RIA Edge 100: Pathstone’s Unique Growth Engine
Pathstone, a multi-family office based in Englewood, N.J., has grown from about $1.4 billion in client assets to $200 billion in the past 16 years. A good deal of that was through acquisition. But another, more creative factor is getting client referrals through community activities ranging from fly-fishing trips to backcountry ski outings.
“Our clients can go to the Super Bowl on their own,” co-founder and CEO Matthew Fleissig said in a recent interview. “But can I gather three snowcats of centimillionaire families to have an experience, and bond and connect? In an AI-commoditized world, information’s been commoditized. Relationships are real.”
There’s no question that Pathstone’s rapid growth, which helped land it on this year’s RIA Edge 100 list, has been partly fueled by acquisitions. This June, it added a Philadelphia-area RIA with $12 billion in client assets, and back in 2024, it made a big leap with the addition of a $45 billion bi-coastal RIA, Hall Capital Partners.
Even so, Fleissig said referrals between upper high-net-worth clients have kept its organic growth flywheel humming, with a light bulb going off a few years ago when a client said to him: “I bet you have other cool families. Can I meet them?”
“I admit, I hadn’t seen that coming,” Fleissig said. “It was a total blind spot.”
Pathstone, which likes to bring its services in-house, responded by acquiring a Colorado firm specializing in client events. It now offers everything from whitewater rafting trips to closed-door meetups with U.S. senators, and will host a total of 77 events in 2026, according to Fleissig.
Patience Peterson, marketing executive and brand strategist at Pathstone, said one of the firm’s tricks is to gather ideas from its client base rather than simply booking them as “calendar moments” to be backfilled.
“It 100% comes from listening to our clients over many, many years and deciding what to do based on that feedback,” Peterson said. “They may have an idea of having an experience with a certain chef or restaurant, and we then take that and orchestrate it in a thoughtful way.”
Outdoor activities have been particularly successful as they promote open conversation and sharing that might not happen in a “conference room at the Four Seasons.”
“When you have your endorphins going, and you’re with a good group of people, the conversation can go in a million different directions,” Peterson said.
For the firm, those experiences lead clients to invite friends, family members or other professional contacts to future gatherings. In addition, it continues a decades-long practice of hosting more formal conferences focused on wealth and investment topics. Across all the engagements, a key is having like-minded UHNW clients who can share concerns and challenges with peers in a safe environment.
“To be able to say that we’re all in the same seat here, even though maybe everyone’s story is a little different, brings a huge, huge value,” she added.
From myCFO to Multi-Family Office
Pathstone’s origins trace back to myCFO, a dot-com-era venture started by Netscape founder Jim Clark that sought to create a “dot-com family office.” After the tech bubble burst, Harris Bank and Bank of Montreal bought the remnants and hired Steve Braverman (who would become Fleissig’s co-founder) to rebuild it. When the 2008 financial crisis hit and the bank asked them to fire 20% of their team, Fleissig, Braverman and co-founder Alan Zachariah decided to buy the East Coast practice instead. In February 2010, Pathstone officially launched with 19 employees, 19 families and $1.4 billion in assets.
Fleissig attributes the firm’s initial competitive advantage to being an early mover in offering clients an “unbundled” service model—offering everything from tax preparation and bill pay to property management alongside traditional wealth management.
“One of our founding families thought they had their investments figured out, but really needed help with accounting, tax, bill pay, planes, pilots, cars, real estate management, payroll for household staff—you name it.”
The firm’s comprehensive approach proved explosive. Within four years, assets had grown to $4 billion across 35 families and 35 employees.
Liz Nesvold, the famed M&A expert now with Emigrant Partners, told Fleissig the firm had reached “terminal velocity” and should raise external capital to acquire a firm that would add leadership and resources, such as an investment research department.
In 2014, Pathstone sold a minority stake to Fiduciary Network, and soon after added Boston-based Federal Street Advisors. Since then, Fleissig said the firm has been “off to the races,” including multiple rounds of private equity funding that have given Lovell Minnick and Kelso & Company minority stakes.
The CEO bristles at the idea that such PE backing “steals your soul,” noting that before the firm had outside investment, it wasn’t as professional.
“We didn’t have a CFO; we didn’t have a chief people officer,” he said. “You ran the business at the end of the year, saw what was in the bank account, and sent it out to shareholders.”
Spreading the Wealth
In addition, each private equity transaction has helped the firm expand employee ownership through management incentive unit programs—profit-interest structures that give employees equity upside without diluting current shareholders.
According to Fleissig, Pathstone has created 150 millionaires among its nearly 1,000 employees through the equity-sharing program, including 41 new shareholders in 2026.
The firm appears likely to continue seeking stakeholder swaps every three to five years, with Fleissig noting that such moves provide liquidity windows that allow retiring partners to sell at market prices without forcing the firm to rely on internal valuations or loans. For example, co-founder Alan Zachariah used an equity window to exit in 2021, making way for Kelly Maregni—who had joined via the Federal Street acquisition—to become president.
In the meantime, the acquisitions will continue with an eye toward expanding services, such as when it brought on two trust companies and a direct indexing firm that has grown from $4 billion to $16 billion in assets.
“We’re just trying to be differentiated,” Fleissig said, noting that the firm has expanded from six service pages at launch to 16 today.
Fleissig said the firm has considered up to 55 deals to date this year, with a particular interest in firms offering travel services, health and wellness, and cybersecurity.
“In this world of commoditization with AI, how do we stand out?” he asked. “If you’re just doing investments, you’re pretty much not growing anymore.”
