Many in the wealth management industry know Rudy Adolf as the Austrian-born founder of Focus Financial Partners, the RIA aggregator that went private three years ago. He retired from his position at Focus in 2023, and resurfaced in 2024 at E3Tech, a startup he founded in partnership with Andreessen Horowitz.
When he founded Focus, he had a dream of having these small wealth management firms compete with the big wirehouses. And when he sold the company, it was at $400 billion in assets.
Now, he’s looking to transform the blue-collar space, investing in traditional service businesses, such as plumbing and electrical companies, he said, speaking at the Wealth Management EDGE conference at The Boca Raton resort in Boca Raton, Fla., this week. E3Tech aims to transform these businesses through a combination of applied AI and programmatic M&A, Adolf’s specialty.
In many ways, Focus’s magic bullet was M&A, Adolf said. The firm had 100 platform firms, but completed 200 tuck-in deals, in which Focus used its capital and M&A expertise to help partner firms do deals.
The firm’s acquisition of Buckingham Strategic Wealth, which did 20 to 30 tuck-ins and grew to $70 billion, was the deal that made Focus, Adolf argued.
Adolf said that when he left wealth management, he didn’t want to return to the industry because whatever he did would just be a shadow of what Focus was. He got a lot of calls, but the one from Andreessen Horowitz stood out, with a pitch to buy into traditional industries and transform them with the power of AI and M&A.
It’s a repeat of the Focus story, in a way, he said. Plumbers and electricians are running small businesses, and there’s a shortage of such blue-collar tradespeople. But this next chapter is all about AI and technology. His big bet with Focus was on the move from big brokerage firms to fiduciary advice. The big bet here is on the reindustrialization of America.