I’m Michele Ferrario, co-founder and CEO at robo-advisor StashAway. AMA!

NOTE: This AMA has ended. Find the Q&A with Michele here.

Hello TIA community!

I’m Michele Ferrario, and I’m the co-founder and CEO of StashAway, a digital wealth management platform (or commonly known as a “robo-advisor”). Before founding StashAway, I was the Group CEO of Zalora.

My co-founders and I founded StashAway in 2016 with the vision to fundamentally change the way people invest and build their wealth. What makes StashAway different is how we leverage our in-house technology to build and manage personalized portfolios, while also monitoring data points that can indicate an economic change (like a recession) before the markets even respond.

I’m passionate about people and numbers, and I believe that mastering how to manage both of those things is the key to build a high-performing organization, regardless of sector. When it comes to building a product, I love meeting people— customers and potential customers—so that I can listen and understand their own pain points, questions, and recommendations.

You can ask me anything, especially about the topics below:

• Why is there a need for a company like StashAway? Aren’t banks enough?
• How will the wealth management industry change in the next five years?
• How do you maintain a high-performance culture during the scale-up phase?
• What are the keys to hiring in the very early days of a business? And as a candidate, how do you position yourself to land a role at a promising early-stage company?
• Should you get an MBA?
• Where’s the best pizza in Singapore?

Talk soon!

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Note from Putra, TIA’s head of community content: The host may choose at his preference to not answer particular questions. The AMA is moderated by the community managers, so let’s keep the questions friendly. 🙂

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Find the Q&A with Michele below.

Hi Michele, will you be adding cryptocurrencies in StashAway? And also what are your thoughts on crypto? Bitcoin, Ether, etc. Thanks!

– Mike Ferrer

Hi Mike,

we are not planning to add cryptocurrencies in the near future, but I don’t rule out doing it at a later stage.
The main reasons why we do not want to do it now are:
– It could potentially create some regulatory issues for us (we hold a CMS license for Fund Management from MAS)
– Crypto’s volatility is incredibly high and it’s very difficult to include it in a portfolio. Also, because of lack of history, correlations to other asset classes and to economic data is still unclear.