Mike Katchen, co-founder and CEO of Wealthsimple, explains how in-person corporate lunch and learn presentations served as the startup's first reliable customer acquisition channel.
“If I did one of these presentations, 20% of the audience would become a client, became the first like reliable customer acquisition channel we found. And it didn't matter how big the audience. So if there were five people, we get one client. If there were a hundred people, we get 20.”
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More from Mike Katchen
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.”
Mike KatchenApr 17, 2023▶ 8:32Mike Katchen, Co-Founder of Wealthsimple | How to Come up with an Idea that Gets Product Market Fit · PMF Show
AssertionSupported
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.”
Mike KatchenApr 17, 2023▶ 14:06Mike Katchen, Co-Founder of Wealthsimple | How to Come up with an Idea that Gets Product Market Fit · PMF Show
AssertionContradicted
Early Canadian regulations required in-person meetings to open investment accounts
“In fact, in Canada, if you wanted to open up an investment account at that time, there were rules that said that you needed to meet a financial advisor in person for an in-person suitability assessment for that person to actually build a portfolio on your beha…”
Mike KatchenApr 17, 2023▶ 14:26Mike Katchen, Co-Founder of Wealthsimple | How to Come up with an Idea that Gets Product Market Fit · PMF Show
AssertionContradicted
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.”
Mike KatchenApr 17, 2023▶ 22:37Mike Katchen, Co-Founder of Wealthsimple | How to Come up with an Idea that Gets Product Market Fit · PMF Show
AssertionSupported
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…”
Mike KatchenApr 17, 2023▶ 26:41Mike Katchen, Co-Founder of Wealthsimple | How to Come up with an Idea that Gets Product Market Fit · PMF Show
AssertionNot 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…”
Mike KatchenApr 17, 2023▶ 27:06Mike Katchen, Co-Founder of Wealthsimple | How to Come up with an Idea that Gets Product Market Fit · PMF Show
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