RIA Wire Articles · July 30, 2026 · By Karilyn Colegrove, Publisher, RIA Wire

This Is the Fast Crowd

Most vendors approach the $100M to $500M RIA market as if it were a smaller, slower version of the big firms.

It is not. It is the fast crowd.

These are the up-and-coming firms of the advisory world — the twenty-somethings of the RIA market. Not yet locked into decades of existing relationships, still forming their habits, and still willing to make a cluster of important choices while they build. Treat them like careful old institutions and you will miss them.

A relationship formed at this stage has a further advantage. Help them now, while they are still open, and you are positioned to grow with them as their needs expand. Some will move into the larger ranks of the industry. The vendors who were present early often remain present later.

The Comforting Error of the Mini-Enterprise Sale

Large advisory firms come with procurement processes, incumbent vendors, and people whose informal role is to slow decisions down. Mid-sized firms frequently have none of these. What they have is momentum and a practical need to put core systems in place.

Vendors who arrive with the full enterprise apparatus — multiple stakeholders, elaborate evaluations, patient multi-threading — often misread the situation. They prepare for a buying committee that does not exist. The firm is trying to solve real problems with a small team and limited patience for process. The result is rarely conflict. It is a string of polite conversations that lead nowhere in particular.

What Experience With Larger Firms Can Actually Offer

If you are used to working with bigger RIAs, you may have something genuinely useful to bring here. Not the process. The judgment. The pattern recognition. The hard-won sense of what tends to work and what tends to create trouble later.

These firms are still forming their operating habits. The vendor who shows up with clear thinking and high standards — rather than a diluted version of an enterprise offering — can be disproportionately valuable. Bring them your best. They are building the foundation they will live with for years.

The Expensive Love of Breadth

There remains a deep affection for large lists. More names feel like more opportunity. In practice, breadth often dilutes effort. Firms outside this band operate under different constraints and on different timelines. Treating them as interchangeable creates a great deal of activity and a more modest amount of progress.

This segment has its own character. Firms here are still mobile enough to decide, and established enough to matter. An approach that ignores that distinction can generate impressive activity while quietly underperforming where it counts.

Keeping Up With the Fast Crowd

The vendors who do better here tend to notice a few unfashionable things:

That these firms behave more like ambitious twenty-somethings than like settled institutions.

That a relationship formed early can expand as the firm itself expands.

That experience gained with larger RIAs is valuable here only if it arrives as insight, not as bureaucracy.

That the most costly approach is not always the most expensive one. Sometimes it is the one that treats this crowd as a lesser version of someone else.

This is the fast crowd.

They decide while they are still forming. Some of them keep growing. Those who meet them with seriousness and good judgment tend to find both shorter cycles and longer relationships.

Those who treat them like smaller versions of the slow, established firms often discover they are spending twice the effort for half the result. The firms themselves keep demonstrating the difference. The only real variable is how long it takes to notice.