The plan
After-loss concierge for high-net-worth families.
Built inside the Pinnacle advisor network.
When a financial advisor's client dies, the advisor refers the heir to Hartwell Stewardship. We run the operational layer of the estate for six to twelve months, alongside the family's attorney and CPA. At the right moment we either transition the family back to their existing advisor or introduce a short slate of fiduciary advisors for the family to choose from. The family pays nothing in either case, and the steward earns the same whether the family stays or moves.
The canonical read
Executive summary — nine slides, about ten minutes.
Go deeper
Four working views of the venture.
Projections & the model
$46M Year-5 revenue on a recognized-trail basis, with the full Y1–Y5 P&L, three scenarios, and the downloadable model.
Open →Operations & platform
The four-agent runtime, steward throughput, the retention-measurement plan, and the live operator console.
Open →Competitive landscape
Where Hartwell sits against consumer apps, generational-transfer software, and captive private-bank desks.
Open →Legal posture
Regulatory spine, placement and retention disclosures, heir-data privacy, and the gating items before the first heir.
Open →See it running
The platform is live, not a mockup.
Two working surfaces behind the plan: the heir-facing experience a family actually moves through, and the operator console a steward works from.
The model
Projections & the model.
Driver-based, reconciled to the financial model. We publish the recognized-trail figure as the planning number — the trail earned in the year, not booked lifetime value at the moment of placement.
At scale, roughly 4,318 completed engagements a year run through about sixty stewards. Revenue compounds across three lines — retention concierge fees, the placement trail, and the post-graduation retainer.
The booked-LTV view of the same Base case would read near $130M in Year 5. We hold to the recognized-trail $46M to stay defensible to a reviewer who tests the assumptions.
Three revenue lines
Two products, billed three ways — the family never pays.
Retention concierge
Tiered by estate size. Earned when the family transitions back to their existing advisor — about 65% of engagements.
Placement trail
No upfront fee. Same shape as Schwab Advisor Network, Fidelity WAS, Zoe, Wealthramp, and Harness. About 35% of engagements.
Post-graduation retainer
Recurring, elected by families who want the operational relationship to continue after the estate work closes.
Base case
The five-year P&L.
| Line | Y1 | Y2 | Y3 | Y4 | Y5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active advisors | 120 | 450 | 1,200 | 2,400 | 3,600 |
| Completed engagements | 90 | 520 | 1,450 | 2,900 | 4,318 |
| Stewards | 2 | 8 | 20 | 40 | ~60 |
| Revenue | $1.0M | $5.4M | $16.0M | $30.0M | $46.0M |
| Variable cost | ($0.6M) | ($2.6M) | ($7.2M) | ($13.5M) | ($19.8M) |
| Contribution margin | $0.4M | $2.8M | $8.8M | $16.5M | $26.2M |
| Fixed cost | ($1.2M) | ($2.0M) | ($3.5M) | ($4.8M) | ($6.2M) |
| EBITDA | ($0.8M) | $0.8M | $5.3M | $11.7M | $20.0M |
| EBITDA margin | — | 15% | 33% | 39% | 44% |
Illustrative ramp. Y5 Base reconciles to the published figures ($46M revenue · $20M EBITDA · 44% margin · ~4,318 engagements · ~60 stewards). Y1–Y4 are shown to convey the curve; in production every cell binds to docs/canonical-numbers.md, and the Plan Audit catches drift.
Year 5 · three scenarios
The range we plan against.
Sensitivities
What moves Year-5 EBITDA the most.
Industry-anchored
The placement trail is a known shape.
The platform
Operations & platform.
A four-agent runtime carries each engagement, with a steward in the loop at every consequential step. The same console a steward works from is the one we open to partners below.
The runtime
Four agents, one steward in the loop.
Intake
Opens the engagement from the advisor's referral, assembles the estate picture, and sets the first sequence with the attorney and CPA.
Concierge workflow
Runs the six-to-twelve-month operational layer — documents, deadlines, institutions — and surfaces what needs a human decision.
Advisor matching
At the graduation moment, prepares the retention transition or a short slate of fiduciary advisors for the family to choose from.
Escalation router
Watches for the situations that need senior judgment and routes them to the responsible steward without delay.
Throughput
How the headcount scales.
A steward takes on roughly six new heirs a month. Headcount tracks engagements divided by about seventy-two concurrent files; the first full-time steward is warranted at around twenty-five concurrent engagements. The model carries about sixty stewards at Year-5 Base.
Retention measurement
How we know it is working.
Track tagging
Every engagement is tagged retention or placement so cohorts are clean from the start.
Retention tracker
Whether the family stayed with the existing advisor or moved, measured against the industry baseline.
Cohort survival
Survival of placed AUM and retained relationships across the first full cohort.
Success criteria
First-cohort thresholds defined in advance, so the result is read honestly rather than narrated after the fact.
Roadmap
Where the build stands.
Explore the platform
Open the surfaces themselves.
The landscape
Competitive landscape.
Three adjacent lanes touch the after-loss moment. None occupies Hartwell's: independent, network-integrated, post-death execution for high-net-worth families.
Defensibility
Where it actually sits.
Two things compound and are hard to copy. First, channel exclusivity inside Pinnacle's sixty-two firms — the referral lives in the workflow advisors already use, with death-event detection inside hours and routing to the responsible advisor, with no net-new tool fatigue. Second, outcome data: by Year 3, twenty-four-month cohort survival on placed AUM that no new entrant can manufacture without the same head start.
The posture
Legal posture.
Hartwell operates inside a regulated RIA partner, to be confirmed. Fiduciary status is asserted only by the receiving advisor — never by Hartwell. The posture below is the spine counsel is clearing for production.
Six postures
How the architecture protects everyone.
RIA partner, TBD
Hartwell operates inside an affiliating RIA. Pinnacle is the IMO — the distribution channel — not the RIA.
Disclosed introductions
The placement trail is disclosed up front. The family chooses from a slate; the fiduciary duty is the receiving advisor's.
Fee-neutral by design
The steward earns the same whether the family stays or moves, so the recommendation carries no economic tilt.
Minimized and governed
Heir data is collected for the engagement, held under a privacy posture cleared by specialist counsel.
Reviewed for production
Every heir-facing line is held to the same register and cleared before a real family sees it.
Clear boundaries
Hartwell runs the operational layer alongside the family's attorney and CPA — it does not practice law or give tax advice.
Counsel sequencing
Five specialist engagements — ~$35K–$75K, Phase 0.
Before the first heir
Gating items.
Long-form
The full business plan.
Thirty-nine slides, about thirty-five minutes. The complete argument, for the reader with the time. Use the arrows, the jump strip, or fullscreen.