roger_lee

Just to clarify, all index funds are managed by Vanguard, and employees who want to choose their own investment allocation are free to do so. However, for the majority of employees that need help with their investing strategy, we use the same investing principles as Wealthfront and Betterment to make sure they're globally diversified and automatically rebalanced. Also, all funds are held in an SIPC-insured secure trust account by one of the nation's largest third party custodians that deals with billions of dollars -- we never touch the money ourselves.

Thanks for pointing that out -- we're hoping TechCrunch will fix this shortly.

Our 401k actually offers dozens of Vanguard funds, and companies can even customize the investment options if they wish.

I couldn't find your email address, but please get in touch on https://captain401.com/join

We use a third party recordkeeper.

That's a great question, and I'm sure you're not the only one that's confused. 401k's can only be offered by the employer, so an employee isn't able to set one up on their own. That's why we want to make it really easy for companies to get a 401k, so that we can expand people's access to them and help them save for retirement and get the tax benefits.

You do indeed have the option to merge multiple 401k accounts together after you leave your job.

Honest Dollar has a great retirement mission as well, but their accounts are structured as a SIMPLE IRA's, which are different from regular 401k's (SIMPLE IRA's have a lower contribution limit and require the company to match)

Nope, an employee can certainly opt to pick their own investments! Though we've found that the vast majority of employees don't want to bother with choosing funds and doing the work of managing and rebalancing their 401k accounts themselves.

Yes, we have access to Vanguard's lower-fee admiral funds. Companies can pick which funds they want in their 401k plan, although most choose a standard lineup of Vanguard index funds that spans across all the major asset classes and risk categories.

For 401k plans that have access to Vanguard's target date funds, they can be a decent choice. Unfortunately, the majority of 401k's don't even offer Vanguard as an option -- instead, employees are stuck with high-fee mutual funds because they give kickbacks to the 401k company.

That said, employees using our investment advice get additional diversification (6-7 asset classes), as well as a more personalized recommendation that takes into account not just your age, but also your risk tolerance, financial situation, other investments, etc. We think that's better than a one-size-fits-all fund.

That's a good question, and we want to make it clear that we don't touch any of the employee's money -- all investments are held in an SIPC-insured secure trust account by one of the nation's largest third party custodians that deals with billions of dollars. And no matter what happens to us as a company, our customers will be able to continue to use the 401k plans we've set up for them.

That said, we do think youth has its advantages, esp. in a stodgy industry like finance -- some of most exciting fintech companies were started by young founders (ex. Stripe, Betterment, etc.).

The last startup I co-founded, I was at for 7 years. I plan to be at this one for 10+.

Our advice is based off decades of Nobel Prize-winning academic research on best practices for long-term investing.. And as an SEC registered investment advisor, we serve as a fiduciary to the 401k plan and avoid all conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about how the 401k industry operates today: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/401k-conflicts-hurt-nest-egg/...

Thank you for your feedback. We will take it into consideration, [name].

Thanks! The email verification is to make sure that users don't enter someone else's email (thereby spamming them), and also so I know that the emails aren't getting flagged as spam.

Fully agreed with your point about wishing there was something else to do after signing up.

Job Change Notifier sends you an email alert whenever any of your LinkedIn connections change jobs. I built this as a weekend project using the LinkedIn API.

For startups (like ours) that sell their products to other companies, you can find out when your company's allies get promoted or move into decision-making roles. Or, use it to generally keep up to date on your professional network.