Fundz for Wealth Advisors and RIAs

A complete blueprint for fiduciary wealth advisors, RIAs, family-office practitioners, and tax/estate specialists finding HNW prospects at the moment of liquidity events — when planning decisions are most consequential and least crowded.

The job to be done

Wealth advisors win clients in the 90-day window after a liquidity event. An acquisition closes, an IPO prices, a secondary lands — and within those 90 days the founder picks the advisor who manages the next 20 years. The advisors who get hired are the ones who showed up early, with relevant context.

Most advisors learn about the event 60 days late, from the same press release everyone else reads. Fundz changes that. Liquidity events surface in your feed within hours, paired with the verified founder, exec team, and SEC-derived context.

Who this playbook is for

• Traditional wealth advisors and RIAs — sourcing HNW relationships through founder liquidity, exec compensation events, post-IPO planning. Annual fee model on AUM.
• Family-office practitioners (VFO and MFO) — tracking multi-event sequences (sale, secondary, foundation, family trust) for ongoing engagements. Often longer relationships, broader scope.
• Tax and estate-planning specialists — positioning around the 90-day post-liquidity window when structuring decisions stack up. Project-based or hourly retainer.

Quick start — first 30 minutes

Step 1: Configure your notifications

Visit /account/email-notifications and verify Daily Email Alerts is on. For wealth-advisor work, the highest-value event types to keep on are: SEC 8-K Filings, Acquisitions, Funding Rounds (large rounds with secondary components), Executive Hires (for new HNW prospects). Toggle off Crowdfundings unless you do angel investing yourself.

Step 2: Save four Mandates

Pick the four most relevant Mandates from the Mandate setups section below and save them on the relevant feed pages. Save Mandates run continuously and surface matches in your daily feed.

Step 3: Build your Watchlist to 100–200 companies

Open /watchlist and add 100–200 companies in your geography or vertical that are at exit-readiness stage (Series C+, public, or private $50M+ revenue). Wealth advisory cycles are longer than fractional or recruiting; you need a larger Watchlist for the long-tail trigger loop to produce.

Step 4: Bookmark your specialty deep links

Two deep links worth bookmarking on day one:

• /sec-filings?item_type=5.02 — Filtered 8-K view for executive departures (severance, separation agreements, equity acceleration). Highest-density wealth-relevant filings.
• /sec-filings/ria — The RIA database. See Power-user tactics for how to use the compare and 13F holdings views.

How Fundz fits your practice

Fundz is a signal-intelligence platform: real-time funding rounds, executive hires and departures, M&A, IPOs, contracts, and SEC filings, paired with verified investor profiles, an RIA database derived from Form ADV filings, and 200 mobile direct dials per month on the Strategic plan.

The framing that lands well for this persona: Fundz is complementary to Sales Navigator, not a replacement. Sales Nav tells you who exists and lets you filter. Fundz tells you when something just happened that makes one of them a buyer today. You can keep your existing people-database workflow and layer Fundz on top as your event radar.

Signals and what they mean for you

Acquisitions

Browse on /acquisitions. The single highest-conversion signal type in the platform for HNW sourcing. Founder is liquid, the timeline is known, planning is urgent.

• Traditional wealth/RIA: $50M–$500M deals where the founder retains identifiable equity are your sweet spot. Reach out within the first 14–30 days post-close.
• Family office: Same trigger but extend scope — spouse, family trust, foundation setup are all in play within 90 days post-liquidity.
• Tax/estate specialist: $10M–$200M deals where founder is in tax-residence states with specific planning leverage (IL, NY, CA exit, FL/TX migration).

IPOs

Founders, early execs, and pre-IPO RSU recipients all hit a planning inflection point at the same time. Surfaces on the Fundings feed when an S-1 is filed and again when pricing is announced. The first 90 days post-IPO are when 10b5-1 plans, charitable structuring, and concentration-management decisions get framed.

SEC 8-K material events

Browse on /sec-filings. Fundz adds AI-generated red-flag analysis to every 8-K. The item types that matter most for wealth work:

• 5.02 (Departure/Appointment of Officers): bookmark this filter. Surfaces severance details, equity acceleration triggers, separation structures — the exact disclosures that drive 60–90 days of compressed planning work.
• 1.01 / 2.01 (Material Agreements / Acquisition or Disposition): Merger announcement filings; first-look intelligence on liquidity events before they hit major press.
• 8.01 (Other Events): Catch-all for material disclosures including foundation announcements, large gifts, or compensation policy changes.

Funding rounds with founder secondaries

Browse on /fundings. Series C and later often include founder secondaries — smaller liquidity events that still trigger planning needs. Filter for rounds $50M+ in your geography.

Executive hires (for new prospects)

Browse on /executives. Senior executives joining $50M+ revenue companies often bring concentrated stock comp packages that need planning. Especially relevant if you specialize in tech or biotech execs.

Daily workflow

7:30 AM ET — Morning brief

The Daily Brief email lands with the 5–10 ICP-matched companies that triggered overnight. For each acquisition, IPO, or material 8-K that fits your geography or vertical, mentally tag as same-week outreach or add to Watchlist for monitoring.

9 AM ET — Same-day outreach window

For high-priority signals (recent founder-liquid acquisition, IPO pricing), open the Deep Dive page (/companies/[id]), read the FundzIQ summary and any related 8-K, identify the founder or CEO with disclosed equity, and send a personalized note. Speed matters — the first credible advisor to show up with relevant context usually gets the introductory call.

Midday — SEC and Watchlist scan

A 5-minute pass through /sec-filings?item_type=5.02 for fresh executive separation filings, and your /watchlist for new triggers on monitored companies. Material 8-Ks often land midday after companies finish filing.

End of day — Research follow-ups

For prospects in active conversation, generate a Search Brief or pull a 13F holdings comparison if they are evaluating you against an existing advisor. Send polished prep materials by EOD so they hit the inbox first thing tomorrow.

Mandate setups by sub-variant

For traditional wealth advisors and RIAs

For family-office practitioners

For tax and estate-planning specialists

Watchlist strategy

Wealth advisory is a long-cycle business; you need 100–200 watched companies for the long-tail trigger loop to produce. Composition guidance:

• 50–75 exit-ready companies in your geography (Series C+, public, $50M+ revenue private)
• 25–50 founder-led companies you have relationships with (track for liquidity signals over multi-year horizon)
• 15–25 industry leaders whose moves create downstream planning work for adjacent companies
• 10–20 companies where multiple senior executives have concentrated stock comp (track for 8-K disclosures and individual planning windows)

Prune quarterly. Drop companies with zero signal in 180 days (longer prune window than fractional given the longer cycle).

Notification configuration

Alerts to enable

• Daily Brief email: on. The 7:30 AM ET morning surface.
• Event Summaries (daily): on for 2–4 saved filters covering acquisitions, IPOs, and 8-K item-type 5.02. Daily cadence beats weekly — the 90-day window matters.
• Watchlist Aging Alerts: low-value for wealth advisors specifically (these are designed for hiring-search work). Skip unless your practice includes interim-CFO bridge work for portfolio companies.
• Saved Questions (AI-features users): save questions like "Which of my Watchlist companies disclosed founder equity in an 8-K this week?" and let the AI answer weekday mornings.

Slack notifications

If you operate in a small team and want real-time channel posts when material events fire, connect Slack at /account/connectors. Recommended: Acquisitions=on, Funding=on (large rounds only), Exec Hire=off (too noisy for wealth work).

Outreach templates

Post-acquisition (founder liquidity)

Post-IPO (founders and early execs)

Material 8-K (separation or comp event)

Family-office cross-event

Power-user tactics

RIA database compare

/sec-filings/ria/compare lets you compare two RIAs side-by-side on portfolio allocation by sector and asset class. Use this when a prospect mentions their existing advisor — pull both RIAs and identify allocation differences you would address differently. Powerful prep for second-meeting conversations.

13F holdings flows

/sec-filings/ria/holdings shows quarterly inflow/outflow per security for any RIA. If you are pitching a founder whose existing advisor manages $1B+ AUM, pulling their 13F flows shows whether they are concentrated, diversifying, or rotating — signal you can use to frame your differentiation.

Investor portfolio compare

/investors lets you build watchlists of investors (VCs, family offices, institutional buyers). Useful for tracking liquidity downstream — when a fund you watch sells or distributes, the LPs (your prospects) are receiving capital.

SEC AI red-flag analysis

On any 8-K detail page, the AI summary surfaces material details (separation triggers, equity acceleration mechanics, comp policy changes) in plain English. Two minutes of reading per filing yields the angle for your outreach — "saw your 8-K" is generic; "saw the equity acceleration on the change-of-control trigger" is specific.

Family Offices feed

/family-offices is the family-office directory. Useful for VFO/MFO practitioners who need to map the institutional landscape, identify referral partners, or position against existing advisors.

What success looks like at week 4

• 100–200 companies on your Watchlist, actively monitored
• 3–4 Mandates running daily
• 5–10 same-week outreach notes per week, each anchored to a specific liquidity or material event
• 1–2 qualified introductory calls per week
• 1 net-new client conversation in active progress

Wealth-advisory sales cycles run longer than fractional or recruiting (typical 3–9 months from first contact to engagement). The Day-1 indicator that the platform is working for you is the conversion rate from outreach to introductory call — healthy is 15–25% on event-anchored outreach.

Common mistakes

• Pursuing too late. Sixty days post-event the founder has usually picked their advisor. Same-week outreach is the standard.
• Generic compliance pitch. "We help founders manage wealth" is invisible. Anchor every message on the specific event and the specific 90-day window.
• Skipping the SEC AI red-flag review. The 8-K AI analysis surfaces details that frame the conversation. Two minutes of reading per Deep Dive is worth it.
• Watchlist too narrow. Wealth advisory is a long-cycle business; you need 100–200 companies on Watchlist for the long-tail trigger loop to produce.
• Ignoring the spouse and family co-advisor dynamic. Many decisions are joint. The founder may not be the only contact worth identifying.
• Not using RIA compare. When a prospect mentions an existing advisor, pulling the comparison is the strongest possible second-meeting prep tool. Most advisors do not do this.
• Treating IPOs and acquisitions as one signal type. They are not. IPO planning is concentration management + 10b5-1 + charitable. Acquisition planning is structure + estate + family. The first 30 days of outreach should be specific to which event you are responding to.

Troubleshooting

My Daily Brief has too many irrelevant signals

Tighten your Mandate filters — specifically the geography and deal-size ranges. If your geography is "US" but you primarily serve a region, narrow it. If you are getting too many small-cap signals, raise the funding/deal-size floor.

I'm not seeing 8-K filings in my feed

Verify SEC 8-K Filings is toggled on at /account/email-notifications. Also save a Mandate filtered to item type 5.02 (or 1.01, 2.01) on the SEC filings page so they appear in your Daily Brief reliably.

The RIA compare view is empty for one of the firms

Form ADV data is updated quarterly; if a firm has not filed a recent ADV, the comparison view may be sparse. Check the firm's filing history in their RIA profile page; for very small RIAs (under $25M AUM) data coverage is thinner.

I can't find founder contact info on the Deep Dive page

For private companies, founder contact verification depends on third-party data sources. Click "Suggest Contacts" on the Deep Dive to request additional verification. For public-company executives, the 8-K filing usually includes legal counsel and HR contacts that can be useful first-touch points.

I want to track an executive across multiple companies

The Executives feed at /executives indexes by executive name. Save a filter for the specific person and toggle daily/weekly email on. As they move companies or take board seats, you will be alerted — useful for relationship-driven advisory work.

Bonus: the Partner Program

Many wealth advisors regularly refer clients to CPAs, estate attorneys, and family-office service providers. The Fundz Partner Program is built for these referral relationships. Your referrals get the platform at a discount, you get rev-share on conversions, and the resulting intelligence keeps feeding your own pipeline. Email john@fundz.net to discuss terms.