Cashmere, an AI-based client acquisition platform for wealth management firms, announced it has raised a $3.6 million seed funding round. This seed round was led by Canapi Ventures, with participation from Benchstrength, Plug and Play, The House Fund, Courtyard Ventures, and angel backers. And as the lead investor, Canapi Ventures will act as board observers, providing strategic guidance as Cashmere scales its operations. The funding will advance product development and strategic hiring, including a newly appointed Head of Machine Learning.
Founded by Farbod Nowzad and Eshan Govil, Cashmere utilizes AI to automate the discovery, research, and engagement of prospective clients for wealth management firms at scale.
The company’s launch coincides with the ongoing ‘Great Wealth Transfer’ globally. Even though there is unprecedented ‘inheritocracy’ and many trillions of assets under management already today, the wealth management sector has a major client acquisition problem. From small, independent firms to larger companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the industry lacks reliable systems to build and nurture high-net-worth sales funnels.
Cashmere identifies when ideal customers are seeking wealth management services and matches them with best-fit advisors. And this includes capturing information on major life events, replicating human research at scale and augmenting this with data not readily accessible for most firms. It adheres to the rigorous standards of compliance and data security in the financial industry, and can be utilized through a standalone dashboard or deployed within a firm’s private ecosystem.
The key features include optimal matching (identifies and prioritizes the best prospects for each firm); Mutual Connections (Discovers potential mutual connections between advisors and prospects); Personalized Outreach (Generates and automates tailored content from advisors to specific prospects for improved engagement); Integrations (Plugs in with an existing CRM to monitor lead lists that firms may have, and improve discovery through client-similarity modeling).
KEY QUOTES:
“There’s essentially no other industry where you can acquire a non-enterprise client that generates $50k-100k per year in revenue and sticks around for 20-30 years. Despite this, the industry does not have the infrastructure and intelligence layer to consistently identify who the best clients are, match them with the right advisor and begin the trust-building process. By relying on referrals and dated processes, firms are leaving a lot of money on the table. We built Cashmere from first principles to address this.”
-Farbod Nowzad, Cashmere CEO and Co-founder
“Cashmere has hit on a fundamental challenge for wealth management firms in its mission to revolutionize client acquisition. Its platform equips firms with the intel they need to efficiently acquire and retain high-value clients, and their team has already begun working with advisor teams at some of the largest banking platforms. We believe that Cashmere’s technology will not only transform how wealth management firms operate but set a new standard for client acquisition across the industry.”
-Jeff Reitman, General Partner at Canapi Ventures
