Wealthfront Secures $20 Million Funding Round

Index Ventures, Greylock Partners and the Social+Capital Partnership have just made financial advisory service Wealthfront $20 million wealthier.

Joined by angel investors from institutions as diverse as WordPress and the San Francisco 49ers professional football team, the funding round provides a significant shot in the arm to a start-up still seeking to distinguish itself in a crowded and growing marketplace.

Wealthfront is an online, SEC-registered financial advisory service geared toward average, non-accredited investors who want actively managed accounts. The service includes such features as tax-loss harvesting (for accounts above $100,000) and automatic rebalancing. Note that both of these features are often accessible only through in-person, human brokers and financial advisors.

The company has seen growth in assets under management of more than 70% since 2013, totaling more than $170 million. 

Wealthfront first appeared on the Finovate stage as part of FinovateStartup 2009. Then doing business as “kaChing”, the company presented their virtual investing environment. To see their demo, click here.

Alumni News — Weeks of October 11 and 18th, 2010

Third-party Blippy application released. The new application, Blipped, was released by Mindsmack. http://bit.ly/finovate10121

BrightScope launches BrightScope Beacon. Beacon will provide detailed analysis of the Defined Contribution marketplace. http://j.mp/finovate10155

Dynamics Inc. releases “dynamic” cards to prevent credit card skimming and card number theft. http://bit.ly/finovate10213  Also, the company is featured in a flattering page-one business story in Friday’s New York Times. http://nyti.ms/finovate10266

Firethorn joins up with Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union to offer mobile banking. PSECU’s 370,000 members will now have mobile banking service with Firethorn’s mobile application. http://j.mp/finovate10153

Geezeo partners with Ping Identity for secure sign-on. Geezeo users will now have access to secure access via single sign-on. http://j.mp/finovate10154

KaChing gets $100 million under assets and changes name to Wealthfront. Read more at TechCrunch about the company’s change in identity. http://tcrn.ch/finovate10211

Kapitall’s iPad app makes the top 10 in the iTunes “free finance” category. http://j.mp/finovate10111

Bloomberg.com reviews Kapitall. Bloomberg says Kapitall is “opening the financial services business to a broader range of investors.” http://j.mp/finovate10157

mFoundry offers innovative mobile banking “adoption guarantee” to new customers. http://bit.ly/finovate10221

Mint.com launches social media contest. The “Drop Your Debt” challenge offers cash prizes for dropping debt.  http://bit.ly/finovate10224

Mint.com unveils new tools including home-value estimates from Zillow and a life-insurance calculator. http://bit.ly/finovate10225

Outright.com now supports Harvest integration for time tracking. Billable hours, payroll and more can be tracked with the Harvest application which now integrates seamlessly with Outright. http://bit.ly/finovate10123

Prosper.com adds one- and five-year terms to its peer-to-peer loan offerings. http://bit.ly/finovate10212

Another innovative social media contest from SmartyPig. SmartyPig’s $20,000 gift card giveaway begins Mon., Oct. 25. http://bit.ly/finovate10222

Orange County Credit Union adopts Tyfone Mobile Payments. Orange County Credit Union, founded in 1938, has 79,000 members and $950 million in assets. http://bit.ly/finovate10122

ZashPay and PopMoney profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle as powerful alternatives to PayPal. See the pros and cons of a number of different mobile money-transfer services. http://j.mp/finovate10151

KaChing Evolves Investment Platform, Focuses On Registered Investment Advisors

In April 2009, kaChing demonstrated its
new Investment IQ platform at FinovateStartup.
(video link) Since then, the company has made several changes to its business model.

In 2009, the platform was open for
anyone to share their holdings and allowed users to mimic any private
investor’s portfolio. Since that time, kaChing has altered its
platform to so that it only tracks professional Registered Investment
Advisors (RIAs). As to what motivated the change in direction, the
startup says that most people are more interested in following a
professional investor’s strategy than another DIY investor. It also
found that professional investors were looking for a platform to
share and promote their track record.

There are now two sides to the kaChing
business:

Consumers

kaChing allows investors to open an
account and invest with RIAs based on their track record and
portfolio focus. This provides small-scale investors unique access
to high-level fund managers that normally only service customers with
minimum portfolios of $50,000 to $500,000 or more.

Business-to-Business (KaChing Pro)

kaChing Pro is the professional side of
the platform. The company handles administrative chores and provides many analytic tools allowing RIAs
to profitably manage smaller accounts. Any professional can use kaChing Pro, but only those whose “Investment IQ” surpasses 140
points are open to all users to invest with.

KaChing Pro markets to small and
medium-sized RIAs with assets under management not exceeding $500
million. Currently, kaChing has sixteen qualified RIAs and more than
600 investors. The company has almost $11 million in assets under
management. The company has raised more than $10 million in venture
capital funding. The company has more than 20 employees, up from 10
at the time of FinovateStartup 2009.

For more information about kaChing see
www.kaching.com
or for more information about kaChing Pro, see
http://pro.kaching.com.
The company’s brokerage partner is Interactive Brokers, LLC.