Over the last decade, consumer investing strategies have generally fallen into one of two buckets: either passive investing through ETFs and robos (e.g. Wealthfront, Betterment) or active DIY investing platforms (e.g. Robinhood, eToro). Adoption of these products has mostly fallen along generational lines – baby boomers have been trained to embrace the passive only investing approach, whilst young millennial and Gen Z consumers have enthusiastically embraced active investing. The reasons for this are manifold, but the psychology of American exceptionalism, coupled with a challenging path to financial progress for Gen Z are two of the largest secular trends pushing younger generations towards embracing more risk. Further, young consumers demand easy to navigate, mobile-first interfaces as well as transparency from their banks and financial partners. They want to deeply understand how their money is being invested and participate in the learnings that result from the process. This is a generation for whom “set and forget” investing just isn’t going to cut it, and legacy investment management vehicles provide neither the ease of use nor transparency they are looking for.
This is why we were so excited to meet the founders of Titan. Joe, Clay, and Max have created a new-guard investment platform that brings premier investment management to the everyday investor, rivaling giants like Fidelity. Similar to the mutual fund platforms of the past, Titan has a fleet of open-access actively-managed strategies. However, their sleek app experience is packed with content that enables investors to have an investment experience directly with the end investment managers.
Titan sits at an interesting intersection between passive robo-advisors and active stock-picking, allowing their customers to “ride shotgun” alongside some of the best fund managers in the world, thus achieving the returns and knowledge of stock picking without having to make the decisions themselves.
Importantly Titan’s founders are exactly the kind of people we like to back – Joe, Clay and Max combine deep knowledge of active investment management and technology with a first principles approach to re-imaging this category for the next generation. Their product velocity and strength of investment choices is reflected in the incredible growth to date: Titan is approaching $1B of assets under management and with 6x YoY growth, notably growing throughout periods of market turmoil since launch three years ago.
I’m very excited to announce that we’re leading Titan’s Series B, and that I will be joining the board. With this most recent funding, Titan will continue to scale their team as well as build out their underlying platform and suite of investment products. Next up: Titan is soon to launch the first and only actively-managed cryptocurrency offering in the market, led by Titan’s in-house crypto investing team. We’re particularly excited about this expansion as it solves for a significant unmet need in active investing – the gap between Gen Z’s desire to participate in crypto investing and the knowledge needed to do so.
Those who dismiss the rise of active investing as a bull market phenomena have fundamentally misunderstood the generational shift in consumer preferences that’s underway; every financial product and category is being re-imagined, and active investing is no exception. We believe that Titan represents the future of the $21T US mutual fund industry, and we couldn’t be more grateful to be partnering with this team for the journey.
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