Welcoming Wealthsimple to the PLUS Collective
One of the core investing themes at PLUS is the conscious consumer. Consumers now have more choices than ever, which is why it is so crucial to build a reliable, transparent, and continuously evolving product. We are excited to announce our latest investment in Wealthsimple, the company behind some of Canada’s leading digital financial products. Despite being a relatively new entrant to the fintech scene in Canada, Wealthsimple now has 1 million clients + 1 million tax filers and 50% brand awareness among all Canadians, as they’ve revolutionized Canadians’ ability to take control over their finances.
Wealthsimple, which initially launched as a robo-advisor six years ago, has significantly and successfully expanded its product offering, which speaks to strong trust with its customer base. The Wealthsimple team has been successfully able to both identify and then deliver on what current and potential customers want. Over the past two years, they have launched a Trade product (Canada’s first commission-free trading platform), a Crypto product (the only securities regulated crypto platform in Canada), and a Cash product (allows peer-to-peer money transfers). Each of these products could be an entire business on its own — think Venmo or Coinbase — but the Wealthsimple team has managed to execute on several fronts at once, with more to come.
The team at Wealthsimple, led by CEO Michael Katchen, is not stopping at improving the financial services experience for their customers — they are also committed to improving the lives of Canadians most in need through the Wealthsimple Foundation. The foundation enables access to education savings that will allow more Canadian children from low-income communities to access funds to advance their opportunities for education. Given our profit-meets-purpose mentality at PLUS, we are energized by the impact Wealthsimple can have through its charity arm and our clients’ ability to help amplify that impact.
We’re grateful to partner with Michael and the rest of the Wealthsimple team in this Series F financing alongside our artist and athlete clients and good friends at Meritech, Greylock, ICONIQ, Dragoneer, DST Global, Redpoint, TCV, and others.
