Steve McLaughlin

You've had a lot of companies in the mutual fund industry that didn't win.

You had a lot that did.

And sometimes the ones that won big time were in the second wave.

So there's no saying that the guys who invented the popularized robo-advisor are going to be the winners.

But I tend to think those companies are going to do quite well.

I'm not an investor in those companies, but I know those guys.

I see them from far.

I'm a big fan.

So I think they're going to be winners.

And

I think they've already proven that to some extent because they've outlasted lots and lots of other guys that have tried to do it, right?

Even like a future advisory tried to do that and pivoted to B2B is now working with BlackRock.

So a lot of the guys that were doing B2C never really developed the brand name, developed the technology.

And I think I'm most proud of as it relates to these companies for them is they've raised a lot of money and they're really, I think they care a lot about the consumers behind the platform.

And they realize that if people actually manage their money correctly over the course of time,

it can create a much better society because the people will retire better, save more money, be able to donate more as they get older and things like that.

So there's sort of an odd social benefit to this whole thing.

When I sat down with some of those CEOs of these companies, that's some of the things they talk about.

It's hard to imagine people going their whole life just investing poorly, making bad decisions, and getting chopped at the knees on fees every year, just the fees alone.

can greatly impact your retirement and some bad decisions along the way, which I think generally the robo-advisor is going to keep you from making terrible decisions, which a lot of people do, selling when the market crashes or buying when the market spikes, or not doing tax loss harvesting and things like that.