Sidekick, a wealth and savings app for millennials with cash to splash, has raised a £4.5m seed round led by Pact VC and TheVentureCity. CEO Matt Ford tells Sifted the round gave the startup a post-money valuation of £15.5m.
MS&AD, Blackwood and 1818 also invested in the round, which was closed across two trenches last month. Returning investors from the wealthtech’s £3.3m pre-seed round include Octopus Ventures, Seedcamp and Semantic Ventures.
Sidekick targets the “mass affluent” — 30-45-year-olds with salaries ranging from around £80k-£200k who mostly work in tech or are entrepreneurs and can pay the app’s £1,000 minimum investment.
Ford says this market is underserved by offerings from other wealthtechs, but that they aren’t quite wealthy enough to access the wealth management services offered by private banks.
“There’s this gulf between products for those at entry-level [and those] who have more than a million pounds,” he says. “But there’s all these hard-working entrepreneurs and young professionals who are taking a lot more accountability for their wealth creation — they need a lot more than just a roboadvisor.”
A sidekick for your money
Sidekick’s app offers an investment portfolio managed by a dedicated team and a cash savings account with an interest rate of up to 5.34%. Customers can also borrow up to 40% of the value of their portfolio. The line of credit, which can’t be used for investing, is funded by a £4m debt facility raised alongside its equity funding round. The company charges a fee for its portfolio product of 0.83% of the value of the portfolio plus value-added tax.
Ford is planning to bring alternative assets — private equity, private credit and venture capital — to the Sidekick app. It’s also looking to add more personalisation options (such as a portfolio concentrated in a particular sector) in the hope of achieving its mission of opening up wealth management services typically reserved for the ultrarich.
And while the Sidekick CEO admitted it’s still early days — it's currently converting the 2,800 founding members it signed up pre-launch to full customers — Ford is already eying expansion overseas.
“Thinking ahead to Series A we want to at least have got the regulatory permissions to be able to launch into European markets,” says Ford.
The wealthtech plans to use a portion of its seed funding to get a licence to operate in an EU country next year and has its eyes on France, Germany and the Netherlands for its continental ambitions. It’s also aiming to grow its headcount from 15 to around 20 by the time it's in the position to raise its next round of funding.
Sidekick’s round comes at an uncertain time for retail investment in the UK. While there are signs of a revival underway, Europe’s homegrown wealthtechs faced stunted growth in app downloads amid the downturn and extra competition from US trading apps Robinhood and Public.
