All Things Fundraising

We cover a move in retirement plan consulting, where Miki Sakata joins Alliant Retirement Consulting as Senior Vice President, Retirement Plan Consultant after more than three years at WTW. On the RIA/M&A front, we highlight Sequoia Financial Group acquiring family office Quish, Hightower’s M&A and strategic partnerships executive Jason Badesha departing for Lido Advisors, and C2C Private Wealth registering as a new RIA in Miami. We also share updates on commitments from the School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, the Houston Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement Fund, and the Baltimore City Fire and Police Retirement System. On the search front, we highlight activity from the San Antonio Fire & Police Pension Fund and Korea Post Insurance. We also cover fundraising from Eureka! Venture SGR and Medicare navigation platform Chapter’s acquisition of AI startup Ridgeway, plus a reminder to register for our upcoming Dakota Cocktails events in Minneapolis and Toronto.

Master sales with four game-changing principles: Focus on what matters, target the right people, craft the perfect pitch, and follow up like a pro. Packed with actionable tips, this guide helps you turn meetings into deals—fast! 💼🔥

In this webinar, Pat Tighe (Head of Product) and Rob Robertson (President) sit down with our CTO, Priya Stanley, to break down Databricks and Snowflake, the two data platforms coming up most as firms build the data foundation for their AI efforts. They explain the difference between a data warehouse, data lake, and lakehouse, which platform fits which type of team, why some firms use both, and how cost compares. You’ll also learn how Dakota Marketplace data is available directly in Snowflake and Databricks, so you can skip the custom API build. Book time with our team at dakota.com.

We cover a C-suite move at Insigneo, where Mercedes Garcia-Ayuso joins as Chief Investment Products Officer after more than 18 years at Citi. On the RIA/M&A front, we highlight Rosenwald Private Wealth bringing a $1.1B RBC team to Indivisible Partners, MAI Capital tapping a former Barron’s executive editor to lead advisor recruiting, and three RBC advisors launching Vessel Wealth Partners. We also share updates on commitments from the Alameda County Employees’ Retirement Association and the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System. On the search front, we highlight activity from the Contra Costa County Employees’ Retirement Association, the Dukes County Contributory Retirement System, and France’s IRCEC. We also cover fundraising from GTCR, Boka, and Belay Investment Group, plus a reminder to register for our upcoming Dakota Cocktails events in Minneapolis and Toronto.

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, Gui Costin sits down with Chip Saltz, head of US Wealth Alternatives Distribution at Wellington Management. Chip leads the firm’s advisor sales efforts for its hedge fund and private investment capabilities across wirehouses, independent and regional broker-dealers, and RIAs. Before Wellington, he held distribution roles at Harrison Street Private Wealth, Versus Capital Advisors, Starwood Capital Group, and John Hancock.

Chip starts with his origin story. He grew up in New Orleans, bartended through college at a fine dining restaurant, and was drawn to wholesaling by the Morgan Keegan professionals who came in for dinner. He got his start at Wood Logan, the distributor for Manulife and John Hancock, where a mentor taught him a formula for success: the quality of your presentation times the quality of your product times the frequency you see people. The key, he says, is that the product is you. He later moved to WP Carey to sell non-traded REITs, then to Starwood, and now Wellington, where he is building a dedicated wealth business.

Gui and Chip agree that the core of a great fundraiser is hard work and likability, which can’t be taught, along with the ability to consistently book meetings with qualified buyers. Chip explains that alternatives sales depend on helping advisors understand structure, liquidity, and operational constraints, because those details are part of the product.

The conversation then turns to how Chip runs his team. Wellington has 7 external wholesalers, with plans to grow to 12 to 14, plus internal wholesalers and sales specialists. Chip describes the internals as living in both the past and the future, prospecting ahead and following up on what already happened. Because advisors may allocate only around 5% of a portfolio to these products, he says it takes 8 to 12 touches, not the 3 to 6 often cited, so the team has to stay ever-present. His communication rhythm includes a collaborative Monday sales call, Wednesday product office hours, regular one-on-ones, and a monthly sales momentum call that ends with deliverables, decisions, and ownership.

They also discuss the role of the CRM and AI. Chip calls the CRM table stakes and says personal notes help build relationships. Wellington has reduced meeting logging from 90 minutes to 90 seconds, and Chip expects AI dictation to bring it down further. Gui shares how he dictated call notes into Claude and sent them into Salesforce.

On leadership, Chip says he leads from the front, holds people accountable, gives direct feedback, praises publicly, and corrects privately. He adds that simplicity isn’t dumbing down, it’s discipline, so that a team’s best use of time is in front of advisors.

His advice for young salespeople is to understand your product deeply instead of memorizing a pitch, read widely, become the person you’d want to work with, ask for the order, and bracket your time. Chip names Influence by Cialdini as a go-to, and Gui recommends The Challenger Sale.

Asked about his biggest challenge, Chip points to prioritizing finite time. He picks 2 to 5 items that move the business forward and says no to the rest, calling the business the art of subtraction.

In Episode 48 of the Emerging Manager Growth Show, Dakota Founder and CEO Gui Costin and Vice President of Institutional Sales Tim Dolan explain why wealth manager RIAs are one of the best channels for emerging managers. They cover the growth of the RIA universe, why smaller RIAs can be stronger targets than large aggregators that act like wirehouses, and how custodian platforms like Schwab, Fidelity and Pershing help managers scale. They also make the case for consistent, disciplined cold outreach and city scheduling, and close with two essentials: a quarterly webinar and a CRM to manage the entire pipeline.

In this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast, host Gui Costin sits down with Christina Adamson, Partner and Co-Global Chief Operating Officer of Ares Wealth Management Solutions, to unpack how a disciplined, people-first approach helped Ares grow its wealth business roughly 50x in five years across eight evergreen funds. Christina previously held roles at Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and Black Creek Capital Markets before joining Ares in 2021.

The conversation opens with communication, the foundation of any fundraising role. Christina explains that early alignment with the people you serve on their three-to-five-year goals, followed by a steady cadence of short touchpoints, keeps everyone on the same page. Updates should not be weather reports; they should share intelligence that helps the recipient do their job better. Gui adds that every interaction with a prospect is an audition for what working with you will feel like after they invest. Christina's unsolicited advice for salespeople is to outwork everyone, stay curious about what the prospect is trying to solve, and cut out the noise to focus on building trust. If you can't say a prospect trusts you, she says, you're in the wrong business.

From there, the pair dig into culture as a competitive advantage. Christina credits CEO Mike Arougheti for setting the tone, with an emphasis on collaboration, transparency, trust, and no egos, alongside real autonomy for leadership teams. Gui adds that clear standards free people up to execute. Both acknowledge that protecting culture as a firm scales sometimes requires actively managing out people who aren't the right fit.

The discussion turns tactical when Gui and Christina explore how technology supports a team of 200 people across 15 offices. Christina describes Ares' use of Teams channels to share intelligence in real time, and both stress a simple rule: if a meeting isn't logged in the CRM, it didn't happen. Gui calls missed call notes "gold bars" left on the table, and they discuss dictating a call report in the lobby, letting AI polish it, and routing it automatically to the right colleagues. Christina explains how Ares layers distribution intelligence and AI into its CRM so reps start each day knowing where to focus, while the relationship manager remains irreplaceable. Gui cautions that collecting data is only half the job; keeping it updated takes a process.

Hiring gets significant airtime. Christina meets every candidate, from summer interns to managing directors, and looks first for drive, then a blend of EQ and IQ, and a desire to be part of a team. They discuss why former competitive athletes tend to thrive in sales, conditioned to handle rejection without self-pity, and why setting clear expectations in interviews lets candidates opt out early.

Gui shares Dakota's monthly "W Days," where teams explain what is and isn't working, and Christina recalls her father's advice to "make it ugly." They close on leadership focus: doing only what only you can do, and investing in the "not urgent but important" work that drives transformative growth.

We cover job changes across the wealth management and institutional investment space, including moves at Miras Management, J.P. Morgan, and HSBC Global Private Banking. On the RIA/M&A front, we highlight Vanguard's acquisition of Altruist, plus Savvy Wealth opening its custodial platform to outside RIAs and a leadership change on NewEdge Wealth's alternatives team. We also share updates on commitments from the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, the Employees' Retirement System of the City of Milwaukee, and the North Dakota State Investment Board. On the search front, we highlight activity from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority Retirement System, the Tulare County Employees' Retirement Association, and the Merced County Employees' Retirement Association. We also cover fundraising from Princeton Equity Group, Excelsior Capital Vietnam Partners, and Z2 Capital Partners — plus a reminder to register for our next Dakota Cocktails event.

Master sales with four game-changing principles: Focus on what matters, target the right people, craft the perfect pitch, and follow up like a pro. Packed with actionable tips, this guide helps you turn meetings into deals—fast! 💼🔥

Dakota unveils its new DealCloud CRM Integration, giving investment firms real-time access to Dakota Marketplace's LP and GP data directly within their DealCloud instance. Watch Pat Tighe and Dominique Mortelliti demo linking and creating accounts/contacts with fuzzy matching, explore the Google Chrome extension, and cover common questions on DataCortex availability, data retention, and bespoke pricing.