Disrupting FinanceJon Stein, Founder & CEO, Betterment

From an early age, I was into happiness & efficiency

“Personal Management is about mapping a plan for your life

that will involve setting short-range and long-range goals and investigating different ways

to reach those goals.”

BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

College taught me two things:(1) The value of rational decisions; and (2) We humans are (crazy) irrational.

Science of EconomicsScience of Human Be-

havior

I majored in economics and took philosophy & psychology courses in pursuit of a unified theory of happiness.

40 percent of my graduating class went into finance; I couldn’t tell you what an investment banker did.

I took a little graduation money and quickly made less of it.

Source: Thomson Financial Datastream

A star has fallenEnron share price, $

I bought here

I sold here

100

80

60

40

20

1996 97 98 99 2000 01 020

After a post-grad, pre-med diploma, I took to the road. I wanted a career with meaning, doing well by doing good.

As luck would have it, my happiest friend offered me a job in finance, the last place I thought I’d end up.

The world I entered had no gravity. Everyone was making money, lots of it.

My time in finance

I built consumer products & managed banks’ investments. Hiding fees was the hottest game in town.

One broker took the opposite side of customer trades, turning investments into profits in 2 months or less.

Customer BrokerAverage Investment

= $ 2,000Average Profit

= $ 2,000

Kahneman and Thaler taught me to apply a customer-centric perspective. What would I want?

Daniel Kahneman Richard H. ThalerIsraeli-American psychologist. Shared the

2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sci-ences

with Vernon L. Smith

American economist and the Ralph & Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of

Behavioral Science & Economics

The name came first…

“Making it better” =

I wanted a service I could recommend to my friends.

What we expect What we want

Transparency

Delight

Accessibility

Automation

Efficiency

Hidden fees

Dreadful UX

Barriers, exclusivity

Manual process

Brick and mortar

“Betterment is the ease of online saving combined with smart investing.”

Simple choices

Sound advice

Intuitive interface

We imagined we’d launch in 5 months. This was optimistic.

The name came first.We launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in May 2010.

Betterment’s strength is rooted in vertical integration

Our product has evolved…

The early days… Today…

Today… We’ve built the best-in-market product for our customers.

Our interface is clean, simple, and intuitive.

A smarter investing experience on all devices.

One year ago today, mobile was less than 10 percent of our sign-ups, traffic and logins.

Today:

• 25 percent of sign-ups

• 40 percent of total traffic

• 60 percent of customer logins

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you complete financial peace of mind.

The most exciting financial company of our generation is the one you use every day and never think about.

“The march towards technology is inevitable.”- The Wall Street Journal, “The New Money Apps” 6/15/2012

Our story is only beginning.

Growing is not easy…

Hiring top people is essential, and we insist that everyone is smart, open and passionate.

Our hiring tactics and incentives include:

Referral bonus

Hosting events at our of-fice

Building internal “talent” team

External recruiting

Advertising

We incentivize with equity and company-wide bonuses to align around creating long-term value.

What’s next?

More advice

New features to guide better financial decisions

Improved mobile

Betterment Institutional

HR partnerships

thank you… questions?

for more information, contact us at partners@betterment.com