Wealthminder—a Reston, Va.-based startup that develops financial planning and investment advice software along with a platform to connect users with verified financial planners—has raised a $1.45 million seed round led by Green Visor Capital, Signatures Capital and a group of unnamed angel investors, the company announced Wednesday.
The funding will be used to further invest in Wealthminder’s technology and to accelerate sales and marketing efforts. Wealthminder founder and CEO Rich Ellinger told DC Inno that the company would be using the funds to also hire several new employees on the sales and marketing side. If all goes well, the company hopes to grow to about 15 to 20 employees within nine to 12 months, Ellinger said.
“One of the things that attracted us to Wealthminder was their focus on user experience. In addition, we see a massive market opportunity to equip the 300,000 financial advisors in the US (and many more world-wide) with a next generation of tools. The team's track record across multiple domain spaces speaks for itself,” said Mike Walsh, general partner at Green Visor Capital, in a statement.
Founded in 2013, Wealthminder’s user-oriented financial organization application works like an assistant that helps to gather relevant income information. The data/portfolio information can be filtered and aggregated based on a series of categories selected by the user.
In April, the startup launched its financial advisory marketplace that can bring together users with advisory firms who have signed up for the service. The feature, seemingly built to compliment Wealthminder’s other tools, shows promise; as Ellinger said, “[p]eople want a better solution than asking a couple of their friends for referrals, and with 118 million households in the US having investable assets, we believe there's a huge opportunity to connect people who want help with those who can provide it.”
Ellinger told DC Inno that the marketplace platform currently has about 26 advisory firms that are live on it, as the program is still in its beta phase, but that he expects significant demand for the service as it is rolled out. The company is focused on driving more users to this side of its business and the hiring of new sales and marketing professional will help with the cause.
