Tyrone Ross Jr., who announced in March that he was stepping down as CEO of Onramp Invest, has launched two new ventures: Turnqey Labs and 401 Financial, a registered investment advisor, according to published reports.
Ross said in interviews that he’s been working on Turnqey Labs, an API suite for cryptocurrency asset data, for the last two months and has two partners, whom he has not yet named. The tagline for the new venture is “Integrator. Aggregator. Marketplace.” Ross did not return a phone call seeking comment.
“The goal is to grab all of that data, clean it, standardize it and pipe into the workflows of advisors because if I’ve learned anything over the last two months of touring around and speaking to a lot of different RIAs and just folks in general, I think this is more a data story right now than a portfolio allocation story, and of personally of wanting to make sure advisors get access and building to that,” Ross said, in an interview with Jay Coulter.
Ross also is launching 401 Financial, an RIA that will serve as an incubator for Turnqey. The name is not related to the 401(k)s.
401(k) Specialist magazine first reported on Ross’ new ventures.
Ross left Onramp in March under a cloud of confusion, and several senior executives have since departed or were let go from the crypto portfolio aggregation platform.
Onramp co-founder Eric Ervin, the CEO of blockchain investment firm Blockforce Capital and the former head of Reality Shares ETFs, took over as CEO. According to sources close to the company, the nascent firm hired too many employees and spent too much money on promotion and publicity.
Three other former Onramp executives also landed new positions this week.
Nyle Bayer, who stepped down as chief marketing officer at Onramp last week, joined Advisor Circle, a product and content studio for the financial services industry, in the same position. Bayer reports to Matt Middleton, CEO of Advisor Circle, and will be responsible for expanding its in-person and digital community, including the Future Proof Festival, taking place Sept. 11 to 14 in Huntington Beach, Calif.
“The future for financial services requires a diversity of people and perspectives to engage with some of the industry’s strongest voices, which are cut from the same fabric that Advisor Circle and Future Proof are built upon,” Bayer said in a statement.
In addition to Bayer, Craig Uhlenkott, former chief product officer at Onramp, and James Byers, former product manager at Onramp, both joined Oleg Tishkevich’s cloud technology platform INVENT.us, as vice president of product and product manager for the RIA channel, respectively.
Prior to Onramp, Uhlenkott spent eight years at TD Ameritrade Institutional as a senior product manager. He also spent eight years at financial planning software developer Advicent, which is now part of InvestCloud. At INVENT.us, he’ll lead integration experience strategy for RIAs, custodians and third-party vendors.
Byers, who also worked at TDAI as a business strategy manager, will support business workflows, data and analytics, and integrations in his new role.
The news follows the departures of Amber McLeod, Onramp director of customer success, and Caitlin Cook, head of community and vice president of operations at Onramp Academy. Cook joined Hxro Labs, which provides news and analysis for crypto and legacy markets, as head of marketing and communications.
Onramp recently announced an undisclosed amount of Series A funding, led by JAM FINTOP, an early-stage fintech investor. In addition, Chris Haley, general partner of FINTOP and former chief financial officer of the Black Diamond Wealth Platform, joined the Onramp board of directors.
