Bessemer to $280M Journey

A story about how Jon Stein, founder of Betterment, found his first venture capital partner and went on to raise significant funding.

"We knew starting out that to build a financial services brand that would reach millions of customers, we would have to raise boatloads of money. I had looked at all the examples of people who'd built financial brands, and no one had done it for less than hundreds of millions of dollars.

We ended up raising $280 million to date, which was even more capital than I initially thought we'd need. What was important to me was finding the right kinds of partners.

Our first venture investor meeting was love at first pitch. We went out to the Bessemer offices and sat down with Rob Stavis, who's still on my board today. I told him about the vision for Betterment and our mission of helping customers do what's best with their money so they can live better. He said, 'That's great, we've been looking for a company like this for 2 years and this is the best one I've seen. We'd love to be in business together.'

They had a long-term horizon - he's been invested for 8 years now and isn't talking at all about liquidity or finding a buyer. That's what was important to me in finding the right kind of partner. All of our investors share that same long-term view."