Titan closed on a $58 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz just five months after it raised a $12.5 million Series A led by General Catalyst. Previous investors General Catalyst, BoxGroup, and Ashton Kutcher‘s Sound Ventures all participated in the round along with entertainment and sports luminaries Odell Beckham Jr., Kevin Durant, Jared Leto and Will Smith.
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“We’re building the next Fidelity, which is a premier investment management platform for our generation,” Joe Percoco, co-founder and co-CEO of Titan, said in an interview.
Percoco breaks down investing into three buckets: passive index funds like the S&P 500; self-brokerage, where individuals buy and sell stocks; and investment management led by firms like BlackRock, Fidelity and T.Rowe Price. Titan aims to bring this third bucket, investment management, where there has been little innovation, to Gen Z and millennials without requiring its customers to be wealthy.
“Any retail client can download our mobile app and immediately after they transfer capital they’re invested in our proprietary strategies,” which are like mutual funds but unlike “the legacy and archaic mutual funds of the past, ours is not a black box it’s an open box,” he said.
“We think the entire stack needs to be rebuilt for this new generation,” said Percoco. “They demand different things, they want everything in real time, they want it fast, they want it on their phone. They expect to have an audience with whoever is the human being on the other side.”
“There’s a really strong return of active investing,” Anish Acharya, a general partner at a16z, said in an interview with Crunchbase News. Acharya led the investment and is joining the board.
“What we love about the Titan product and thesis is you ride shotgun along with some of the best fund managers in the world,” he said.
Acharya views Robinhood, another a16z portfolio company, as complementary for consumers who say don’t know what stocks to buy next. This gives users exposure to active funds and the learning that comes with that.
titan has 30,000 customers through organic growth, with seven out of 10 coming to the platform each week, said Percoco. It will have $1 billion in assets under management in the fall, just over three years since it launched.
Users need to have at least $100 to invest and either pay a $5 monthly fee or 1 percent if their investment is $10,000 or more.
“Every financial product is being reinvented for Gen Z,” said Acharya. “What exemplifies this generation is not just sort of making their own investing decisions, but really wanting to be in the loop with respect to their money.”
“Our goal is to render the mutual fund obsolete,” said Percoco. “All new products and vehicles are launched mobile-first direct-to-consumer, not black box, no layers and layers of fees.”
The firm currently hosts three funds and aims to launch a crypto fund next. The service has already had mutual fund managers reach out who could build products on top of Titan and communicate directly with its customers via the service.
Featured picture: Titan co-founders Joe Percoco, Max Bernardy and Clayton Gardner.
Blogroll image: Dom Guzman
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