Castle Rock Innovations

Castle Rock Innovations, founded in 2001 by Khash Sarrafi and Michael Marr, established itself as a enterprise technology services provider with a strong focus on the financial services sector. The founding team brought extensive corporate experience to the venture; Sarrafi previously served as the Global Director of Information Technology at Timex and managed eBusiness and Global Data Warehouse for Carrier Corporation, a subsidiary of United Technologies. Marr's background was in building highly scalable, transaction-intensive technology solutions for Fortune 100 companies.

The company's core business revolves around providing sophisticated technology solutions to clients in Capital Markets, Banking, and Insurance. It operates on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, offering a suite of services that includes information management, custom software development, and management consulting. A flagship offering was the Axis Retirement Analytics Platform, a real-time, web-based tool designed to help broker-dealers, banks, and other fiduciaries comply with 401(k) fee disclosure regulations. This platform gained significant traction, being adopted by 10 of the top 20 broker-dealers in the United States.

Historically, the firm demonstrated notable growth, earning a place on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in both 2009 and 2010. A significant milestone occurred on December 4, 2013, when the company secured $1.3 million in a private equity funding round from investors such as Ferst Capital Partners and Tactex Asset Management. This period of growth and product success culminated in the acquisition of Castle Rock Innovations by Envestnet on August 30, 2015, marking a successful exit for the founders and investors.

Keywords: enterprise technology, financial software, retirement analytics, SaaS, 401(k) compliance, management consulting, data management, FinTech, custom software, information architecture