July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Wealthfront has come into some wealth of its own.

This online investment manager announced today that it raised $20 million from top tier investors. Mike Volpi of Index Ventures led the round, joined by Chamath Palihapitiya of The Social + Capital Partnership and Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners.

Wealthfront’s platform helps clients build and manage a diverse investment portfolio, rather than paying for an investment bank or private wealth manager. You put in the account type, amount to invest, and age, and this SEC-registered, software-based financial advisor will provide professional financial advise at a lower cost. The service also manages the personalized online investment account for you.

Wealthfront is unique among financial services companies in that we derive our value from our underlying software,” said COO Adam Nash in a blog post.  Our core is our engineering-centric culture, which means we will leverage our new financing to significantly grow our product and engineering team.”

The company is built on the idea that ‘everyone deserves sophisticated investment advice.’ It launched in 2011 and has since added features like automatic rebalancing, continuous tax-loss harvesting, differentiated asset location and broadened the set of diversified assets classes. Within a year, Wealthfront brought in over $170 million under management and those assets have grown by more than seventy percent.

This second round of funding will help Wealthfront continue to grow and disrupt “an industry that manages trillions of dollars.” In addition to the investors listed above, lead investor of the first round DAG Ventures participated along with notable individuals. It will go towards product development and enhancing to add features without adding to client fees, as well as to expand the team.

Right now, Wealthfront does not charge on advisory fee on the first $10,000 invested, a charges a monthly advisory fee based on an annual fee rate of .25 percent after that. Wealthfront is based in Palo Alto, California. This brings its total funding to $30.5 million.

Photo Credit: Willem van Bergen/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

 Torch Partners entered the US market today and opened an office in San Francisco.

Torch is an international investment bank that focuses on technology, media, and telecom. It is based in London with offices in Berlin and primarily works with European companies and deals. The decision to set up shop in America is in an effort to strengthen the ties between its European clients and Silicon Valley.

“With the proliferation of entrepreneurship and startup culture around the world, we saw a vacuum of talent helping the global tech community,” said Sanu Desai, Managing Director.   While Silicon Valley remains the startup capital of the world, places like London and Berlin have become tech leaders in their own right.  The flow of ideas is outpacing the flow of capital.”

The firm provides strategic investment banking services on mergers and acquisitions, fundraising, IPO advising and any other financial concerns. Desai said that the time is ripe for a firm like Torch, because the entrepreneurship is heating up in Europe and startups are beginning to see the value of hiring on investment bank to act as a middleman.

“The bigger story here is the rise of a new generation of firms advising tech companies,” he said. “In the last five years, things have gotten very interesting as the bigger banks blew up and it created opportunities for a new generation of boutique firms to provide support for the best new companies trying to grow. The idea of startup culture has spread all over the planet and companies around the world want to make deals in the US and companies here want to be international. There is a need for people like me to bridge that gap.”

Torch Partners was founded in 2003. It has served clients including online travel business Secret Escapes, collaboration leaders Huddle and Workshare, data center company TelecityGroup, equity investor Summit Partners and food ordering service JustEat, which secured one of the largest fundraising rounds in Europe this year.