(Bloomberg) -- David J. La Placa, a wealth manager in DeutscheBank AG’s San Francisco office, resigned on Friday with threecolleagues to start Intellectus Partners, a boutique firm cateringto entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

Their new firm started today with La Placa, 46, as chiefexecutive officer and co-founder Jay Casey, as president, La Placasaid in an interview. Kelly Morton and Tina Chan left Deutsche Bankto become vice presidents. The group managed about $3 billion atDeutsche Bank, said La Placa.

The group is joining a stream of brokers that have left bigbanks and brokerages to start up their own firms, astechnology makes reporting and trading easier and advisers relishin the chance to own equity in their own business. The group boltedwith help from Dynasty Financial Partners, a 5-year-old NewYork-based company that finds office space, sets up trading systemsand handles such details as printing business cards for brokers andadvisers.

“The size of breakaways is picking up,” said Shirl Penney,Dynasty’s founder. “The next tier after the early adopters, whodidn’t want to be first, is now coming into the market.”

Intellectus is one of the biggest among the 29 teams thatDynasty has turned into independent investment advisers. Penneysaid Dynasty, which works with firms overseeing a combined $23billion, took 12 teams independent in 2014. The company expects todo the same for as many as 15 this year.

No ‘Salespeople’

La Placa said his firm will be fee-based, meaning Intellectuscan charge clients an annual advisory fee or a commission forcertain products.

“We’re advisers, we’re not salespeople,” La Placa said. “I’mgoing to put the street in competition for my clients.”

Catherine Wooters, a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank, declined tocomment.

The 20,000 independent registered investment advisers in theU.S. have gained market share every year since 2007, more thandoubling their assets to $2.7 trillion as of 2014, according toresearch firm Aite Group. Client assets at the largest retailbrokerages of UBS AG, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo & Co. andBank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit rose 14 percent to $6.6trillion in the same period, Aite said.

Dynasty is part of a cottage industry that helps brokers gofree. HighTower Advisors LLC in Chicago, Focus Financial PartnersLLC in New York and Tru Independence LLC in Portland, Oregon, arealso in the business.

A Philadelphia native, La Placa moved to San Francisco in 2000,sent there by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. He left Lehman in 2004and joined Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, where his roster of wealthytechnology clients grew. He has backed some startups, includingSwell Radio, a Pandora-like app for talk radio, that Apple Inc.bought last year, and Navdy, a system that displays maps, texts ande-mails inside a car’s windshield.

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