A new online company, FutureAdvisor, aims to break open the market for sophisticated financial advice and make that service available not only to the wealthy, but to all investors.
Launched in 2010, the Seattle-based startup says it already analyzes $4 billion in assets for its users and, today, it announced $5 million in new venture capital funding.
"We feel that everyone should have access to quality financial services like this and not just the wealthy," the company's cofounder Bo Lu said in a statement. "We take this responsibility very seriously. Our customers are key to our innovation - we will continue to listen closely to their feedback and roll out new features to help them achieve their investment goals."
On Wednesday, FutureAdvisor announced $5 million in Series A funding from influential Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital. It also unveiled what it described as the financial services industry's first personalized 401(k) fee analysis and recommendation features, designed to help people save on fees in their 401(k) portfolio.
"Up until today, sound financial advice has only been accessible to the one percent," Warren Hogarth, partner at Sequoia Capital, said in a statement. "FutureAdvisor promises to democratize access to financial advice, save consumers thousands of dollars on annual fees, and enable customers to retire more comfortably."
The startup's founding team includes financial industry veterans, top software engineers from Microsoft and math PhDs from top universities. In addition, it is backed by angel investors, including Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman and Square's Chief Operating Offer, Keith Rabois. The free Web service is built on research-backed financial algorithms.
The company came out of influential Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator.
