Wealthfront

The elephant in the (chat)room is the question of “does this have upside to make me rich? I mean, like, private-island rich, not just private-peninsula rich.”

Don’t read this review if you hate money. Otherwise, let me address this, from an engineer’s perspective:

• phenomenally good business to be in; excellent upside

• automates expensive humans; not just an incremental improvement to something that’s already being done in software

• barrier to entry for smaller firms: you need critical mass for customers to trust you (unlike, say, with online games)

• barrier to entry for large non-investment (software) firms: it’s specialized and business-y enough that e.g. Google can’t just enter the space (unlike, say, online maps or self-driving cars, which are huge engineering problems)

• barrier to entry for large investment firms: they can’t move as fast, and quite frankly, Silicon Valley talent is unlikely to want to work there (same reason why engineering talent is probably better at Google than at e.g. some large car company). Also, they’re in the tough spot of having to cannibalize their own (non-automated) investment advisory business.

• not very susceptible to an economic downturn. This isn’t the case for many companies who e.g. sell software and get hit when corporate budgets are axed all around.

• some of what we do (especially tax optimization) just can’t be done accurately by humans - some tasks are just too big/complex/geared towards computers. So we’re not just cheaper, but also better.

• startup-y enough to have a lot of upside (and excitement); mature enough to not have to work crazy hours and eat ramen. (However, do note that the office has lots of free drinks and food, including ramen noodles. Nothing against ramen here).

• phenomenally good executive team. Yes, “About Us” pages look very good on all companies, so you wouldn’t know. But trust me. In particular, our executive chairman, Andy Rachleff, is Silicon Valley royalty. I’ve been told top 25. I’d say he’s the next step down from the household-name VCs (Andreessen, Khosla, etc) - think Robert Downey Jr instead of Brad Pitt. Why does this matter? Well, his knowledge and connections are out of this world, and it’s helped the company many times (e.g. to get deals, visibility with other big companies and media, etc.)

Finally: yes, we do intend to make money, but there’s clear social value in that we benefit people in very meaningful (i.e. not share-your-cat-pictures-with-your-friends) ways:

• those with little $ (below most advisors’ minimums of ~ $250k) are otherwise completely unserved
• those with more $ are otherwise overcharged (~4x) for an inferior service

Since my 'pros' section talked mostly about the business, I'll do the same thing here:

• What if some big company tries to spend crazy money and wipe us out of existence? I'm not worried because we have a huge lead and we can run faster than the big guys. It's like me having to compete in a marathon against the NYC marathon winner – who is also given a head start. (To be clear, the marathon runner in this analogy is Wealthfront, not me; I'm not big on cardio). But again, you never know.
• Lots of interviewing. I actually rather like the opportunity to bore candidates with my sales pitch on the company, but some people may find interviewing to be a nuisance.
• What happens if the market tanks? I personally don't think that the tide for doing this online will ever turn, but you never know. Worst case, we'll pivot into an online mattress seller for people to put their money under.