A new wealth management and advisory firm has come out of stealth mode announcing both its formal launch and $37 million in venture capital funding led by Greenoaks Capital and angel investor Lachy Groom.
Named Compound, the firm was founded in 2019 by Jordan Gonen and Jacob Schein with a mission to serve the spectrum of technologists—from those just beginning their careers at startups to those at more mature tech companies, and entrepreneurs.
“The next generation of wealth is holding a different suite of assets, one that traditional wealth management is often struggling to support,” Gonen said.
From stock options to cryptocurrency and other forms of digital assets, young professionals—especially those in technology fields—can find it difficult to for an incumbent firm to handle all their needs, he said.
“We strive to be holistic and have found that our clients don’t think about their assets in a silo,” meaning that such young and tech-forward clients don’t isolate their digital assets or stock options from their traditional stock and bond portfolios.
Those illiquid assets can also present tech workers with unique tax needs as well.
While he declined to provide a specific number, in terms of clients or assets under management, Gonen said Compound already counts “hundreds” of technology employees, founders and investors as clients or users of Compound’s wealth management platform to track assets, get financial advice, invest liquidity, borrow money and file taxes.
The firm, which has 50 employees and offices in San Francisco and New York, also is made up of a 50% remote workforce spread throughout the United States.
While the client base may be predominantly made up of those from the technology industry, Compound’s advisory approach is decidedly a hybrid one with an intentional mix of technology and human advisors.
In fact, the firm currently has 10 full-time advisors, among them several CFPs that are split between internal units focused on investments and taxes, respectively.
“Most of our advisors are from the industry and several with more than 10 years of experience,” said Gonen.
“Our advisors only give advice and our mission is to empower advisors to be the best version of themselves—we can build "Iron Man" and "Iron Woman" suits for those people to be the best advisors,” he said referring to his firm’s technology platform metaphorically.
The cost to clients for Compound’s services is “based on complexity,” according to Gonen. While the firm does not publish a price list, the cost can range from a few hundred dollars a year for a client with simple planning or investment needs up to “tens of thousands a year” for those with the most complex requirements, for example, in the area of stock option management from a liquidity event. The firm performs an assessment working with each client at the outset to determine the exact level of service.
“What we offer is bespoke and personalized for the client, and we are building specialized solutions for people that have the-next-generation-of-wealth needs and take a very long view in supporting them,” Gonen said.
Other participants in the capital raise included Egon Durban of Silver Lake, Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX, YCombinator, XYZ, SciFi, Day One Ventures, and founders and executives from Coinbase, Goldman Sachs, Meta, Stripe, Brex, Plaid, Adobe, Notion, AngelList, Eventbrite, Affirm, Polychain, Paradigm, Blend, Quora, Vise, Carta and Point.
