[teej]

Wealthfront has raised ~$100M and Betterment has raised ~$200M. If they are only burning $4M/year to grow as fast as they are, they are doing fantastically well. I suspect though that the author's burn rates are off by an order of magnitude.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Agreed. I know the author was trying to be conservative, but I wouldn't be surprised if fully loaded employee costs were about double his estimates.

[sulam]

Yeah, he's taking salary, and a conservative salary at that, as cost to the business. The cost to the business is generally much higher, 1.5x to 2x depending on benefits. He should probably double the number he's using.

[krallja]

Also, both Betterment and Wealthfront have grown AUM since this article was written: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13959061