In 2016, Michele Ferrario typed two words and a city into Google: robo-adviser, Singapore. He found nothing.
Ferrario is originally from Italy, with a background in finance, and he was working in Singapore with a good salary. He was saving well, but the money was sitting in cash. He wanted something more sensible: a diversified portfolio built on low-fee exchange-traded funds. He asked several Singapore banks. They mostly offered mutual funds with high fees.
Before that, he had been chief executive of Singapore-based e-commerce platform Zelora, so he was no stranger to building a company.
He had heard that in the United States, robo-advisers were growing fast. Here there seemed to be none. He later said the search was the moment: he Googled it and could not find anything.
Before that, he had been chief executive of Singapore-based e-commerce platform Zelora, so he was no stranger to building a company. What they do show is who joined him. Freddy Lim took the investment chair as chief investment officer, and Nino Ulsamer became chief technology officer.
The three spent about nine months building before they launched in July 2017. The product was meant to be plain. A saver answers questions, gets a portfolio matched to their risk level, and pays a modest fee. Ferrario has said the aim is to help many people build wealth through lower fees and regular investing.
The backing followed. Square Peg led a US$16 million Series C in July 2020. Then in April 2021, Sequoia Capital India led a US$25 million Series D, with Eight Roads Ventures and Square Peg returning. The platform had passed US$1 billion in assets under management that January. Part of the new money was set aside to buy back up to US$3 million of employee stock options, and the company was preparing a Thailand launch. A further Series D+ of about US$12.67 million shows up in company filings.
The cost of a business like this is trust. People hand over their savings to an app only after they believe in the people behind it, and every market has its own regulator.
There is a plain lesson in that first search. Ferrario did not need to predict the future. He needed to notice that something he wanted did not exist, and that he was not likely the only person who did.