It hits different when the company you’re building solves the exact problem that kept you up at night, especially when the “problem” involves millions in concentrated equity and a tax bill that could make your CPA’s head spin.
Cache was born out of that friction. Srikanth Narayan, the Founder and CEO, didn’t need another generic wealth management platform. After leading engineering and product at Uber and Alphabet, what he needed was a smarter, sharper way to diversify his own stock-heavy portfolio, without getting torched by capital gains taxes. The options available? Clunky, expensive, or locked behind a velvet rope of minimums and exclusivity. So he did what smart founders do when the market hands them an outdated blueprint, he started over.
Today, Cache is packing $625 million in assets on-platform, with $600 million flowing through its flagship exchange fund product. These aren’t your grandpa’s index funds. They’re tax-deferred diversification vehicles designed for public company execs, early-stage employees, and the wealth advisers who need to keep up with them. Minimum investment? $100K. Fees? 0.40–0.95%. And the alpha? Up to 10.7% excess return vs. the Nasdaq-100, with a tracking error so tight it’s practically engineered.
And if you’re wondering who else sees the signal in all this noise, First Round Capital just led Cache’s $12.5 million Series A with Bill Trenchard stepping up. That’s not a soft commitment. That’s a move.
This round didn’t materialize out of thin air. Cache’s secret isn’t just technology, it’s timing. Srikanth Narayan didn’t chase a trend. He anticipated a reckoning. Equity compensation is a $350 billion market. Most employees are sitting on portfolios so lopsided they’d fail a stress test. And legacy finance firms? They’re still handing out PDFs and quoting minimums like it’s 1999.
Cache isn’t just modernizing exchange funds. It’s consumerizing them, bringing the kind of tax-efficient strategies that used to be reserved for private bankers and yacht-club family offices directly to the inboxes of startup employees. With bi-weekly onboarding, SEC-registered protections, and BNY Mellon custody, they’re wrapping sophistication in simplicity, and making it look easy.
The leadership bench reads like a who’s who of fintech and asset management. Christopher Lange (ex-Goldman Sachs) leads investments. Aaron White, formerly of Adero Partners, handles investor solutions. Paul Smith brings design pedigree from Opendoor and Uber. And with strategic advice from Charles Schwab’s Peter Crawford, RIA pioneer Tim Kochis, and Alpha Architect’s Wesley Gray, this isn’t a team playing small ball.
Cache isn’t trying to be the loudest name in fintech. They’re just building the most surgical product in wealthtech, and letting the AUM speak for itself.
Now they’ve got the capital to scale. The playbook? More benchmarks, deeper integrations, mobile experience, and API-driven partnerships for RIAs. Tax season may never be sexy, but diversification just got a lot smoother.
