22: Betterment CEO Jon Stein: A Decade of Pioneering Robo Advisory
Invest Like a Boss
Sam Marks Johnny FD Derek Spartz
4.8 • 518 Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2016
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jon Stein is the very popular CEO of Betterment, a platform that is pioneering “Robo-Advisory” and a listener favorite. In fact, the term “Robo-Advisory” was one of the reasons we wanted to start the podcast. When we first heard about Betterment, it was clear a new modern era of technology and investment advice was now available. Aside from the platform itself, we wanted to hear about Jon’s story and why he started Betterment. And a very inspiring one it is. Betterment has been in the works for almost a decade. You’ll be intrigued to hear how and where it got started, and what the future holds.
Jon’s - LinkedIn
Betterment account sign up - For every friend who funds, you get 30 days free, and each friend gets 6 months free.
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Money master of the game - Tony Robbins
Time Stamp:
03:00 - Starting Betterment in New York City
05:30 - John’s personal story behind Betterment
11:20 - Launching Techcrunch Disrupt
16:00 - Transitioning away from using financial advisors
18:00 - Staying the course during a decrease in market value
19L50 - Growth and infrastructure over the next few years
22:40 - Active vs. passive - Evidence based
25:00 - Opportunity for international investors
27:00 - Being an emotional or physiological advisor
31:10 - Benefits for active and engaged investors
34:00 - John’s advice to his younger self
34:53 - Sam’s investments in Betterment
38:38 - Two side effects to robo-advisor
44:50 - The downside to Vanguard
49:00 - Removing emotion to prevent a loss
55:00 - Why is Betterment right for you
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Invest Like a Boss podcast. I'm Sam Marks and I'm Johnny FD. We're self-made entrepreneurs who invest our own money and use modern technology to invest like a boss. Join us each week for exclusive interviews with our network of modern investors, business owners, and multi-millionaires to discover new ways to invest our hard-earned cash. Hey, everyone, this is Johnny and welcome to episode 22 of the Invest Like a Boss podcast, back with Sam |
| 0:22.2 | Marks, and I'm so excited that this week we have the CEO of the betterment coming on. |
| 0:29.1 | Yeah, me too. This is a highly anticipated episode, and I got to say, you know, Robo investing |
| 0:35.0 | that term alone was one of the things that excited us to start |
| 0:38.8 | this podcast. What is robo investing? Yeah, so John Stein, the founder and CEO of Betterment, |
| 0:44.9 | is such an amazing guy with such a crazy story that I hope he gets into because it's one of |
| 0:51.4 | those things where I really believe that, you know, the terms of betterment and |
| 0:56.7 | investing betterment, these are things that, you know, we can discuss after this episode, you know, |
| 1:00.8 | because, you know, obviously he's the founder of CEO of the company, so he's always going to |
| 1:05.5 | have a great thing to say. So me and you can kind of deep dive into that little bit more. |
| 1:08.9 | But I think you can learn so much about someone |
| 1:11.8 | based on who they are and their stories so i i'm really excited for you to ask them those type of |
| 1:17.2 | questions even more than like like i don't have the numbers because the numbers you know are pretty |
| 1:21.2 | transparent we can just look on the site and see what the fees are and uh what the possible returns |
| 1:25.8 | are things like that. Yeah, definitely. |
| 1:28.1 | I mean, I've looked at a bunch of interviews that he's been in. |
| 1:30.9 | He's much, very much in the public eye. |
| 1:33.4 | And I really appreciate that about people in these new, especially directors in these new |
| 1:38.7 | fintech companies to come on and really explain this stuff in layman's terms, express why they started these companies |
| 1:45.7 | and how they work. And he's everywhere on the web and doing a lot of interviews to tell his story. |
| 1:51.8 | And I think that's really important, especially for people like us that we're trying to figure |
| 1:56.2 | out and navigate these new platforms, these new ways of investing. And John seems like a very charismatic guy, and he's always willing to tell a story. So we're excited to bring him on the show and talk about it. Yeah, so let's get him on. Let's kind of figure out, you know, let's find out his personality and his background, how he started, why he started betterment. And then, you know, me and you, you know, we can deep dive in the rest of it on our own time yeah |
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