Rampell: Wealthfront originally launched as an active copy-trading platform named KaChing
Alex Rampell · Robinhood CEO: Making Everyone An Owner · Nov 21, 2025 · at 6:02
a16z General Partner Alex Rampell recounts the early history of Wealthfront and its pivot from active copy-trading to automated passive indexing.
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“So Keqing was kind of a brilliant idea that was ahead of its time, which was there. So Andy Ratcliffe started this company because I think he was on the board of Penn University of Pennsylvania, and they had all of these Public hedge fund money managers, long, short firms that would outperform the market. And why can't you democratize that in twofold? One is maybe Eric is an amazing money manager, but never got handed a fund. And then number two is if he has a great fund, why not let other people just off the street go invest with him and kind of copy their trades. And that was the original idea of Wealthfront was really kind of very, very active, like believing that people could beat the market. And then for a variety of reasons that pivoted into, like, the exact opposite.”
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