"You cannot be all things to all people," Edwards said.
     
The company now has 95 clients, many of whom have invested a few million, with the two largest clients entrusting abut $11 million each.
     
Social media has enabled Heron to sign some younger clients, but it still has some that were born before 1945.
     
Another tier of clients are the so-called baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964. Another tier that the company is trying to develop are the so-called Generation Xers, which Edwards considers to be those born between about 1965 and 1985.
     
Edwards likes to quote something that hockey great Wayne Gretzky used to say, to the effect that he had success by going where the puck would be instead of going where it is. To that end, Edwards will add another company aimed primarily ast Generation Xers next year, to be called Heron Wealth.
     
Baby boomers care about confidence, Edwards said. Generation Xers care about trust. "They will spend eight hours (on the Internet) researching a toaster," he said.
     
He expects Generation Xers to Google Heron and his name before signing on, and he wants to make sure everything they see inspires trust.
     
Heron's asset target for 2015 is $280 million by year-end.
     
Heron is one of 20,000 companies Smarsh has as clients. Steve Marsh would not disclose the privately held company's revenue, but he acknowledged that it has had substantial growth since he started it with two personal computers in his apartment in Brooklyn in 2001. He said it was one of the first companies to focus on such archival recordkeeping.
     
Now Smarsh has 225 employees, including about 120 at its headquarters in Portland. Its clients including one-person companies and companies with 10,000 employees, such as the AIG Advisor Group. Smarsh also has offices in Los Angeles, New York and London.
 

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