While building a wealth management firm in San Francisco, financial planner Russell Kroeger found that most industry software was targeted toward older people with a lot of money, who needed help managing retirement funds. However, Kroeger wasn’t working with retirees, but rather with young professionals in tech—and this demographic wanted shorter-term wealth management guidance.
Kroeger launched Trayecto, alongside co-founders Josh Horwitz and Paola Ayala, to provide better financial planning services to modern workers in the tech startup ecosystem. The software is licensed to financial advisors and helps them offer more precise guidance to clients.
“Trayecto helps make it easier to serve those younger demographics, and efficiently add value in a way that is still profitable for those wealth management firms,” Kroeger said.
He chose the tech startup space as his target market in part because professionals in this space often have partial ownership of a company via equity shares. This and other factors can lead to complexities with financial planning, which in turn amounts to a need for the more specific and targeted services Trayecto aims to offer its clients.
For example, if a client wants to take a sabbatical or switch jobs in a new state, Trayecto helps map out possible financial outcomes and opportunities. Horwitz said that especially in this generation of workers, many people change jobs every few years, and Trayecto works at a “granular level” to map out opportunities and predict effects on their medium-term goals.
Kroeger said there is a lack of innovative software in this field, and having optimized financial services is a win-win for both the client and advisor. Trayecto helps clients understand the financial outcomes of life decisions and understand what opportunities are realistic for them.
“The client wins, because the client has a better understanding of their finances and can be confident when they say, ‘Yes, this is the path forward that I want, because I understand how it impacts me over the next three to five years,’” Kroeger said. “And the advisor gets value because they didn’t waste all their time in spreadsheets and scattered notes.”
The founders said that workers in their 20s to 50s often aren’t educated on financial planning, and may make decisions based on what their parents or coworkers are doing. But that won’t always align with their own situations. To that end, Ayala said that equity compensation is a “growing niche.” Trayecto has a “detailed knowledge center” to help financial advisors to support their clients in this space.
With this B2B service, financial advisors pay a subscription on a per-household basis. These Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) can register with Trayecto, either as wealth management firms or individual financial advisors. Trayecto currently works with about 30 wealth management firms, and about 150 firms are on the waitlist. In later phases of Trayecto, the end users may be able to license the software on their own, Kroeger said.
Trayecto means “trajectory,” or “journey,” in Spanish. Kroeger said he chose this name because Trayecto helps workers with personal finance throughout their professional journeys.
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Startup: Trayecto
Co-Founders: Josh Horwitz, Paola Ayala, Russell Kroeger
Founded: 2024
Team size: 3 (plus advisors/consultants)
Location: Durham
Website: www.trayecto.io
Funding: Closed SAFE; next raise pending
Kroeger pitched at Raleigh’s Venture Connect in March, where he said he connected with other local founders and investors in the Triangle tech community. Also present at Venture Connect were several founders with whom Trayecto participated in Durham’s inaugural FCAT Fellowship last year.
“There’s already a community in the Raleigh-Durham RTP ecosystem for startups, but the FCAT fellowship provided a more intimate space,” Ayala said. “We really got to know each other really well and understand each other’s companies, and coming into Venture Connect, it was really cool.”
