Existing retail investment solutions, including robo-advisors, don’t serve customers’ long-term financial needs and goals. Investors are on a constant rollercoaster of emotional and counterproductive decision-making around stock picking or buying cryptocurrencies. Specifically for Millenials – the first post-war generation not to earn more than their parents by the time they reach their 30s – the path to building wealth is less clear than for previous generations.
This is why we are excited to back Sidekick, a digital active investment manager built for today’s rapidly changing world. Founded by serial entrepreneur Matthew Ford (CEO) and Peter Townsend (CTO), the UK-based company is on a mission to democratise the wealth-building products and opportunities currently only available to High-Net-Worth individuals, rethinking and restructuring products for a retail customer, starting with actively managed baskets of public equities and crypto, and a portfolio line of credit.
Started by a highly-experienced founding team with traditional asset management, consumer credit and fintech backgrounds, Sidekick provides retail investors access to a dedicated investment team who will provide regular updates on portfolio performance and share high-quality editorial content to help customers build their investment knowledge along the way.
“Most retail investors have two options to build wealth: settle for passive portfolios or they can try to time the market and pick stocks and crypto themselves without access to the training, tools and information needed to do this effectively. This funding will allow us to build a modern app-based investment service that gives customers the same professional expertise that only high-net-worth individuals are used to. We’ve already got a stellar team in place, and we’re now excited to be working towards regulatory approval to launch over the coming months,” highlights Matthew Ford, CEO and Co-Founder of Sidekick, and also an experienced fintech entrepreneur and investor.
On why we invested in Sidekick, our Partner Tom Wilson comments:
“Matt and Pete have a huge amount of fintech startup experience from their time founding Pariti and working on the exec team at Tandem. Matt’s even experienced the dark side with his time as a Fintech focused VC at Mouro Capital where we had the privilege of co-investing in Uncapped. All this to say, they’re the perfect team to be going after this opportunity. We believe there’s a massive business here to democratise access to financial products and help close the generational wealth gap”.
We are excited to participate in Sidekick’s £3.33M pre-seed round led by Octopus Ventures and joined by Semantic Ventures and prominent angel investors, including Will Neale, founder of Grabyo, Michael Pennington, co-founder of Gumtree, Ricky Knox, co-founder of Tandem, Michael Kent, co-founder of Azimo, Freddy Kelly, co-founder of Credit Kudos, and Mark Ransford, a serial FinTech investor. The fresh funding will support Sidekick’s journey towards becoming a regulated active investment manager that offers access to portfolios of both traditional and digital assets.
The team plans to build out the app-based product, expand the in-house asset management team, secure the required regulatory permissions and registrations to offer an innovative product mix including both stocks and crypto, and construct a responsible funding line for customers to borrow against their portfolios when needed. Sidekick has applied to the FCA for the relevant regulatory permissions and registrations and hope to launch upon authorisation in 2023.
For more information and to join the waitlist, visit sidekickmoney.com.