SideKick

What is it?

Sidekick is an alternative investment platform, that gives retail investors access to actively managed portfolios. Starting first with hedged equity portfolios, SideKick wants to help retail investors gain access to alternative investments and, in doing so, build the next generation wealth management platform. A data and automation driven approach to asset selection, enables the business to construct alternative investment products and serve users at a much lower cost than traditional wealth platforms and advisors.

SideKick will also be the first investment platform in Europe that gives users a line of credit secured against their portfolio, meaning users can maintain liquidity without realising losses associated to short-term market moves.

Why we like it

Sidekick’s initial alternative investment product will be a UK first. It’s being launched into a timely ‘bear’ market, which makes hedging strategies look appealing when index trackers and stock picks are not performing well. While High Net Worth (HNW) individuals can access a suite of alternative investment products, working millennials have historically been locked out of these markets due to high investment sizes, and the lack of digital tools to power and distribute these products.

This is a huge growth market, as private banking only serves the top 1% of HNWs. Many other people have sufficient income for a diversified investment portfolio but are currently under served. There is a major opportunity for a new entrant to plug this gap by enabling access to the full suite of alternative investments.

What our fund managers say

“We at Octopus Fintech believe that there has been a generational shift in retail participation in financial markets. Yet participation alone is not sufficient to wealth creation. We share SideKick’s thesis that access and asset allocation to the right financial products is fundamental and see that an alternative investment platform is sorely needed.”

– Zihao Xu – Partner

Who are we backing?

CEO and Founder Matt Ford is a second-time fintech with an impressive track-record and in-depth domain expertise in fintech. Matt spun out SideKick from his research on alternative investment during his time in VC at Mouro Ventures, a fintech focused fund.

Prior to that, he had built Pariti, a D2C savings app that sold to Tandem in 2018, where he later became Chief Product Officer. Peter Townsend, Head of Engineering at Tandem and ex-CTO and co-founder of Pariti with Matt, has agreed to join SideKick as CTO.

See more on SideKick’s website here.