Wealthsimple co-founder Mike Katchen discusses the regulatory barriers his startup faced trying to digitize wealth management in Canada.
Disclosure
Y Combinator rejected Wealthsimple's early prototype due to market doubts
“We applied to YC, little known fact about Wealthsimple's history at this stage. Got turned down because they didn't quite believe that anybody wanted what we were trying to build.”
Assertion Supported
Canada lacked API clearing infrastructure like Apex when Wealthsimple launched
“In the US? Because the industry is so big. You have these infrastructure players like apex clearing that if you want to start a stock trading business, you just like ask them for their APIs and you plug in. It is super simple. In Canada, none of that existed.”
Assertion Contradicted
Wealthsimple currently manages roughly $20 billion in client assets
“You know, companies are roughly twenty billion or so today, which is you know, nothing to sneeze at, but it's not a trillion yet.”
Assertion Supported
Regulators initially forced Wealthsimple to call every new customer for suitability
“It took us like six months to get the approval, which felt like forever. Maybe it wasn't in a regulatory world, but then even when we got approval, we actually had all these conditions on it where we had to call every single client who signed up to do a suitab…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Wealthsimple used six months of data to convince regulators of digital onboarding
“It took us another, like, six months of showing them the data of, like, how phone calls really didn't change the answer for people, and people really didn't want, young people in particular, like, really didn't want to speak to anybody on the phone. To convinc…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wealthsimple benefited massively from a bull market and the meme stock craze
“Like we were a massive beneficiary of starting the business in a huge bull run in the markets. You know, we were around with a stock trading app during meme stocks that was just incredibly successful.”