Titan: Innovating on Investment Experiences 💹
Behind the scenes on how this investment management giant grew to 50k+ high LTV users with over $1B in assets, hitting a $450M valuation along the way.
Founded in 2018, Titan is a members-only wealth platform designed to be a complete wealth system for investors, from delivering investment expertise to access to premium experiences.
At the time of their $58M Series B in 2021, Titan was close to managing $1B in assets across their members, and was valued at a staggering ~$450M.💰
A behemoth in asset management today, Titan started off with extremely humble beginnings.
Entering the market with “Flagship” ⛳️
Titan rode two undercurrents to enter the market:
A nearly wholesale shift away from “defined benefit” plans like pensions towards diversified, personalized investment strategies
Rise of next-gen financially-savvy consumers, who are drawn to mobile-first, open-access investment platforms
Before Titan, access to direct portfolio managers would require a $1M minimum in assets.
And so the team launched “Flagship”, an actively managed equity strategy of large cap US stocks, built and managed by Titan’s in-house investment team. The goal with this strategy was to beat the market benchmark over a long-term time horizon.
“While technology has penetrated several sectors of consumer finance, a trusted investment management platform for coming generations has yet to emerge,” - Joe Percoco, founder and co-CEO of Titan.
Differentiating in a crowded space with managed investments and zero fees 💰
Titan didn’t stop with equities. They planned on democratizing access to a whole slew of asset classes not typically available to retail investors.
Products like hedge funds and venture capital have high minimums and high fees that make them inaccessible to most investors. Additionally, most retail investors lack the know-how to choose the right investments.
Titan innovated on two fronts to solve a real need felt by a large proportion of investors:
It makes a number of alternative asset classes like real estate, private credit, venture capital, etc available to retail investors at an affordable price.
It bridges the knowledge gap with its research team working behind the scenes to help deliver market insights through in-app videos, deep dives, and other tools.
Strategy and tactics behind a Titan-ic valuation of $450M 📈
Titan has grown to over 50k high LTV users on the back of great product innovations, quality content and free tools for top-of-funnel acquisition.
Smart Cash: Moves your money automatically
Titan has grown on a near-zero marketing budget due to its continuous innovation on delivering products that solve real pain points.
“Smart Cash” was born from Clayton’s personal pain of fighting inflation. It helps an investors cash earn the most it can instead of sitting in a savings account earning next to nothing.
It scans rates across cash equivalents, factors in the user’s individual tax details and calculates the anticipated highest yield not only before, but after, taxes. When a better option is found, Smart Cash automatically moves the user’s money.
Bringing truth to a fragmented content landscape
In Titan’s early days, they found that media (news outlets, financial media, Bloomberg, CBC) was underused in the active investments segment. If a user managed to find content on a topic, different resources pointed in different directions and there was no clear source of truth.
Noticing this whitespace, Titan jumped into the content landscape to bring together fragmented topics, with a goal of educating the user and building trust in the brand.
They routinely put out in-app videos 📺, email newsletters, explanatory articles, and image carousels. This content was heavily forwarded by their users to other prospective users.
Hackathon idea “Ask Titan Anything” takes off
Great ideas can come from anywhere. Especially hackathons.
Titan’s “Ask Me Anything” gives real-time Q&A and research commentary about positions in the market and investment decisions. Investors submit questions to the team’s analysts, and the Q&A is publicly distributed. A user can ask questions like:
“What's driving the rise in coal-related stocks?”
“Atlassian (TEAM) was at record highs a little over 2 years ago but is down 40% since then. It seems like a promising stock, what is your outlook?”
“Any thoughts on Google after its most recent earnings?”
Titan stands out by allowing direct access to investment analysts, providing insights on specific stocks, and openly sharing research on topics like semiconductor disruptions, crypto fluctuations, growth stock valuations, and big tech earnings.
Free tools for top-of-funnel acquisition
The team has built tools like “free wealth and investment calculators” to attract top-of-funnel users. These tools attract users who have the intent to solve problems that Titan can help with.
By educating users 📚 about possible returns on their investments using an actively managed portfolio, these tools build motivation in users which nudges them to explore Titan’s offerings and possible returns.
Next up, become the complete wealth membership experience ➡️
While Titan started by providing investment opportunities to retail investors, they were only solving a small piece of the bigger puzzle. Outside of Titan, a user’s wealth was fragmented across multiple apps 🙁 with no guidance or unified philosophy on how to grow it well.
With their latest launch, Titan now offers a diversified set of active and passive investments across asset classes, on-demand advice from an experienced wealth team, and a brand new ecosystem of what they call “Access”.
“Access” is a personal concierge that gets the user into coveted hotspots in dining, nightlife, fitness, and more.
Sold-out concert? Not a problem. Titan can get you in. These are experiences people rave about.
Early-to-mid career professionals are set to inherit trillions of dollars 💰 in assets in the coming decade, and Titan is set up perfectly as the go-to investment management platform to capture on this shift.
Thanks for reading! 😄
One Step Ahead is a publication by Plotline. With this series, we plan to give you a behind-the-scenes breakdown of the product and growth strategies that have propelled consumer apps to where they are today.