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- [00:01]
A
The problem is not new, but the solutions we're coming up with are very innovative and very new and they ride on a lot of the innovation that happened in AI the last few years.
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B
Welcome back to another episode of Builders. As always, this show is brought to you by Frontlines IO, Silicon Valley's leading B2B podcast production studio. If you're bringing technology to market and want to learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with Venture backed founders and marketers. Where they talk, all things go to market. Of course, if you want to launch your own podcast, we offer podcasts as a service to more than 80 tech startups. The idea there is very simple. You show up and host and we do everything else. Now, with all that said, let's jump in today's episode. Today we're speaking with Bassam, co founder and CEO of Avantos. AI Bassam, welcome to the show.
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A
Thanks for having me, Brad.
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B
Of course. So when you're on that flight that you take a lot from Atlanta, New York City, if you have someone sitting down next to you who likes to talk a lot and they ask you some so what do you do? How do you answer that question? What do you do?
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A
It's always an interesting question. I think for a lot of founders it's always interesting to explain what you do because it doesn't exist and you're creating it. So it's always that. But in Avento. So we've been in the wealth space for a very long time in the client management space, and we have created an operating system for client management. It's a big white space in the industry, in financial services. It's an old, old problem. The problem is not new, but the solutions we're coming up with are very innovative and very new and they ride on a lot of the innovation that happened in AI the last few years. And so we thought it was the right time to create a new way to do client management for financial services. We started in wealth management because it's an area that is acutely aware of that problem and it's also a fantastic growth area for a lot of financial services. But, but very quickly we're expanding into insurance, banking, capital markets and so on. It's all the same problem. Being able to surface complex relationships, onboarding them, servicing them, deepening the relationship is all things that Aventos tackle.
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B
And was that a no brainer from day one that wealth management was going to be the first market to go after, or did it take some iteration to uncover that that was the market to go after.
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A
So it wasn't evident until it was, if that makes sense. So we always knew the problem existed. So Rabia, my co founder and I spent 20 years in this space in different shape and form. Like whether in consulting in our first company, Encore or in Avantos, in some shape or form, everybody was dealing with some onboarding or servicing in financial services. And it's a big problem. Wealth was not immediately evident. We were thinking about insurance, capital markets, banks. There's different flavor to it. Wealth was on the table. But then we had the design partner coming in a big wealth manager, Mercer Advisors, who from the get go were very excited about building a new way to service their clients. And the president of Mercer Advisor, very innovative, he was thinking big and he said what I have in place does not do it. And so we partner up with Mercer Advisor, building Aventus in stealth mode at the beginning to see how it works, how the different pieces fit. And once we started getting the impact, the real impact by deploying it is when Rabia and I decided to found the company back in September 2024 and launch officially Avantos.
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B
And when you were in that design partner phase, that first one there, what were the big learnings that you had?
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A
So we always had a very strong hypothesis that the core of the issue is the data. How you think about data. Like in financial services, as you can imagine, there's no lack of data. Actually there's too much data. If one can argue the problem is context. How do you marry the data and how you build a way that is able to represent not just the client data, because that's one piece of the equation. People gravitate towards client data, client360, what have you. But you need to also represent the team servicing the client. So the advisor, the customer, success people, operations, all of them servicing the clients, they have their own data and own structure, their own entitlement and representing also the product, like what clients are buying. And these are very complex products and they have very complex workflows, et cetera, et cetera. Solving one part is not enough. What was a big for us is we tried to solve it at the beginning with a traditional way of representing data tables. It gets out of control very, very quickly. It doesn't matter like how you structure, it gets out of control very quickly. Hence why people revert to paper a lot of the times. So what we did is we said we're going to actually use an established technology, but is particularly well suited for it, which is a knowledge graph. And because it was an AI era. It is particularly also well suited for any AI agent because it literally contextualize all the data and you can have very complex relationships between those data elements without breaking your model. And so that was a big aha moment. Once we deployed that knowledge graph, everything started flowing not magically, but very, very seamlessly. And so that was very exciting for us.
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B
You mentioned paper. There is that your primary competitor is paper and people using paper.
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A
Yeah, paper is the big one. Swivel Chair is another big one. Meaning like, I have a workflow here, I have a workflow here, I have a workflow here. So Swivel Chair is another big one. Sometimes people use platforms like CRMs or task managers or like some product account portfolio management system and things like that to do some workflows. I would bucket those into the swivel chair bucket, where you're doing one piece of the equation, and then you have to do something else and something else. These platforms really were not built to maintain a client relationship. They were built to do a very specific function. CRM is built to do sales, not servicing. Task management is built for operations, not for your advisors. And Frontline and product management are built to service products. But clients own many, many products with different custodians, different types of products. So it gives you one slice of the equation. So nothing is perfect that exists today. And literally why the reason we created
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B
Aventus and what's your market category then? Because it sounds like it's not a CRM for wealth management. It sounds like it's much, much more than that. How do you define and describe the market category that you're in and that people are buying?
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A
So, Brett, one of the things that we struggle with is literally a definition of what the category is. CRM, Client relationship management. I mean, like, they hijack the word itself without being a client. Relationship management, they're a sales tool. They're literally very good at sales, campaigning, getting leads, leads generation, and managing those pieces of the equation. Everything else you have to code, you might as well code on a different platform. And so that piece was taken. And us calling it like a relationship management and what have you was very problematic because we're not that, but we are managing relationship. The other pieces was a bit clearer. We're not a workflow tool per se, because we are specific to the area. So what we call ourselves is an operating system for client management. There's a bunch of overlaps over there, but that's how we describe ourselves very concretely to our clients. The flip side of it the product market fit that we have is spot on for the market. We don't have to explain a lot what we do. We show up and we say we focus on client management, particularly onboarding and servicing. Our clients immediately get it. And it's like an acute problem for everyone so that we don't have to explain a lot what we are and we're not. They're like you solve a problem that I have on my hand. I get it.
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B
This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines I.O. podcast. Now back to today's episode and how do you think about expansion outside of wealth management? I know you touched on the other areas that you're going into. I would imagine that there's a lot of different areas you can go into. And when there's a lot of different areas, at least for me as a founder, I feel overwhelmed and I feel stressed about where to go and want to choose the right one. Of course. How do you think about evaluating where to go next in terms of market expansion?
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A
Very good. And we've already done that with our latest fundraising, our Series A. We pick a few strategic partners to come and be our design partners in those different areas, as well as doing it for us because we started in wealth management. A lot of the financial institutions already have a wealth management business in them. Bank insurance, they have a wealth management business. So it's a natural extension to look at financial institutions that already have an established wealth business.
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B
Mm.
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A
Start there and expand. This is what we did, for example, with Guardian Life. So Guardian Life is obviously a big life insurer, but they have a wealth business and they want to fix the wealth business or create a client management solution for their wealth business. But again, the idea is they want to deepen the relationship, get their wealth clients to think about annuities and life and vice versa. So that was a very natural client for us. And the adjacency between wealth product and life and annuity is natural because life and annuity are really wealth product. They're just serviced by an insurance company. So it's a very natural extension to that. Another partner of ours, Vanguard, again All of this is public. It's an asset manager, big asset manager and a big brokerage business. But they're also building a wealth business. So they want the platform for wealth and cross selling from their brokerage into wealth. And finally sei, which is a big custodian and also service a lot of banks as part of their wealth business. So banks have their wealth business and their SEI is the custodian for it. So banking is a natural now adjacency for us. So we're picking the design partners that are very strategics and using wealth to expand into the other products.
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B
And how do you think about branding? So I was on your site earlier, I have it pulled up now. It doesn't to me look like a wealth management company. Like when I picture a wealth management company, it would be like a sailboat or some like calming skis, you know, different imagery like this that you just like all over the place. And I have to imagine that there was a decision made to say let's not look exactly like our customers, let's look different. Take us behind the scenes on that. Because I feel like with a lot of companies I talk to, they're constantly balancing that, like do we try to look like our customers or do we try to look different? You've taken an approach to look very different. At least that's what it looks like from the outside.
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A
Yeah, yeah. We're a technology company. We're fundamentally an AI native technology company. We built it from the ground up, so we should look as it. And that's how we took the approach again for branding. It's always, there's never a right answer, there's a bunch of good answers and what have you. We also didn't want to go all dial it all the way up to being like extreme innovative and extreme provocative in terms of branding because our clients are by design conservative as well. So we want it to be technology, but we also wanted to be conservative in how we present technology. The colors you choose, the wording you choose, et cetera, et cetera.
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B
And was that hard to get right?
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A
We're still working on it. I think so. Yes, it is. And it's a continuous evolution. You should have seen our sites during our seed funding. It looks like fundamentally different and really bad in my opinion. And so it's an evolution and it never ends. And we'll keep on evolving it, but we're pretty happy where the direction it's taking.
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B
I think it's good to look back at your early versions of the website and at Least for me. I feel a little bit embarrassed about some of the early iterations that I had on the website and I hate that they're back there on like the Wayback Machine that anyone can see what, you know, our brand looked like 10 years ago. But that's, everyone deals with that, I think.
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A
And we had like Rabia and I had our sheriff, like our board member calling us and like, when are you going to update your website? That was when we were at like the seed funding piece because like he's like, I have a bunch of clients, I send them and I don't understand what you do on your website and it's all over the place and what have you. So we made it a point actually to revamp that very quickly before our Series A.
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B
And given your background, it doesn't look like you spent that much time or any time really thinking about marketing or being involved in marketing and things like that. So for you, what does that ramp up been like to really learn, go to market, learn marketing, learn sales. And you know, real reason I'm asking is a lot of founders I interview, they're in the exact same boat. They were in, you know, technical positions, they weren't doing marketing, they weren't CMOs who became founders. What was that ramp like for you and what lessons have you learned as you ramped up?
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A
So this is where I benefited a lot. I had the luxury of like eventos is not the first company we were part of growing. So we learned a lot from our days in Encore as well in terms of how we approach it, how we think about it and what have you. For us in Avantos, like Rabia and I, like my co founder, we decided that our approach should be consistent. It is our strengths in terms of how we do it. We want to go to enterprise. That is our bread and butter. We know how to service big clients and manage big clients. So with that in mind, going to enterprise and asking to be a foundational layer does not require market. It requires you to know the client super well. It requires a network for you to come in and be credible obviously with the track record you have. So we haven't spent much time or effort on marketing per se because our target audience is something we can go directly to on a one to one basis. Having said that, as we're now scaling, we are expanding our market target and we need to be now starting to invest in marketing, starting to invest in how a go to market team should look like, go to, et cetera, et cetera. So far it's been purely focused on big enterprises and these things. You can do it more on a retail level than a wholesale level like marketing and go to market. This show is brought to you by the global talent company, a marketing leader's best friend in these times of budget cuts and efficient growth. We help marketing leaders find, hire, vet and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70% less than their US and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit globaltalent.co.
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B
as you start to think about that, go to market, plan the marketing plan. Is there anything that you're just not gonna do that would maybe surprise people to say, like, you know, these are common marketing things that other companies would do, we're not gonna do that at all. Or is it still early days for you and you haven't thought too much about, like, the specific tactics that you'd be deploying?
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A
I think it's still a bit early days. The things I know it's not us to do and we're not going to do is like the mass emails, mass call type of motion. We're not that product. We're not a widget that you're able to like sell very quickly. And like, we're more transformational as a deployment. So I don't think these lead particularly well to these type of motion. So we know we're not going to do this outside of that. To your point, Brett, like, we're still figuring it out how we're going to
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B
go about it makes perfect sense. What about communicating to an industry that is conservative? Obviously, I think there's like a fine line when it comes to how you talk about technology. I think there's a lot of fear in all industries about AI that it's going to just come in and wipe out all the jobs and take away all the jobs. How do you communicate that in a way that your customers are excited about your AI but not scared that it's going to lead to them no longer having a job?
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A
Yeah. I would say for our customers, our clients, there's two main things top of mind for them. One is, yeah, from a conservative perspective, security. What is happening to my data? You are getting deployed and with AI in place, how are you ensuring that my data's safe, my data is not, getting leveraged by other clients, et cetera, et cetera. Again, we use our experience. We built Avantos for enterprise from the get go. And this is our, like, we've been 10 years in the business building systems like that. So we come with credibility in terms of how we can deploy and we Spent a lot of investment R and D in terms of isolation, how we can isolate the data for each client making sure there's all the things that you would do. So that's kind of like typically the first thing that enterprise come in, the second one is yes, more on the automation side of the equation. Great, you're going to do a lot of the pieces. The good news in wealth management, there's not enough advisors to service all the clients they want to service, like literally. And so getting advisor more productive means additional clients they can service. Clients that usually for example, did not have the net worth that it makes sense for them to service are now able to service. I can go and service 200 clients instead of 100 clients and I can do it as effectively because of all the automation that is happening there. So that's typically what we hear and what people are craving. And it's typically the first thing that people ask us how much productivity you increase from an advisor perspective? And typically we do increase it. We increase by about, from our measurement about 30% and we measure it by advisor to client ratio how many more clients you can serve as an advisor by using our platform versus not using it. And that resonates quite well.
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B
I mean I'm not in this space but it sounds like that would be a no brainer, right? If you present the data in that way that they increase productivity. For people who say no, why do they say no?
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A
Again, it's never the product market fit, it's never saying I don't need it or I have onboarding figured out. Like that is not something I've heard so far. Typically it's a timing thing meaning like I just spend X million doing some form of onboarding. I'm not ready for it. And they'll tell you I don't think it's solved, but I'm not ready for round two. This is the most common piece I would hear.
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B
And final question for you, let's talk about the big picture vision here so we can go out three years, five years, 10 years. What's the big picture vision for everything that you're building?
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A
So truly when we call ourselves an operating system, we truly want to be that. We want to be that layer that enables financial services to truly deepen the relationship with the client. That means a number of things. That means being able to do things that you currently do well, which is like all the stuff that you normally do, but it's also doing things that you wouldn't have done, which is most in the industry because financial services is converging is literally what is technically called cross selling. A given client does not want to be serviced like according to the product they own. Like, here's an advisor for this slice of my portfolio, here's the broker now for my insurance products, here's a banker for my mortgage, et cetera, et cetera. They truly want to be serviced across the board. And so being that multi product operating system never existed is what we are building. AI is a huge boost to how it enables us to do this mainly around coordination of data, mainly around leveraging insights to surface through life events, detecting life events and what have you. All of this is to deepen that relationship. This is what we're on track to building with Avantos.
- [19:27]
B
Amazing. Well, love what you're building, love how you're building it. We'd love to have you come back on every few months or every year to keep us updated on the journey here before we wrap. For those who are listening and that want to follow along with you in this journey, where should we send them? Where should they go?
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A
Go to Aventos AI and ping us. We're more than happy talking more about financial services.
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B
Amazing. Well, thanks so much for taking the time, Brett.
- [19:47]
A
Thank you so much.
- [19:50]
B
Well, that's all for today. Today's episode of Builders, brought to you by the Frontlines. If you want more amazing content like this, visit Frontlines IO where you'll find a library of more than 1500 interviews with founders, marketers and other GTM leaders, where we unpack the tactical lessons from their journey. And of course, as always, if you do want to launch your own podcast, we'd love to have a conversation with you. Visit Frontlines IO Podcasts as a service. Mention that you listen, mention you love the show and and we'll give you a 10% discount. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.