{"id":3479,"date":"2012-12-06T09:22:44","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T17:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wealthfront.com/blog\/?p=3479"},"modified":"2023-02-22T14:21:58","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T22:21:58","slug":"year-in-review-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wealthfront.com/blog\/year-in-review-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Anniversary, Wealthfront"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week marks the first anniversary of the launch of Wealthfront\u2019s software-based financial advisor. We have come a long way in the past year toward our audacious goal to democratize access to high quality financial advice. The speed and the distance we\u2019ve traveled are due to the tremendous support of our clients and the incredible contributions of our Wealthfront team. Thank you!<\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/a>

Andy Rachleff, President & CEO and Daniel Carroll, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s always fun to take a moment and reflect on where you\u2019ve come from and where you are going when you\u2019ve reached a milestone.\u00a0 On Dec. 1, 2011, we launched a low-cost service to create and manage diversified portfolios, using a well-established concept in finance called Modern Portfolio Theory.<\/p>\n

Our approach got a huge endorsement this year, when the renowned economist Burton Malkiel joined our team<\/a> as Chief Investment Officer. With Burt\u2019s help and the help of another highly respected academic, Paul Pfleiderer, the C.O.G. Miller Distinguished Professor of Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business, we made significant improvements to our risk assessment algorithms and the rigor of our asset allocation model.<\/p>\n

Tax-loss harvesting and other features<\/h2>\n

Over the past year, we added many features to our service. Here\u2019s a quick review:<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We added electronic bank transfer (ACH)<\/strong> so that you can now fund your account more conveniently.<\/p>\n

\u2022 We added automated scheduled deposits<\/strong>, which allow you to use dollar-cost averaging to avoid some of the risks of the market\u2019s highs and lows, and to enforce a savings routine on yourself.<\/p>\n

\u2022 On Oct. 9, 2012 we added continuous\u00a0tax-loss harvesting<\/a><\/strong>. Even high-end private wealth management accounts do not offer continuous \u2013 as opposed to year-end \u2013\u00a0tax-loss harvesting.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We now offer our clients individual, joint and trust taxable accounts<\/strong>, and a variety of IRAs. We also support 401(k) rollovers.<\/p>\n

\u2022 For the sake of simplicity, we now provide our service free of commissions and other ancillary fees<\/strong>. Compare this to other brokers and advisors who hide so many fees in their statements and disclosures that you need to be a detective to find them and a PhD to understand them.<\/p>\n

\u2022 We offer our clients actionable, data-driven advice through our Knowledge Center<\/a><\/strong> on topics including college savings<\/a>, which are the best tech companies to build a career<\/a>, the role of your home<\/a> in asset allocation and whether you should make angel investments<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Adam Nash joins<\/h2>\n

As an aside, I believe this data-driven advice is only possible because of the technical talent we\u2019ve attracted to our company. Wealthfront is built on a fantastic engineering team, which has been widely recognized for its technical contributions including continuous deployment<\/a>. In the past year, we have succeeded in marrying that talent with deeply experienced investment professionals.<\/p>\n

The SEC rules prohibit us from quoting our satisfied clients or promoting their reviews. (The regulations that, in effect, protect the incumbents and make it harder for new companies to succeed are one of the great day-to-day frustrations of running a finance startup.) I\u2019ve heard from hundreds of people at our seminars that they are trying our service, and our new assets continue to grow at a consistent rate of at least 15% a month.<\/p>\n

This week, we announced that Adam Nash<\/a>, an executive who played a key role in driving growth and product innovation at LinkedIn and eBay, joins us as our chief operating officer. Adam will oversee engineering, product and marketing at Wealthfront.<\/p>\n

I can assure you we are not resting on our laurels. Our rate of innovation is increasing, and we plan to continue our rapid rate of new feature development. We continue to offer\u00a0free seminars<\/a> for companies that want to help their employees invest their savings. Talking to people in our market helps us shape our product roadmap.<\/p>\n

Our strategy is informed by our mission to democratize access to high quality financial advice. We take this challenge very seriously. We want to build a great company by doing well for our clients.<\/p>\n

We have a number of great new ideas in the development hopper to both improve and simplify our service, but would greatly appreciate hearing from you.\u00a0 Please email me at andy@wealthfront\u00a0with any enhancements or new ideas you would like to see us implement.<\/p>\n

We look forward to many more happy anniversaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week marks the first anniversary of the launch of Wealthfront\u2019s software-based financial advisor. We have come a long way in the past year toward our audacious goal to democratize access to high quality financial advice. The speed and the distance we\u2019ve traveled are due to the tremendous support of our clients and the incredible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1360],"tags":[1339,1362],"coauthors":[99],"class_list":["post-3479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-news","tag-wealthfront-product-release","tag-wealthfront"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHappy Anniversary, Wealthfront: A Year in Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A Year In Review: Wealthfront reviews a year of personal finance innovation, from low fee investment management service to sophisticated financial advice.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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