Farbod Nowzad
Cashmere, a tech startup that's automating client acquisition for wealth managers, has raised $3.6 million in a seed funding round.
Based in Los Angeles, the startup's platform finds and engages with prospective clients for wealth management firms. Traditionally, financial advisors operate in person and with mostly manual processes.
"We spent a lot of time talking to wealth managers, and there was a consistent narrative about the lack of tech solutions for client acquisition; this is an industry that has relied on word of mouth," Farbod Nowzad, CEO at Cashmere, told Business Insider. "We realized there was no sophisticated way of doing this at a time where there is a shift in the industry with some advisors phasing out their book."
Cashmere, founded by Nowzad Eshan Govil — both machine learning graduates — aggregates and cleans data from various sources to generate fresh leads. It's similar to a business like ZoomInfo, a searchable database for company contacts, but for sourcing clients for wealth managers.
The startup's platform, which has been used by UBS, provides details on prospective clients, such as inheritance, divorce, and company sales. It then uses AI to match leads with the best-suited member of the wealth management firm and to automate bespoke outreach emails, according to Cashmere's pitch deck.
The seed round was led by Canapi Ventures, with participation from Benchstrength, Plug and Play, The House Fund, Courtyard Ventures, and several angel backers.
"We're going to be really investing in engineering as well as in customer success as we ensure we're taking advantage of the data," Nowzad added. "We've had a steady stream of customers and a lot of inbound interest, so we'll grow our business development team to make noise and let people know we exist."
Check out Cashmere's 12-slide seed deck below:
