Brian Hyman always wanted to run his own business. From side projects at 15 years old to building products in Manhattan’s financial services sector, business leadership was the consistent goal throughout his career.
In the early 2020s, Hyman founded High Meadow Solutions alongside partners David Masri and Sean Arnold.
The digital transformation consultancy now employs over 40 people and specialises in CRM implementation, consolidation and migration for wealth management firms.
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Before launching High Meadow, Hyman worked in product management across asset management firms and SaaS providers.
His career began as an analyst focused on trade execution and portfolio analytics, working with hedge funds on treasury management and post-trade analytics.
“I wasn’t an engineer. I was working with the business stakeholders to advocate for their needs to engineering teams,” he explained.
“I had to know enough about the business to understand the requirements, but I also had to know enough to communicate effectively with engineers.”
That dual perspective became his professional advantage. He taught himself programming and data engineering whilst maintaining his strategic focus, eventually leading digital transformation projects that moved companies from on-premise systems into cloud infrastructure.
The catalyst for starting High Meadow came from mentorship. One of Hyman’s mentors shared a crucial lesson about execution versus ideas.
“He told me that the first business that he started, which was extremely successful, he thought had a decent idea, but sort of mediocre at best. But the execution behind that business was impeccable,” Hyman recalled.
“I was spinning my wheels trying to think of ideas that would be really impactful. It was through that mentorship that I began to understand that I could just rely on my execution skills, which were extensive.”
He met co-founder David Masri whilst working in Manhattan at an asset management firm. Masri was a contracting data engineer who had already started his own consultancy. The third partner, Sean Arnold, was Hyman’s former boss at a consultancy where Hyman had reported to him as head of consulting.
High Meadow Solutions works primarily with registered investment advisors and broker-dealers, handling complex scenarios including private equity-backed firms consolidating multiple portfolio companies with separate CRM systems and tech stacks.
“Oftentimes you’ll have multiple competing products but you can’t just move off of all of them all at once,” Hyman explained. “So what does that roadmap look like? It’s usually multiple years.”
The first clients came through personal network referrals. Building the team presented Hyman’s biggest challenge as a founder, particularly around relinquishing control.
His solution was building the team almost entirely from personal and partner networks. Of the 40-plus employees, 99% came through these connections rather than recruiting agencies.
“A lot of those people, especially the ones that joined me first, I had almost a decade worth of working experience with them,” Hyman said.
“One of my favourite things that I’ve been able to do is introduce a team to a client and tell these clients that this team has been working together for 6, 7, 8, 9 years.”
The business trajectory changed significantly halfway through 2024 when the partners narrowed their focus from serving multiple financial services sectors to specialising in wealth management.
“I had this attitude going into it that I know all of these different businesses and so I can work with private equity firms, investment banks, VCs, hedge funds. It was too wide of a focus,” Hyman reflected.
“By narrowing that focus and really honing in on our core competencies, we created the turning point in that business.”
Running the business fundamentally changed his perspective. “When I started the business, all I cared about was myself,” he admitted.
“I went from staying up at night worrying about what was on my plate to staying up at night worrying about the collective plate. A hit to my business could impact the lives of now many people that I genuinely care about.”
Hyman credits his father as his biggest source of support. “My dad immigrated from Argentina to America with nothing and started his own business,” Hyman said.
“He was a massive source of inspiration for me.”
Beyond revenue growth, Hyman finds reward in developing his team. “Being able to work with people and give them the exposure that they had not had up until this point in their career and helping them broaden their experience and gain new skills,” he said.
Looking ahead, Hyman wants High Meadow to become the go-to name in wealth and asset management digital transformation.
“I would like it to be synonymous with digital transformation in wealth and asset management,” Hyman said.
“Really just getting out there and creating more buzz around that name is the goal”
