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Live Long And Prosper with FutureAdvisor (YC S10)

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84 pointsjonxu17 comments

Okay, I'm very impressed. I work at a financial research company so I approached this with a very skeptical eye and was worried that this was going to be "The Idiots Guide to Index Investing" where it just pushed advice without explaining what the methodology was, all wrapped up in some Web 2.0 gradients and rounded corners.

What I found, I'm happy to report, was a lot of technical depth just underneath the surface. When it told me to consider investing in Real Estate, I first scoffed and then clicked the "why this model portfolio?" link and saw all the reasoning, complete with references to original sources.

In short, they managed to strike a nice balance between being user friendly vs overwhelming the users with financial theory.

Great work guys.

In short, they managed to strike a nice balance between being user friendly vs overwhelming the users with financial theory.

it's not coincidence or luck they've struck that balance. for the past two months they've paid a painstaking amount of attention to how to present that technical info without overwhelming the user. i saw it evolve week by week and it's cool to see users appreciate it.

Please make it possible to enter data directly rather than providing login credentials and having you download it. This would solve two problems: First, the fact that some people won't want to give you access to their money; and second, the fact that some people have accounts not with one of the three mentioned funds.

Thanks for the feedback, this is in the works. For the second issue, we are planning to push out additional financial institution support in the near future even with the current download method. For the first, you're right that entering manually or even uploading from a standard file format (e.g. csv) will help reduce friction. -Jon

we are planning to push out additional financial institution support in the near future even with the current download method

You're never going to cover everything. Also keep in mind that even if you're targetting US users, you're going to have non-US users -- who have non-US investment accounts, and often e.g., pension plans which don't have online access at all.

Point taken. Manual entry is definitely a proper catch-all. The Yodlee service gets pretty close, although perhaps not as wide reach internationally (I believe they support some banks in India) or pensions.

The one thing that makes this kind of service a no-go for me is the need for me to disclose my password to a third party. What would it take for the financial institution to allow read-only access using a separate set of credentials? All I have here is that I have to take FutureAdvisor's word that their access is read-only.

Hi Jon here from FutureAdvisor. Thanks for the feedback. We're working on allowing you to enter your investments manually which would solve this problem somewhat. A bit less convenient. I'm with you, it would be great for banks and financial institutions to do a read-only password. Quick question, what are your thoughts about using Mint.com?

I didn't use it because of the privacy issues. Probably a bit too much Nerd Privacy Paranoia Disorder (TM).

Even further, is it not a violation of the TOS of those services to disclose the password to a third party?

Edit: I just saw that it says your connection is read-only. How does that work if you're using the same password? Do you have a special deal with the brokerages that allows you to ask for the password and that they don't allow any login from your domain to change anything?

Yodlee

Don't you incur large potential liabilities by dispensing financial advice over the internet?

To a financial professional (or at least to me), the info that's available without signing up is a little vague. It would be great if you could clarify things in the details pages. Maybe a demo or tour?

How exactly are you optimizing portfolios? If I had to guess from the description, I'd guess you guys just cracked open "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" and made a big if/else chain based on people's age as to how much they should invest. Is there any kind of mean/variance optimization going on here?

Also, how are you determining which funds are "similar"? Is it just the description of the assets or are you actually calculating correlations of returns and finding historically similar assets?

Are you guys a registered RIA? Your terms of service say that you are not providing financial advice, but I'm curious as to how that actually holds up. I mean your company name is "future advisor" and you are recommending people invest in different areas based on dschobel's comment. That seems like advice to me.

Found some typos in your "investment methodology" article:

In additon, many funds charge high fees...

If you agree with luminaries...

I'm hitting some major slows during registration. Two 504 time outs. Good problem to have. :)

Jon here from FutureAdvisor. Thanks, we're thrilled that people are excited about investing the right way for the long-term. Thanks for being patient.

good job guys!

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