Why We Said ‘No’ to a Client Who Only Wanted to Beat the Market

When you build a wealth management platform, you expect the hard problems to be technical - data aggregation, modeling, personalization, compliance. What you don’t expect is that one of the biggest strategic challenges will be identifying who your product is actually for.

Over the last two years, I’ve spoken with hundreds of prospective users - engineers, founders, executives, newly-minted millionaires, and folks just trying to get their arms around their financial life. And somewhere in these conversations, a very specific pattern emerged:

A surprising number of people had one primary question:

“If I use your platform… can you beat the market?”

No curiosity about taxes.

No interest in liquidity planning, RSU timing, or downside protection.

No desire to understand how their full financial world fits together.

Just a scoreboard.

And for a brief period early on, we did attract them. Accidentally.

Our ML models significantly beat the benchmark out of the gate - a byproduct of the research culture our investment thesis came from - and it unlocked a flood of users who were exclusively chasing returns.

On paper, this looked like traction.

In reality, it was the wrong ICP, for us and for them.

This is the story of what we learned, why we changed, and how founders building wealth products (and clients evaluating them) can avoid the same trap.

The Temptation: “If we can beat the market, we’ll grow faster.”

It’s easy to convince yourself that outperformance is a great wedge, that it will open the door to deeper engagement later.

But the truth is more sobering:

Return-chasing audiences are the least loyal, the most volatile, and the least aligned with long-term financial wellness.

They switch advisors the moment the scoreboard tilts.

They compare you to macro cycles you don’t control.

And they often have no interest in the actual levers that move the needle on lifetime outcomes: taxes, liquidity, concentration risk, behavior, and planning.

As a business, we saw stickiness drop sharply.
As a platform, our vision started to drift.
As a team, it forced us to ask: Is this who we’re building for?

The answer was no. And the moment we said that out loud, the product roadmap became clearer.

Why this “returns” mindset is bad for the business, and bad for the client

This is not an argument against making money.

It is an argument against evaluating a wealth platform with a single, narrow metric.

Clients lose when they think this way because:

• An outperforming strategy can still fail their real life.
• Higher returns often come packaged with higher taxes, higher risk, and higher stress.
• A “beat the market” mindset encourages short-termism - on both sides.
  

Platforms lose because:

• They build for volatility instead of stability.
• They attract the wrong audience and repel the right one.
• They end up optimizing product features around performance dashboards instead of decision-making frameworks, liquidity planning, scenario modeling, or tax intelligence.

In product terms:

The metric becomes the roadmap. And it’s the wrong metric.

The hardest lesson: You cannot serve everyone - and you shouldn’t try to

Founders hate saying no. Especially in the early days.

But one of the most important disciplines in wealth-tech is being clear about your ICP and unapologetic about it.

If your platform is built for holistic financial wellness, tax optimization, and long-horizon compounding, you will not make return-maximizers happy. And that is a good thing.

We learned that the sooner you accept your niche, the faster you grow.

The moment we tightened positioning - “equity-heavy professionals who want comprehensive advice, not stock tips” - everything clicked:

• Pricing clarity improved
• Product focus improved
• Churn dropped
• Referrals from the right clients spiked
• Our advisors could go deeper instead of being forced into performance entertainment

Saying no became an accelerant, not a constraint.

If not returns… What should clients look for in a wealth platform?

If I were advising any high-earning professional evaluating a platform, here’s what actually matters:

1. Does it understand your entire financial world?

Employer stock, private investments, multiple accounts, taxes, cash, debt - not just your brokerage account.

2. Does it optimize for after-tax outcomes, not pre-tax charts?

Short-term gains, RSU timing, tax-loss harvesting, and asset location often matter more than 1–2% of “alpha.”

3. Does it help you prepare for the real risks - job loss, market events, liquidity needs?

A portfolio that beats the S&P but collapses during a layoff is not a winning plan.

4. Does it lower your decision load?

Good platforms remove complexity.
Great platforms remove anxiety.

5. Does it help you plan your actual life - not just your investments?

Housing, education, career flexibility, caring for parents, starting a company - those aren’t footnotes. They are the plan.

What a wealth platform should highlight to attract the right audience

When we looked at who stayed, who referred others, and who grew with us, the common traits were clear.

The clients who are the best long-term fit value:

• Holistic planning instead of performance comparisons
• Liquidity readiness instead of “alpha”
• Clear rules for RSUs, options, and employer concentration
• Tax efficiency measured over years, not quarters
• One integrated view of everything, no fragmentation
• A human advisor who can say no to bad ideas
• A platform that explains decisions, not just graphs them

These users don’t just consume the product - they build with you.
They ask deeper questions.
They give richer feedback.
They make the roadmap sharper.

A high-fidelity ICP produces a high-fidelity product.

The turning point: Our early outperformance was a distraction

In our first year, our models were strong enough that we unintentionally pulled in a large cohort of “money chasers.”

They loved the charts.
They loved the outperformance.
They loved the idea of having a “secret engine.”

But they churned quickly because:

• They weren’t here for planning
• They didn’t want advice - just upside
• They compared every quarter to the S&P
• They had no appetite for long-term thinking
• They were not interested in the actual mission: holistic financial wellness

It forced us to confront an uncomfortable truth:

Just because a segment wants your product doesn’t mean you should build for them.

In hindsight, it was the best thing that happened to us.
It made us sharpen our message, our ICP, our design choices, and our entire product philosophy.

The philosophy we build on now

We care about returns - we just don’t reduce our identity to them.

We optimize for:

• Total household risk
• Tax minimization
• Liquidity planning
• RSU-aware strategies
• After-tax lifetime compounding
• Stress reduction
• High-confidence decision making
  

The right question isn’t:

“Can you beat the market?”

The right question is:

“Can you improve my probability of funding the life I actually want?”

That’s the platform we’re building.
And that’s the audience we’re building for.

And this is why we said “no” to a client who only wanted to beat the market.

Because the question was wrong.
Because the mandate was misaligned.
Because saying no protected the product, the team, and the mission we are building.

If this resonates with you, if you want a partner who looks at your whole picture rather than a single metric, you can schedule a 1:1 session with our advisory team. We’d be happy to understand your world and walk you through how we work.