LearnVest's $375M Growth

Summary: Alexa Von Tobel shares the journey of LearnVest, from its humble beginnings as a financial newsletter to its eventual acquisition by Northwestern Mutual.

"I started LearnVest in 2007 with my own savings. We started with content because back in 2008 in New York City, you could do a free newsletter and just get going. We created a brand with an authentic voice because it was stupefying that I could graduate from a great school, work on Wall Street, be good at math and economics, but still not have clear answers to basic wallet questions.

We always planned for content, tools, and advice. Once we raised enough money to build a proper tech team, we started with a budgeting app - a place to see all your finances in one place. Then we realized people wanted advice, so we built financial planning software that could take any family, ingest 60 data points, and spit out what we called 'GPS for your money' - a living and breathing financial plan.

When Northwestern Mutual acquired us, they saw three powerful things: incredible software they could plug in, our entire platform, and the team. I'm most proud that roughly a third of Northwestern Mutual's management team became original LearnVest team members. For a tiny startup to become such a big part of a company that does $35-40 billion in revenue was remarkable.

I stayed for four years after the acquisition because I genuinely loved it. Yes, there were brutal days - we sunset the LearnVest brand because it made more sense to live under the parent company that had been around for 163 years. But it was the right decision for what we promised to do."