They're dealing with people's money and they're growing. Doesn't seem too absurd. They're not just building a rinky dinky dumb interface between a user and a Vanguard fund. Also, they have an institutional product outside of the scope of the consumer product.
I get all that. I don't get how that kind of head count works for a company that only has about 100,000 customers and $3 billion in assets, considering the value proposition for this company is supposed to be intelligent passive investing.
> They're dealing with people's money and they're growing. Doesn't seem too absurd. They're not just building a rinky dinky dumb interface between a user and a Vanguard fund.
Prop shops and hedge funds run leaner than they are, and those places are employing lots of people for actively developing trading strategies and maintaining large, sophisticated backend systems. Betterment is supposed to reduce the risk and cost of investing by using algorithms to build index funds and cutting all that active management crap, thus I would expect them to be running leaner than those other places.
As for growth, they have been in business for almost eight years. I don't think the growth rate justifies the current head count. I worry that they are pulling a Twitter and hiring a bunch of people they don't actually need yet as part of a talent war.
On their institutional product, LinkedIn gives me the impression that it is run as a quasi-separate entity. I don't know if the 180 people referred to here have much to do with that part of the business.