StepStone, with offices in 19 cities and over 500 employees, serves a variety of clients such as large public and private pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, and prominent endowments, foundations and family offices. StepStone tailors portfolios across four primary asset classes – Private Equity, Private Debt, Real Estate, and Infrastructure and Real Assets. Over 60 employees are equity owners of StepStone, a factor of its partnership approach to business operations and goal of aligning its employees’ interests with those of its clients.

StepStone’s founders presented a thesis on the vast expected growth in the private capital markets and how a new advisory business, if structured correctly, could capitalize on the wave of expected capital flows. Argonaut was a preferred investor given its experience in letting founders build their businesses as a true partner with flexibility. With help from Argonaut as a key advisor, StepStone was able to acquire numerous additional business lines, grow its client base on a global scale, and still maintain a small partnership-style ownership structure that ensured its key employees worked in tandem with the founders. StepStone successfully completed its IPO in September 2020.