
Gary Lutes
Get their honest, personalized take on your startup.
Sign in to pitch Gary →At a glance
- Full Name
- Gary William Lutes Jr.
- Title
- Partner (CFA® charterholder)
- Firm
- Tillman Hartley LLC
- Firm Type
- Fee-only Registered Investment Advisor (wealth management / financial planning). Listed in some startup-investor databases under "Angel Investors."
- Investment Stage
- Listed as Seed Round in investor-database entries (unverified by primary sources — see note below)
- Sector Focus
- Not publicly stated; his professional work centers on wealth management, portfolio design, estate/tax planning, and financial modeling
- Geographic Focus
- United States (firm serves clients from offices in Denver, CO; Asheville, NC; and Athens, GA)
- Location
- Candler / Asheville area, North Carolina
Background
Gary Lutes is a Partner at Tillman Hartley LLC, a fee-only Registered Investment Advisor that provides wealth management and financial planning to high-net-worth families and individuals. He joined the firm in 2004, initially to help develop its proprietary estate-planning software, and has since become central to the firm's customized reporting, portfolio design, and financial modeling work. He earned the CFA® (Chartered Financial Analyst) designation in 2012.
Lutes holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of South Florida, a background that informs his reputation for building tools that help clients visualize and make decisions about their finances. He maintains the Series 65 license and, per his SEC/IAPD record (CRD #5907559), is registered to provide advisory services in states including Florida and North Carolina. Firm materials describe his analytical ability and eye for detail as making him "invaluable in the areas of portfolio design, analysis, and client service."
Tillman Hartley was founded more than 25 years ago by Michael Tillman, an estate-planning and tax attorney who observed that his clients' investment portfolios were not being managed in alignment with their estate and tax plans; he co-founded the firm to deliver integrated planning and wealth management. Public adviser filings put the firm's assets under management in the range of roughly $570–610 million.
Lutes lives near Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife and son, and maintains a small homestead. Note: the "Angel Investor / Seed Round" labels in the stub data appear to originate from startup-investor aggregator databases (e.g., Foundersuite) rather than from any primary source, and no public record of specific startup angel investments by Gary Lutes could be verified.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Professional discipline: As a CFA and RIA partner, his day-to-day investing is institutional wealth management — Modern Portfolio Theory-based portfolio construction with personalized investment policy statements, not startup venture betting.
- Client profile served: High-net-worth and multi-generational families, charitable organizations, and clients approaching or in retirement.
- Aggregator listing: Third-party investor databases categorize him as an "Angel Investor" focused on "Seed Round" deals; this could not be corroborated by his firm's own materials, his LinkedIn, or SEC records.
- No publicly stated startup thesis, check size, or target-company profile could be found from primary sources.
Notable Investments
- No specific angel or venture-stage portfolio companies could be verified from primary sources. (Startup-investor databases list him but do not document confirmed deals; treat any such listing with caution.)
Unlock the full research
Get how to approach them, recent activity, sources, contact links — plus pitch their AI twin for a candid read on your raise.
One-time. Stays unlocked for you.