When Asset-Map founder Adam Holt was growing up, he always thought he’d become an architect or artist.
“I always had a passion for art. I’ve built my own furniture [and] renovated my houses. I was an experimenter in terms of learning new things, new trades,” Holt told RIA Intel. So, when Holt became a financial advisor at RubinGoldman & Associates in the early 2000s, it was natural for him to use his design background and experience with mind mapping to help his clients visualize their financial life.
“I started doing [it] for my clients and that really resonated with them,” Holt said. “They’d always say ‘Adam, I want that map thing. Give me a drawing. I don’t want your huge E-money report. That’s for you. Give me the drawing.”
Now, Holt serves as CEO of Asset-Map, a data visualization platform built for advisors. He developed his first iteration of the platform in 2004 and, after receiving approval from RubinGoldman’s compliance team, began using it at the firm in 2006. It was adopted firmwide in 2008. “I kept reiterating and reiterating and cutting and adding, cutting and cutting to get to a minimalistic design I think would still hold water in a professional environment, which is what I think is our special sauce,” said Holt.
From 2006 to 2008, Holt’s personal growth revenue as a financial advisor grew 300 percent each year. Over the ten-year period ending in 2019, his firm’s asset under management grew from about $200 million to $1.2 billion, Holt said.
In 2012, Holt spoke about the software he had developed at a financial conference. By the end of the conference, he had sold the software to 23 advisors — and by the end of the year, he had 100 users. Asset-Map was rebuilt entirely in 2013 to meet the growing demand, and the platform is now used by more than 6000 advisors representing 1.25 million clients. It has mapped over $1.5 trillion in financial instruments.
Asset-Map, which costs individual users between $99 and $199, claims to be able to visualize a client’s entire financial life, on one page, in 15 minutes or less. The company has about 16 integrations with popular CRM and portfolio management tools like Redtail, Wealthbox, Salesforce, and Orion, as well as other fintech firms like Riskalyze, that link the client’s information directly to Asset-Map.
Advisors can also send their clients a direct-to-consumer link to fill out so that they can build the data map with them.
Holt said the company is able to link disparate information that advisors often don’t have access to, like insurance policies or tax liabilities, with all the other information they do know, giving advisors and their clients a better understanding of the total picture of a client’s financial health .
In recent years, Asset-Map has seen its membership and revenue skyrocket. In 2022, the company experienced about 23 percent in revenue growth — but in the six straight years prior to that, Asset-Map had 40 percent annual revenue growth. Holt said he believes the company will meet or exceed that growth this year. The company adds about 100 new clients every month and it demos the product to more than 250 firms a month.
In order to meet increased user demand from larger financial institutions and continue to scale its operations, Asset-Map completed a Series B round of funding in February for $6 million, which valued the company at $46 million according to Pitchbook, a data company focused on venture capital, private equity, and mergers and acquisitions.
The company’s future roadmap includes possible integrations with Altruist and Morningstar Workstation as well the debut of a consumer portal that will give investors more control.
“You’re going to see us build integrations with a real deep analysis on the structure of holdings, as well as the ability zoom out like, ‘Hey, what does this mean from a tax or an estate perspective?’” Holt said. “If the advisor voice can’t deliver tax, legal insurance, investment, and financial planning all in one shop, which very few can, they need to be able to collaborate amongst those professionals.”
