New York-based Ritholz Wealth Management has joined a $2.7 million round for Seeds Investor, a startup building an automated investing platform with more personalized client engagement.
Social Leverage, a venture capital firm whose leadership includes Stocktwits founder Howard Lindzon, led the seed round for the New York startup. Other investors include:
- The Compound Capital Fund, an affiliate of Ritholz Wealth
- DuContra Ventures, founded by Adrian Grenier, who starred in the HBO television show Entourage, and San Francisco-based venture capitalist Bá Minuzzi
- Ryan Shanks, CEO of FA Match; and
- Paul Walker, former co-head of technology at Goldman Sachs.
Social Leverage’s general partner Matt Ober, an expert in data analytics, will join Seeds Investor’s board.
Seeds is a venture of Michael and Zach Conway, a financial adviser and managing director at Conway Wealth Group, which he characterizes as a “family office-style private wealth advisory firm,” with $6.48 billion in assets under management.
Less ‘Cookie Cutter’
“A few years ago, Michael W. Conway…and I realized that as advisors, we didn’t have the technology to deliver the less cookie-cutter, more meaningful, and more personalized investing experience that clients increasingly demanded,” Zach Conway said in a LinkedIn post announcing the seed funding. “This raise will enable us to further bolster our amazing team and platform, helping to bring personalized, purpose-aligned investment solutions to the most forward-looking advisory firms in the country,” he added.
Ritholtz Wealth is a venture of author and “The Big Picture” blogger Barry L. Ritholtz, who serves as its chairman and chief investment officer. Before founding Ritholtz Wealth, he helmed Fusion IQ. Earlier he has served as chief market strategist of investment bank Maxim Group. Ritholtz earned his undergraduate degree at Stony Brook University, and a graduate degree from Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.
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Founded in 2019, Seeds focuses on investor needs in a rapidly changing investing environment where risks are “ephemeral,” as Zach Conway terms it. Conway advances what he calls a three-dimensional approach that would weigh not only risk and time horizon, but also behavioral finance and personal values of an investor, in recommending investment opportunities.
Conway Wealth was an early user of Seeds, whose clients now include Tampa, Fla.-based One Seven, Southern California-headquartered KWB Wealth and Ohio’s Cunningham Wealth Management. Seeds’ platform was last year voted “Best in Show” by attendees of Carson Group’s Excell Conference.
“If you can tie the investment management to values that align with the client, then behaviorally they will feel more tied to the financial plan and will be more likely to stick with it because it’s not just a bunch of Vanguard ETFs,” Michael Batnick, director of research at Ritholtz Wealth, told InvestmentNews.
