INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The founders of Vise AI met when they were 13, a couple of teenagers more interested in applied artificial intelligence than English class
Fast-forward several years and the pair has relocated from the Midwest to San Francisco to raise money for a financial technology business
quite useful to large businesses, investment bankers and other financiers
which automates portfolio management using AI and machine learning
Launching onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco today, the SEC-registered investment advisor will begin customer on-boarding next week
co-founder and chief technology officer of Vise AI.For now, the team is going after independent advisory shops, those without a flock of
analysts available at their beck and call and who need outsourced investment management
Ultimately, they plan to pursue the big wealth managers
The business has also been approved as a subadvisor by TD Ameritrade Institutional, which has thousands of independent RIAs on its
relationships and help empower their relationships, while still delivering a better portfolio to the client is the type of solution that
Cleveland, and Mehrotra, raised just outside Detroit, met years ago at a Northwestern University summer research program
agreements) as consultants and completing the fintech conference circuit a few times over
But when it came to raising venture capital to exit the era of self-funding and launch their AI-enabled portfolio manager, they were
clueless.Their first infusion of outside capital came in the form of a $20,000 uncapped note from Dorm Room Fund
A little something to help them through the daunting fundraising process
But their first real pitch meeting was with none other than Vinod Khosla, the billionaire founder of Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures
realized they had no idea what they were doing
They began refining their pitch
After reaching out to roughly 1,000 different investors (Vasavada created a detailed CRM to track all their cold pitches) they raised $2
million from co-leads Keith Rabois, a co-founder at PayPal and a partner at Founders Fund, and Ben Ling of Bling Capital, two investors who
were, ironically, former general partners at Khosla Ventures
Capital also participated
Vasavada and Mehrotra said that once they had tapped two high-profile leads, offers came flooding in, including from VCs who had rejected
jobs. Vise AI co-founder Runik MehrotraOnce they reach $50 million in assets under management, Vise plans to raise a much larger round
of funding to help the team expand and open an office in New York.Vise is targeting a market worth trillions in one of the most valuable
To succeed in the long term, the startup will have to infiltrate a decades-old network relying on legacy technology, as well as battle
According to their thesis, companies like Betterment and Wealthfront are successful with tech-rich millennials, but once one accumulates
