Draft

Based in Austin, Texas, Draft was a financial technology firm established in 2014 by founders Jason St. Peter and Brad Lawler. The company, which also operated under the name Hrvst, positioned itself as a provider of analytical tools for both individual investors and wealth management professionals. The initial concept centered on a mobile application that used crowdsourced data to help self-directed investors analyze their portfolios. Users could connect their various investment accounts to a single platform to compare performance, asset allocation, and fees against the aggregated, anonymized data of other users in the community. This model was designed to demystify investing and highlight the impact of fees, empowering users to make more informed decisions or engage in more substantive conversations with their financial advisors.

The company later evolved its strategy to target wealth advisors and financial institutions directly with a suite of analytics and communication tools. A key offering was Draft Insights, a tool designed to give advisors a holistic view of a client's or prospect's portfolio, regardless of where the assets were held. By securely accessing account data, Draft Insights could automatically analyze a portfolio to identify opportunities for the advisor. These included surfacing issues like high fees, excessive risk, poor diversification, and low-quality investment products. The platform was built to analyze millions of portfolios, offering scalable applications for larger financial institutions, such as compliance analysis, targeted marketing campaigns, and integration with customized portfolio checkup tools. The technology was capable of processing data from advised accounts or leveraging data aggregation services.

Draft participated in several accelerator and incubator programs, including one in June 2014 and another in November 2014, the same year it secured $1 million in a seed funding round. Despite its early efforts and participation in events like the 2015 SXSW Interactive Startup Spotlight, the company eventually ceased operations, with its status listed as 'Out of Business' as of August 2017.

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