RIA investing company launched in 2024 by former United Capital CEO Joe Duran, has made a minority investment in Cyndeo Wealth Partners, a Florida-headquartered registered investment advisor with $3.1 billion in client assets. This marks Rise Growth’s fourth investment since inception, and the first acquisition of an RIA in the Dynasty Financial Partners network.
Cyndeo was created in 2020 when Matt Kilgroe, president and CEO, and his 13-member team left UBS to start their own independent firm, partnering with Dynasty to do so. The RIA has offices in Lake Mary and St. Petersburg, Fla., where Dynasty is also headquartered.
Dynasty owns a minority stake in Cyndeo and will roll over its investment as part of this deal with Rise Growth. Dynasty Investment Bank advised Cyndeo on the transaction.
Rise Growth’s Duran said his firm has a pipeline of wirehouse advisors seeking a larger RIA platform to join, and Cyndeo will be a good option for them.
“I’m really interested in the high-growth advisors that have under $300, $400 million in assets, but find it hard to continue to grow inside a wirehouse, and aren’t really cherished by the wirehouses because they keep lifting their minimum size,” Duran said. “Dynasty can send some of those sub-scale advisors who don’t want to do the day-to-day and ramp up that. They’ve already been very friendly to Cyndeo. We’re looking to grow that relationship. I’ve been looking to partner with (Dynasty Financial President and CEO) Shirl (Penney) for a long time. I think we’re a very good combination.”
Cyndeo already has an equity participation plan in place, but Rise Growth will work with the RIA to add cash to the balance sheet and formalize the equity plan.
“The beauty of this is, [wirehouse breakaways] don’t need to get office space; they don’t need to have admin; they don’t need to have a brand,” Duran said. “We’re doing all that work. You can basically leave and be part of a team and get equity in a firm that’s still relatively small, but not as big as it’s going to be.”
Duran said he expects to grow Cyndeo to $10 billion in the “not-so-distant future.”
The four RIAs that have partnered with Rise Growth now represent $30 billion in total assets. Rise Growth also invested in Krilogy, a St. Louis-based RIA with more than $4 billion; Grimes & Company, a $6 billion fee-only RIA headquartered in Westborough, Mass.; and Bleakley Financial Group, which rebranded in July to OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners and now has about $16 billion.
Rise Growth has a fifth deal in the pipeline that’s a couple of months away from being finalized.
Duran said his firm is focusing on how to embed AI technology in its partner firms.
“Across our platform partners, we’ve organized an AI committee to help put together a strategy for each of these firms so that they learn the best of each other,” he said. “We now can have the network effect with four firms.”
Duran, who sold his company, United Capital, to Goldman Sachs in 2019, launched Rise Growth in 2024, with the goal of acquiring roughly 30% stakes in next-generation RIAs with between $1 billion and $7 billion in AUM. In exchange, it will provide growth capital and resources to help the firms become national RIA platforms with $10 billion or more in assets.
In February 2024, Rise Growth raised more than $250 million in funding from its management team and Charlesbank Capital Partners, the middle-market private equity firm that also backs Lido Advisors. Charlesbank took a majority stake in the company.
