Our $17 Million Series A Funding Round: Raising the Bar

We are proud to have earned the trust and confidence of an exceptional group of investors and are energized to work even harder for
Alto We're All In This Together

Announcement

I’m incredibly excited to announce that we closed a $17m Series A financing round last week. 

At Alto, we live by our core values. Educate to drive equality. Hold customers and colleagues in high regard. You do you (a team favorite). Build trust with transparency and honesty. Act with intention. Know it can be done. And finally, celebrate victories, no matter what size.  

For any startup, closing a financing round is a tremendous victory worth celebrating. Our team has worked hard. Now, we have additional resources to accelerate the build of our products, expand access to a broader range of alternative investments, and continue to create a best-in-class experience. We are proud to have earned the trust and confidence of an exceptional group of investors and are energized to work even harder for our customers and our partners.

Before Alto

In 2013, I set out to invest in a private company using my IRA. Suffice to say, it was an absurdly tedious, expensive, and time-consuming experience. If I were on my podcast, I’d describe it with far more colorful language. 

So, I did what any sane person would do: I did it again. And then again. Using a different legacy self-directed IRA (SDIRA) provider for each investment, I confirmed that the industry hadn’t changed much since 1974, when ERISA, the law that introduced Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA), was passed. 

Opportunity

There are $30+ trillion sitting in retirement accounts and only a small percentage of that is currently invested in alternative investments. To my mind, investing tax-advantaged, long-term funds in long-term assets with the potential for outsized returns fosters true portfolio diversification and simply makes sense. So I decided to build a company to fix the problems and inefficiencies I had experienced firsthand, to help the rest of us access an asset class that is typically only available to the wealthiest individuals and sophisticated institutional investors.

Growth

We’ve come a long way since our launch in 2018. Alto is now a team of 50+ determined, passionate, and diverse professionals driven to serve the people who have believed in our mission and supported our work along the way. With nearly 30 investment platform partners, Alto enables easy and affordable investment across asset classes, including private equity, venture capital, real estate, cryptocurrencies, securitized collectibles, and more. And we’ve only just begun. 

Our Series A was led by Unusual Ventures and we welcomed Sarah Leary, co-founder of NextDoor and partner there, to our board. The round included existing investors Moment Ventures, Acrew Capital, and Alpha Edison, Carta, and new strategic investors, Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton, New York Life Ventures, and Stone Ridge Holdings Group. On behalf of the Alto team, I thank all of our investors and customers for their support.

Now, let’s get back to work.

Eric Satz

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