The AI Trying to Replace Your Financial Advisor with Fahad Hassan and David Cusatis

Dan Nathan (0:00)

In today's hyperfast markets, it's never been more important to consider every option to raise capital, drive growth and create value. Stay one step ahead with Strategic Alternatives, a podcast from RBC Capital Markets. This season, RBC's experts examine how corporates and investors are adapting their strategies, reassessing their portfolios, and reallocating capital to navigate uncertainty and volatility in the current macro environment. Tune in to Strategic Alternatives, the RBC Capital Markets podcast today.

iConnections is the largest membership-only platform for the alternative investment industry. Bringing together thousands of fund managers and allocators in one powerful hub. iConnections reimagines how the industry connects through its digital offerings and premier in-person events, empowering allocators and managers to meet, build relationships, and do business anytime, anywhere. To explore more about iConnections, its events, and gain access to the members-only platform, visit iconnections.io.

All right. Welcome to the OK Computer Podcast. I'm Dan Nathan. I'm here with Fahad Hassan. He is the co-founder and CEO of Range, but also your other co-founder. This would be David Cusatis. You are the chief AI architect at Range, which is a wealth management platform. And you guys are just going deep with AI. And we're going to get into all of that. We're going to talk about the founding of the company, your backgrounds, the opportunity that you saw to disrupt the wealth management business, which is a big business and a big target. And you guys are taking a very unique approach. You guys are raising a lot of assets. So we want to get in how you're doing that and then really what you see as the opportunity. Because right now, as I'm sitting here, a couple of my good friends, and without naming names, are at this massive, massive conference for wealth managers. They're all getting together. It's a very personal sort of experience. But in this day and age, I'm all about agents and swarms of agents. And I think that's probably what you're betting on for your business. So guys, thank you for being here. Let's just kind of start with your backgrounds, if we can really quickly, because I think a lot of what you guys have to say and why you entered this market is going to resonate to some degree with a lot of our viewers, a lot of our listeners. Some may be excited about it. Others might feel threatened by it. So let's start there.

Fahad Hassan (2:11)

Yeah. So like you said, I'm Fahad Hassan. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Range. We started this company about five and a half years ago now. We launched in 2023 So we've been live in market almost four years. And I would say what's interesting about our backgrounds is we're both computer science backgrounds. I've been in venture backed startups for most of my career. And I think what's most fascinating about Range and our story is we have no finance experience and no finance background. And for I think a lot of listeners, like why would I give these guys money to manage if they have no, you know, certifications, background, et cetera, finance. It's because I think we have a very empathetic approach to like how we're building the company. I started the company because my wife and I were looking for advisors in 2000 At the end of 2020, we were about to have our first kid. And I met with state attorneys. We met with financial advisors. And we're just like, this is it. You want 1% for this. Nothing online, very expensive, very opaque.

And the more research we did, we're like, holy shit, this thing hasn't changed this industry in 100 years. Why are people still doing this? At the same time, Chat GPT just come out. And so very, very early days of like that taking over the world very quickly. And we just, you know, David and I have been searching for ideas for years to work on together. And it just kind of hit and we're like, all right, let's see if there's something here. And when we started the business, we didn't really have this perspective of the industry and disrupting it because we worked at JP Morgan or UBS, like every other founder we compete with. They found some problem at some bank or warehouse or RIA firm that they wanted desperately solve. We approached it from the perspective of I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm in my 40s, like I got problems and I want a cheap, fast, smart solution. Give that to me. And that didn't exist. And so that's how Range was born. And we've just been iterating organically over the last several years. We've now got almost 5,000 clients.