How Elevation Point is building growth momentum in 2025

Almost half a year its official launch, Elevation Point, an independent RIA platform and self-described "growth accelerator" for independent advisors and breakaway firms, is strengthening its presence in the Midwest.

In its first partnership for 2025, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based firm said it has made a strategic minority investment in Stonebrook Private, a fee-only fiduciary advisory practice based in Northville, Michigan. With $740 million in assets under management, the practice, led by father-son team of Todd D. Knickerbocker and Spencer Knickerbocker, has earned recognition as one of the fastest-growing RIAs in America.

For Jim Dickson, the former Sanctuary CEO who co-founded the venture with industry veteran Mark Penske last June, the latest partnership is an ideal example of the kind of multi-generational practice Elevation Point hopes to support.

"You've got the patriarch – Todd, in this particular case – who's been around forever. His son has really come into the business, embracing technology and the more modern way to think about growing the business," he told InvestmentNews in an interview Tuesday. "It's this perfect combination of old and new."

In a written statement Tuesday morning, Dickson said the partnership with the 10-person Stonebrook Private team "sets the stage for ... momentum, transformative partnerships, and growth to come at Elevation Point this year." The statement from the firm, which oversaw more than $3.4 billion in assets as of Sept. 30, also highlighted an "oversubscribed pipeline" of deals to kick off 2025.

"We've got five teams now in our pipeline, and we're approaching $5 billion in AUM," Dickson said. "For only being open six months, we feel really good about that."

He said the past half-year has been largely a period of preparation, with most of his time in the third and fourth quarter spent ensuring Elevation Point had the right mix of infrastructure and talent. In the months after launch, the firm made notable additions to its leadership, including former UBS executives Bradford Smithy and Robert B. Tamarkin; Caitlin Douglas, who stepped in as COO from Dynasty Financial Partners in September; and Jenna Bloomgarden and Brian R. Terraciano, who joined from Summit Financial and BNY Pershing, respectively.

"They have that experience, but they're at a point in their career where they've still got fire in their belly, and they really want to make a difference and help these firms grow," Dickson said. 

Elevation Point's business model, he said, focuses heavily on finding firms with strong organic growth, taking minority stakes in them, and giving them the resources and acces to scale to help accelerate it. That organic growth focus can be challenging for potential partners, he said, many of whom have tended to succeed on the strength of the markets.

"I think the last 12 years, we've been in a bull market, and it's put a lot of makeup on the business," he said. "When we dig into our diligence and all the deals that we're looking at, very often, if you back out the market growth, you actually see these businesses shrinking."

According to Dickson, Elevation Point has fielded inquiries from across the RIA, broker-dealer, and wirehouse spaces, with a deal pipeline that skews "a little heavy" towards breakaways currently. But with many of those businesses leaning more on market growth than actual client acquisition, he said his firm has been investing time and resources to develop infrastructure and strategies aimed at helping advisors grow their practices.

"When the bull market stops, and it will stop, it'll be like being in the water when the tide goes out," Dickson said. "Now that we've got that team in place, we've got that technology in place, we've got our capital in place ... it's just a matter of putting those resources to work."