Ellevest is the first investing platform designed for women and their specific financial needs. We sat down with Melissa Cullens, Ellevest’s Chief Design Officer, to learn more about how this 2017 Interbrand Breakthrough Brand is putting their money where their mouth is to create an investment experience specially tailored for 51% of the population.
What sort of unique challenge are you answering in the marketplace?
We are trying to close the gender investing gap. Research shows us that women don’t invest to the same extent that men do, and there are a lot of myths for why—we’re “really bad at math” or we’re “not smart enough”—but clearly none of these myths are true. The real reason is that the investing industry has been so out of touch, which has created this feeling of insecurity for women when it comes to investing. Our founder, Sallie Krawcheck, really wanted to create a business that would reach into this space and turn investing upside down. We created Ellevest to invite the half of the population that hasn’t been investing to the same degree to start. We provide a platform that takes into consideration the fact that women live longer, and that we don’t earn the same way that men do. If you give a woman the same gender neutral investment plan that dominates the industry right now, regardless if she makes the same amount as a male counterpart to start out with, she’s still going to end up hundreds of thousands of dollars short by the time she reaches retirement.
Do you see this as creating a brand new category of financial advisory services or do you see this as disrupting the current landscape?
We want to disrupt the old guys. The current narrative is to go be Warren Buffett, but there’s only one Warren Buffett for a reason. If we could all be Warren Buffett by picking up a self help book, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. We want to open the doors and say there are different ways to make investing work for you. You want to buy a house, you’ve got kids, you’re probably thinking about what you want to do with them for school, and the market is a great way to deliver against those life goals. But the way that we traditionally think about and tell stories around what makes you a good investor or what makes investing important is more about a day-to-day, “Did you beat a benchmark?” narrative. We are goals-based, and the entire product is trying to communicate that money is power, of which women traditionally have less than men do. This is a huge opportunity to push for equality and feminism.
Read this week's 'What The Elle' newsletter here: https://t.co/HFYC3sudhC. @SallieKrawcheck pic.twitter.com/oeOe3LIbV7
— Ellevest (@Ellevest) July 25, 2017
How much do you rely on data to be a differentiator for your product, versus the message that you’re a robo-financial advisory product that also happens to be geared towards women?
If you look at what everybody else says about their product, they always say, “We have the best technology.” Well we have amazing technology, too. We have four patents pending on our technology. At the end of the day what really matters is whether or not our clients are going to be able to reach their goals. It isn’t as important for us to talk about our Chief Investment Officer, who spent countless hours coming up with all of the different hundreds of variations of customizable investment portfolios. The most important thing is that you get the house in six years when you actually want to buy it.
Do you think that being so connected to your audience has allowed you to reach the level of growth that you have and continue to break through?
I really do. When we started out, most products for women were not really for women. They’re a product that was initially created for guys, but they added a layer of pink paint and made it little for our “little lady hands.” Instead of doing that, we started with our target client and asked, “What do you need?” We wanted them to show us everything about how they use their money and how they think about their finances. We wanted them to bring in their spreadsheets and show us their boxes of AVERY file folders. We didn’t just build the product based off her needs, we built the brand values and platform based on what our client is asking for and what she needs that’s different than what she’s seeing in the rest of the marketplace.
Do you feel like you would be able to do this without digital? Would the brand be as successful?
A considerable amount of our growth comes from organic traffic that is facilitated by being able to put Sallie’s talks online, engaging with our target audience through our social channels, owning our message through public relations, and using digital media as a way to talk about what is important to us and why the company matters.
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