Each month as part of Digital.NYC’s Startups to Watch program we connect with the winning company to find out more about them. Here's what we learned in a recent talk with Sallie Krawcheck Co-Founder and CEO and Charlie Kroll, Co-Founder and President of Ellevest.
Digital.NYC: Tell us about your company. What does Ellevest do?
Ellevest is a digital investment platform for women. Driven by a mission to close the gender investing gap, Ellevest helps women take control of their financial futures through investing with a powerful algorithm based on women’s unique financial needs — longer lifespans, more frequent career breaks, and the gender pay gap.
Digital.NYC: What is your background?
Sallie: I’ve been in the financial services industry for almost thirty years. At different points in my career I ran Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and was CFO of Citigroup. I was also a research analyst. These days, I’m an entrepreneur on a mission to close the gender investing gap.
Charlie: I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole career. I started my first company, Andera in my dorm room at Brown, and sold it 13 years later to a public company after raising several rounds of venture capital and going through real ups and downs. I also enjoy helping young entrepreneurs plot their course, as a founding board member of Venture for America and Chair of Brown’s Entrepreneurship Program. Digital.NYC:
How did you come up with the idea and the name for Ellevest?
Sallie: I also own Ellevate Network, which is a global professional women’s network. It was originally named 85 Broads, so my first task was to rename that. I wanted something that indicated it was female, and I also wanted a sense of forward motion and momentum. One day, after a long run, I started writing down names in a notebook; I felt almost like my brain shaking a bit and knew I had an idea I liked about to emerge. It was Ellevate (get it? Elle is French for She), and I named that business Ellevate Network. With that as a starting point, Charlie came up with the name Ellevest. So a joint effort!
Digital.NYC: Who is your target customer?
Sallie: We target professional women who have the basics of their financial lives in order. They keep track of their budgets, they’re likely actively contributing to their 401(k)’s, and they’re looking for a place to invest additional funds. That’s why we’ve worked our tails off to make a userfriendly, streamlined process that will cost less than a traditional advisor and also take a lot less time.
Charlie: While women are our core target, Ellevest works for men too. Our algorithm actually also adjusts to take into account men’s (shorter) lives.
Digital.NYC: How do you think Ellevest is going to disrupt the market? What are the main differentiators between you and your competitors?
Sallie: The financial advice industry has a long track record of doing a great job for men, but not necessarily for women. When you turn on CNBC, it can feel a lot like ESPN. There are a lot of sports and war analogies. Whether intentional or not, it’s messages like these that have made investing feel inaccessible to many women.
Charlie: We didn’t just “pink and shrink” the old model. We conducted hundreds of hours of research with women to build an investment platform they’d actually want to use, and incorporated their longer lifespans, different salary curves, more frequent career breaks, and other unique factors into our planning algorithm. We also built the platform to be goals based, with a focus on staying on track rather than beating the market. And we’ve got four patents pending.
Digital.NYC: Why did you chose New York City as your base for Ellevest?
Sallie: I know from my years on Wall Street how important this city is to the financial industry and now I’m seeing first hand how that parallels in tech. We’ve been able to source top notch engineering and technology talent; there’s no place I’d rather be.
Charlie: Having grown up in NYC, I always wanted to come back and start a company here, but until recently the city wasn’t great for startups. That’s all changed now and there’s no better place to start a financial technology company. Our office is in the Flatiron District right near Madison Square Park, which is a great neighborhood for startups. Plus, the food within walking distance is amazing.
Digital.NYC: What else might our readers be interested to know about Ellevest
Charlie: We’ve built an amazing (and majority female) team at Ellevest with a diverse set of backgrounds, like our head of Product Alexandria Stried, who managed digital products for Weight Watchers, our Chief Investment Officer Sylvia Kwan who has a Ph.D. in engineering economic systems from Stanford and decades of experience at places like Charles Schwab and Financial Engines, our head of Design Melissa Cullens who worked on the redesign of Vogue.com, our head of Operations David Rossien who has 30 years of financial services experiences at places like Merrill Lynch and smaller startups, our CTO Michael Smith who was lead engineer for Thrillist, and the list goes on.
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