I studied behavioral economics at Columbia and realized: people aren't bad with money because they're dumb. The system is designed to confuse them.
We launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010 with $400,000 and a product that managed money for free. People thought we were either lying or about to go broke.
The average financial advisor charges 1% of assets to do what an algorithm can do better. That's a trillion-dollar inefficiency. We're fixing it.
We don't let you pick stocks. That's not a limitation — that's the feature. The research is clear: most people lose money trying to be clever.
Tax-loss harvesting alone pays for our fee several times over for most customers. People just didn't have access to it before because they didn't have enough money for a real advisor.
Wealthfront and us basically created this category together. The market is big enough for both. It's the old-school advisors who should be worried.