AssetMark makes a turnkey mutual fund WRAP product for investment advisors. Advisors can select between AssetMark’s stable of well-known WRAP strategy providers. If a strategist does poorly, the advisor can “fire” the strategist and replace them with another—all without leaving AssetMark. A simple but brilliant setup that is now in common use by many WRAP providers, like Schwab. It’s a great product and I’ve never met an advisor who didn’t love it.

AssetMark was just acquired for $230M - $330M, depending on whether they hit certain performance targets over the next five years.

I built AssetMark’s original technology platform ten years ago. They started by outsourcing their operations to a company called IAN, where I ran the development department and built the software. (This is the same development team who later built Techfi’s technology.) Outsourcing to IAN was the quickest way AssetMark could launch their product, and our involvement was short-lived. They moved it in-house after a few years.

Their chairman, Ron Cordes, is a great guy and is one of the best salesmen I’ve ever met. When he came to IAN ten years ago, he and the other AssetMark founders were riding out no-compete agreements. When IAN had the technology platform ready, they went out and started marketing this new “mutual fund WRAP” concept to advisors.

They signed up advisors very fast, largely due to Ron’s dynamic presentations. It was like turning a faucet on—they had $10M days. In the short time IAN ran their operations, I believe they hit the north side of $1B. They had $7B on the system when the company sold last week.

From their web site, it looks like everybody I worked with is still at the company. Way to go guys!