29 Mar Steve Lockshin’s view of Advizr on Kitces podcast
Steve Lockshin speaks to Michael Kitces on his Financial Advisor Success Podcast yesterday
Listen or read the full podcast here
Steve: Just go in with your eyes wide open. Again, I don’t want to take away the wanderlust of “this is really cool, we should do this,” and perhaps it creates the next great thing. I’ll give you a perfect example. There’s a company that you know and I know that I’m an investor and on the board of advisors of which is Advizr, A-D-V-I-Z-R.
Michael: Yeah, financial planning software company.
Steve: Yeah. First time I met them, I’ll never forget, they came into the hotel I was staying, they showed me their software, I’m like, “It looks nice. Doesn’t do anything special. You guys have no shot.” And that was basically my message to them. They went home and they’re like, “Okay, good feedback. What do we need to do? We’re not stopping.” And six months later I come across them again and they’ve made a lot of improvements. And now I’m like, “Okay, you really are doing something different.” And I end up investing in the company and now I’m actively involved trying to help them succeed.
And I think they will succeed, they’re building amazing stuff. And they have the ability because they started later. And I don’t mean for this to be a promote for them, but they started later and they’ve got new architecture. So when they’re competing with MoneyGuidePro and eMoney, which may have deeper tools that don’t get fully utilized, I believe, by most advisors, they’re hitting the core in a much more flexible way that will allow them, I think if they do it right, to slingshot past the incumbents.
And so if you’re an advisor, you have to think, “Am I going to buy the incumbent because it’s safer or am I going to buy something new because it makes sense?”