We are excited to announce Ardent’s follow-on participation in Gridline’s $9 million Seed Round alongside GC&H Investments, Tech Square Ventures, BLH Venture Partners, and a group of stellar Angel investors. Gridline is a wealth platform that democratizes private market investing by providing individual investors and RIAs access to top-performing alternative asset managers, enabling them to build diversified portfolios in minutes through a fully digital experience.
Our very own CEO Partner, Jon Hallet, first introduced Gridline to our team back in the Summer of 2021. At the time, we were excited by the idea of bringing alternative asset access to a large market of smaller, non-institutional investors previously excluded from the opportunity. Since then, the Gridline team has worked hard to build an operational infrastructure to streamline investing in private markets. The company launched its beta platform last month, where accredited investors can now diversify their portfolios through a basket of hand-picked funds.
Unlocking Private Markets
Similar to what Robinhood did for the public markets, Gridline brings widespread access to alternative investments. As the name suggests, “alternative investments” describes investment opportunities outside the norm of public stocks and bonds. These investments carry higher risk profiles due to less regulation. Therefore the SEC requires all investors in these assets to be accredited or “financially sophisticated with a reduced need for the protection provided by regulatory disclosure filings.” While this may seem like a very small pool of individuals, an estimated 16 million households in the U.S. qualify as accredited investors. Yet, many of these accredited investors still do not have access to opportunities to invest in private markets due to little bandwidth to perform due diligence and back-office requirements. Instead, large institutions like pension funds and endowments with dedicated due diligence teams take up a large portion of alternative investors.
Gridline’s platform streamlines the back office and assists with due diligence by curating a list of funds selected by their team, making investment more feasible for individuals and the RIAs that serve them. The company aims to become the go-to platform for discovering, deploying, and managing investments across all alternative asset classes. Fund managers also benefit from Gridline’s solution by reducing the friction of interacting with individual investors.
Talented Team
Democratizing alternative investing requires both a deep network among fund managers and an understanding of a retail investor’s tech needs. Gridline’s CEO Logan Henderson is an extremely impressive founder with prior experience as CEO of Salesfusion. He previously worked in M&A at Suntrust and has the help of seasoned startup-veteran Jon Hallet as his Co-founder and Executive Chairman. We believe the experience running a successful SaaS company coupled with his background in banking makes him uniquely qualified to create a massive company. The company is also looking to hire several additions to its investment team, including a Chief Investment Officer. These key hires will enable the company to serve users through deep fund analysis and working with managers to create a frictionless experience.
We are thrilled to partner with Gridline and their growing team as they expand access to private market investing. If you are an accredited investor, you can sign up for their platform here.
