Today, new 401(k)-focused startup ForUsAll announced $9.5 million in Series A funding led by Foundation Capital with general partner Steve Vassallo joining the board. Additionally, Lawrence H. Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, has joined as Senior Advisor.
American retirement is underfunded by a whopping $6 trillion*. Due to lack of resources, complexity, and cost, many small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) don't even offer retirement plans. As a result, 54% of Americans don't have access to retirement plans at work. For those SMBs that do offer retirement options, employee participation is low because of lack of engagement and overly complex onboarding process. When employees do participate, they are often not saving enough and, compounding the issue even further, they are subjected to exorbitant fees and wasting $17 billion** every year.
'You shouldn't have to work at a Fortune 500 company in order to have a viable retirement savings plan,' said Shin Inoue, CEO and cofounder at ForUsAll. 'So, we rebuilt the 401(k) from the ground up and tackled the SMBs' access problem, participation problem, savings problem, and fees problem.'
Now, the ForUsAll 401(k) is changing the SMB paradigm. To date, the company has seen an average participation rate of 88 percent, with savings rates of 7.4 percent on average. That's almost twice as much money flowing into ForUsAll's 401(k) when compared to the typical SMB 401(k). ForUsAll also eliminates major hassle factors for SMBs by assuming administrative and fiduciary responsibilities and keeping fees close to 0.5 percent compared to the industry average of 1.3 percent.
ForUsAll was founded by Shin Inoue, David Ramirez, and Dave Boudreau from Financial Engines where they served the Fortune 500s. Now, they have brought their technology and design expertise down to the small end to help close the $6 trillion dollar gap in retirement savings.
'ForUsAll is one of the few FinTech companies leading with design,' said Steve Vassallo, General Partner at Foundation Capital. 'With a beautifully simple product, they are making it possible for everyone to save for retirement.'
'Our collective technology and design expertise is transforming the underserved and overcharged SMB 401(k) and will ultimately close the $6 trillion retirement gap in America.' said Inoue.
About ForUsAll
ForUsAll is a next-generation provider of 401(k)s for small businesses. ForUsAll was founded to help bridge the current retirement gap facing the United States by radically simplifying the 401(k) so that it's easy, hassle-free, and inexpensive for any small company and its employees. ForUsAll has a very simple goal: to make sure that every American has a fair shot at retirement success, no matter how small the company they work for or own. To learn more please go to http://www.ForUsAll.com.
About Foundation Capital
Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm dedicated to the proposition that one entrepreneur's idea, with the right support, can become a business that changes the world. The company is made up of former entrepreneurs who set out to create the firm they wanted as founders. This forward-thinking team of VCs has helped companies like Lending Club change the way money is lent and borrowed, Sunrun reinvent the residential clean energy market, and Netflix revolutionize media distribution and consumption, among many others.
Foundation Capital is currently invested in more than 60 high-growth ventures in the areas of consumer, information technology, software, digital energy, financial technology and marketing technology. These investments include AdRoll, Beepi, Bolt Threads, DogVacay, Kik, ForgeRock, Lending Home, Localytics and Visier. The firm's twenty-six IPOs include Netflix OnDeck, Chegg, Sunrun, MobileIron, Control4, TubeMogul, Envestnet, Financial Engines, Lending Club, NetZero, Responsys and Silver Spring Networks. Read more at http://www.foundationcapital.com.