In the world of investments, Jack Bogle was one of the industry giants. At Seedrs we can’t do a better job eulogising him than the the countless peers better placed than us have done so already.
What I would like to celebrate is the patience taken to build what is now a behemoth of the investment management community. Vanguard’s growth to $trillions in asset under management didn’t happen overnight.
When Jeff and Carlos began working on Seedrs a decade ago, they were challenging a business model that hasn’t changed for centuries. Private capital markets have been and remain today, opaque, paper heavy, network driven, exclusive and for many observers inefficient. Building a tech-enabled infrastructure to bring greater efficiencies to investors and businesses and bring more transparency to private markets clearly challenged the status quo. If it was simple and obvious as a business model others would have done it long before. Importantly tackling challenges faced by investors and business and providing a service to address these needs has been key to the growth of Seedrs so far.
We can look to the growth of Vanguard to understand what doing the right thing for investors and building trust can lead to. It’s very easy today to laud Jack. Investors (institutions and individuals) around the world have said as customers what they want and we’ve witnessed the seismic shift of assets from active to passive strategies in the past two decades. This is not the place to debate which is better or which is right, something that is key in this shift though is the ability to address the needs of the customer (B2C or B2B). Investors have communicated what their needs and requirements are and Vanguard has been well placed to reap the benefits in addressing the needs of the customer.
Before his passing; I joked at Seedrs how I would love Jeff Lynn to be regarded as a Jack Bogle of private markets. This sentiment remains today as we continue to grow the platform and evolve the investment solutions we can build with technology to meet the unique needs of multiple investor channels.
Jack Bogle made things easy and low-cost for all investors to invest in the stock markets. Could this be possible in private markets? Watch this space….
