Brighton Jones is a wealth management firm, headquartered in Seattle. Through its 18 offices around the country, the firm serves more than 4,000 high-net-worth families and advises on $20 billion in assets. Brighton Jones advisors function like a client’s personal CFO, managing broad financial planning, decision making, and overall wealth creation.
Tyler Mayfield leads the firm’s private investing team.
Tyler Mayfield
Managing Director
Brighton Jones
2000
Founded
$20B
AUM
Challenge: Identifying wins across a broad spectrum of opportunity
Brighton Jones looks at wealth creation from all angles. Rather than focusing specifically on public market investments, as many firms do, they look at their clients’ net worth from a big-picture perspective. They prioritize:
- Holistic wealth management. Brighton Jones works to drive overall net worth by supporting the total balance sheet. Advisors take into consideration private holdings, career moves and compensation, and individual opportunities to invest in the private market.
- Private investing. Brighton Jones got into private investing to bring efficiency, strategy, and a deeper level of intelligence to what their clients were doing independently. By pooling capital and layering on the firm’s investment expertise, Brighton Jones and their clients have been able to invest more strategically and impactfully.
Before PitchBook, Brighton Jones consulted a variety of disparate sources for intelligence gathering. Research methods lacked process rigor, efficiency, and consistency. Brighton Jones needed a powerful tool to help advisors provide exceptional intelligence and guidance to clients and positively impact their financial futures.
“Our success hinges on helping clients make smart decisions on a broad spectrum of opportunities that impact their financial position. PitchBook gives us the insights to do this exceptionally well.”
—Tyler Mayfield, Managing Director
Solution: Anchoring to a rich and reliable resource
Given the broad scope of Brighton Jones’ work on behalf of clients, the leadership team wanted to anchor the firms’ council to a deep, rich, and reliable source of intelligence. They discovered PitchBook and became a customer in 2018 as its private investing portfolio grew.
Today, Brighton Jones uses PitchBook for:
Intelligence gathering
Valuations
Deal sourcing
Competitive analysis
Benchmarking
“Our clients have the drive and ability to deploy significant capital and create big wins in the private markets. We are able to maximize that potential with the intelligence afforded by PitchBook.”
—Tyler Mayfield, Managing Director
Results: Expected and not expected
Brighton Jones advisors are gleaning intelligence they have complete confidence in, saving time once spent combing through numerous websites for needed information, and ultimately providing better advice. PitchBook is providing an edge, adding value to client strategies and successes.
Some of the ways Brighton Jones has leveraged PitchBook to help clients making winning decisions that positively impact their financial futures include:
- Career counsel. The firm has helped countless clients make thoughtful and well-informed decisions on job offers with the help of PitchBook. Going beyond meeting people and evaluating compensation, advisors take into consideration who is backing the company, historic fund raising and valuations, and more to determine if the opportunity is sound, if the company is moving in the right direction and set to be competitive in its space.
- Informed decision making. A client with millions of shares in their company had a tender offer. They had the opportunity to create liquidity but weren’t sure if it was the right time or offer. With PitchBook, the advisor team was able to look at historic rounds and current valuation to give the client objective insights to add to personal context in evaluating the opportunity.
- Guiding the firm’s future. Brighton Jones looks at the investments of well-known institutions and endowments to guide its strategies. Through PitchBook, Brighton Jones can glean asset allocation, which funds the groups have invested in, and levels of investment year-over-year. Comparing and contrasting this information creates a deep level of insight to help guide the firm’s future direction, and help firm leadership think more broadly and strategically about opportunities in the private investing space.
“The investment of a client’s time and energy in their careers is as precious as their investment of dollars. PitchBook gives us insights to help our clients make well-informed decisions on career moves. This has been a surprising and invaluable addition we can bring to their broader wealth management strategy.”
—Tyler Mayfield, Managing Director
Going forward, the firm plans to expand its use of PitchBook for business development and the identification of high-growth-potential investments. It will seek out more opportunities to invest in up-and-coming companies in the 18 markets where the firm has offices. The team is hard at work to fully realize the firm’s dual mandate—to expertly manage client’s wealth while delivering winning strategies for future growth.
