Forbes - USA (2020-03)

Money Moves 2020

USE A RETIREMENT-INCOME HACK

Figuring how best to draw annual income from var-

ious accounts in retirement can be bewildering. But

new hybrid-robo services such as Vanguard’s Person-

al Advisor, Schwab’s Intelligent Income, Capital One’s

United Income and Fintech 5 0 member Kindur make it

easy. The apps create an individualized asset alloca-

tion and tax-optimized income plan (they’ll even send

you a monthly “paycheck” and counsel you on when

to take Social Security), all under the watch of on-call

human advisors. Costs vary, but are usually far less

than for a traditional planner. —Ashlea Ebeling

MARCH 20 20

never been to South America. I want to travel for

a year and try to work on this remotely as an ad-

venture. Figure out what I want to do with my

life,” he says. “[It] was an interesting experience

to see the financial system in another country

like that, that had gone through hyperinflation.”

Later, as a coder at Airbnb, Armstrong had his

crypto epiphany. His employer was sending mon-

ey to landlords in Latin America. He describes

the process this way: “High fees... long delays

... opaque. We’d try sending money to somebody
in Uruguay and didn’t know how much would
show up on the other side.”
In 2010 he read the manifesto, published by a
person (or persons) under the alias Satoshi Naka-
moto, that proposed bitcoin as an underground
currency. Its transactions are recorded on a led-
ger called the blockchain, maintained in dupli-
cated computer files by a band of self-appointed
guardians called nodes. Disputes about transac-
tions and ground rules are resolved by majori-
ty vote. The nodes are kept honest, and trouble-
makers at bay, by requiring a participant in the
network to engage in some arithmetic busywork
before certifying a batch of transactions. A node
who completes the arithmetic task is awarded a
few new coins.
The busywork, called mining, did not inter-
est Armstrong. But he did see an opportunity in
the business of safeguarding the keys to the coins
and setting up transactions. Anybody can do that
with some readily available software, but if you
mishandle the protocol your coins will be stolen
or lost.
Armstrong took a flyer on bitcoins, buying
$1,000 worth at $9 a coin. The price sank to $2.
He kept the faith.
Working weekends and late nights, Armstrong
wrote code in Ruby and JavaScript to buy and
store coins. He was doing for the bitcoin network
what an earlier generation of programmers had
done for the internet by creating browsers.
It was fun. Was it worth quitting his day job?

FORBES.COM

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AXONI

NEW YORK CITY

BLOCKCHAIN & BITCOIN

Uses blockchain technology

to overhaul financial-markets

infrastructure, most notably

the DTCC’s Trade Information

Warehouse, which tracks

$10 trillion worth of credit

derivatives around the globe.

FUNDING: $59 million; latest

valuation of $171 million^1

BONA FIDES: 15 banks, including

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup,

just launched new Axoni-built

infrastructure for equity swaps

COFOUNDERS: CEO Greg Schvey,

33, and CTO Jeff Schvey, 35,

brothers who also cofounded

TradeBlock

BEHAVOX

NEW YORK CITY

WALL STREET & ENTERPRISE

Sells system used to monitor

traders for insider trading

and market manipulation.

Its algorithms screen email

and chat data, while its voice

biometrics track phone calls

on loud trading desks.

FUNDING: $20 million; latest

valuation of $300 million

BONA FIDES: Used by more than

40 companies; revenues grew

130% in 2019

FOUNDER & CEO: Erkin Adylov,

36, a Kyrgyzstan-born former

Goldman Sachs analyst and

hedge fund portfolio manager

BETTER.COM

NEW YORK CITY

REAL ESTATE

Online mortgage originator

provides home shoppers with

preapprovals in as little as

three minutes. Uses matching

software to sell loans to insti-

tutions such as Chase and

Fannie Mae.

FUNDING: $254 million; latest

valuation of $610 million

BONA FIDES: Revenue increased

fivefold to $115 million in 2019,

thanks in part to a refi boom

FOUNDER & CEO: Vishal Garg,

42, also started MyRichUncle,

an early online lender that shut

down in 2009

BETTERMENT

NEW YORK CITY

INVESTING

Robo-advice pioneer offers

managed ETF portfolios for

0.25% of assets a year, or

0.40% for access to human

financial planners, too.

FUNDING: $275 million; latest

valuation of $800 million^1

BONA FIDES: $22 billion in assets

under management

COFOUNDER & CEO:

Jon Stein, 40

BREX

SAN FRANCISCO

B2B LENDING

Issues corporate credit cards

designed for startups. In Oc-

tober, it rolled out a corporate

cash-management account.

FUNDING: $315 million; latest

valuation of $2.6 billion

BONA FIDES: More than 10,000

customers, including Airbnb

COFOUNDERS & CO-CEOS:

Henrique Dubugras, 24;

Pedro Franceschi, 23

CADRE

NEW YORK CITY

REAL ESTATE

Online platform allows institu-

tional and wealthy investors to

buy into commercial real estate

partnerships at lower fees.

FUNDING: $133 million; latest

valuation of $800 million

BONA FIDES: Has financed

purchases of $3.1 billion worth

of property in 36 deals

COFOUNDERS: CEO Ryan

Williams, 32; brothers

Jared Kushner, 39, and

Joshua Kushner, 34

RYAN WILLIAMS

(^1) According to PitchBook
THE FORBES FINTECH 50