RIA prospecting startup raises $15m from Fintop, Dynasty, Ritholtz VC firm

RIA data startup VRGL announced on Tuesday that it has raised $15m in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firms MissionOG and Fintop Capital.

Also participating in the round were founding investors Sallyport Investments and Checchi Capital, as well as new backers Dynasty Financial Partners, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Flyover Capital and Fin Capital, as well as The Compound Capital, a venture fund run by Ritholtz Wealth Management. Specific financial terms, including the size of each firm’s stake, were not disclosed.

‘We are excited to close our Series A investment with leading fintech VCs and strategic investors. We strongly feel advisors and their clients deserve more streamlined onboarding and analytics in the get-to-know-you phase of the relationship,’ VRGL co-founder and chief executive Josh Smith stated. ‘With our raise, we will expand to become the leading client acquisition and proposal management tool on the market.’

VRGL, led by Smith and co-founder and COO Josh Zimmerman, aims to use automated data extraction and analytics to accelerate the client prospecting and acquisition process for RIA practices. The platform also contains portfolio analysis tools. The firm’s website indicates the company is named after Virgil, the Roman writer of the Aeneid whose fictional ghost guided Dante’s character through hell and purgatory in The Divine Comedy. Like Virgil, the firm ‘helps advisors guide clients with clear-eyed quantitative views of their portfolios,’ the website states.

The firm said in a press release that the fundraising round would help it ‘scale its operational resources, further grow its sales and partnership capabilities, and execute its product and marketing roadmap.’

VRGL’s new backers will look to accelerate adoption of the firm’s technology in the RIA space. According to a Dynasty spokesperson, Dynasty chief client officer Austin Philbin will lead an effort to integrate VRGL’s platform into the Dynasty Connect referrals program in order ‘to help drive more meaningful end client leads to advisors.’ About 300 advisors on Dynasty’s platform participate in the referrals program. 

Lead investor Fintop Capital has backed Smith’s business ventures before, including Solovis, a Nasdaq-owned investment management platform designed for limited partners with multi-asset class portfolios.

‘As investors in Josh’s prior company Solovis, we are thrilled to be partnering with him and this management team again,’ Fintop managing partner Rick Kushel stated. ‘Tech-driven transparency is long overdue in wealth management, and there’s no better team to deliver it.’

In the RIA tech space, Fintop backs turnkey asset management platform and unified managed accounts provider SmartX, advisor marketing firm SnappyKraken, and crypto-for-advisors startup Onramp Invest, though its investment in the latter came through Jam Fintop, a joint venture with Jacobs Asset Management.