Advisors selling to advisors- the key to wealthtech success

The key to success in wealth management technology I believe is advisors selling to advisors. Having sat in the shoes of the people across the table, having the relationships in the industry, the Rolodex, the relationships, and the understanding of what is happening in the industry is key to success in wealthtech.

At Social Leverage we have been spending time investing in the wealth management space for many years and I think one theme we see as a key to successfully selling software to advisors is having advisors as part of the sales team. The credibility, relationships, and understanding of the pain points in this industry is something that is hard to grasp as an outsider. I know this can be true in almost all industries, but I think it is particularly true in wealth management.

We have invested in SeedsInvestor (which just successfully raised more capital), Lumida, Secfi, and many others in and around the space and they all have a key member of the team with a wealth of experience as an advisor, selling to advisors, and having spent years in the industry. I am lucky to constantly be learning from our founders and have the opportunity to bounce ideas, new companies, and problems off of them and get their thoughts from their experience working with clients.

As more and more companies look at bringing innovation to the wealth management space, I think it’s important for founders to have ex-advisors on their founding team. Wealth management technology doesn’t have many public market companies outside of Envestnet, but I think in the next 10 years we will be seeing a few more big winners and that likely will be accomplished via a rollup.