Key Leaders: Satayan Mahajan, David Blundin, Andy Berkheimer, Hilary Malecha, Puneet Thariani, Carmen Vetere
Founding: 2022
Mission: Be the de-facto platform for Wealth Management through the use of AI
Employees: 25
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Seed, $9M raised
Investors: Link Ventures
Audiences Served: High Net Worth Individuals, Emerging Wealth Consumers, Financial Advisory Firms
Glassdoor Rating: N/A
Valuation (estimated): $75M (as shared in their Feb ’25 $9M Seed fundraise announcement)
^ There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!
Datalign Advisory connects Americans with trusted financial advisors who can help them navigate life’s most important financial decisions. In an industry where finding the right financial guidance has always been a challenge, Datalign uses AI to fulfill its vision of perfect alignment between consumers and advisors. This team is leading an industry transformation to ensure that the right person finds the right advisor at the right moment, so every American has the money they need to live their best life and retire comfortably.
Link Studio (formerly Cogo Labs) the Kendall Square incubator of AI pioneer Dave Blundin, has been spinning out talented technology teams since 2005. Their hands have helped incubate & shape successful technology companies like Datasage (successfully acquired), Everquote (publicly traded), and growth stage company Vestmark amongst others. Dave & the Link Studio squad have assembled different teams in different verticals but their approach to scale usually shares a common thread: technology platform shifts that disrupt incumbent industries.
Financial advisory is a classic example. Your parents probably have one, right? This industry has been around for decades, with $165T in assets under management by advisors in 2025 (src). Almost half of those dollars will be moving to younger consumers with changing tastes in the coming years. Gen X, Millennials & Gen Z consumers are due to inherit $84 trillion with a T by 2045! (src) The kids are about to be in charge!
The typical advisor marketing playbook, from sponsoring tables at galas to golf tournaments, is inefficient at best.. What if “lead generation” wasn’t about volume, but values? What if finding the right financial advisor wasn’t a game of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon or a linear regression driven algorithm, but a carefully constructed process of alignment between who you are and what you need? Americans are falling short on their retirement goals (almost 45% won’t be able to cover their retirement spending) and there are experts out there who can help! (src)
Datalign Advisory is building a technology platform to make advisor-client connections more satisfying, intelligent and mutually beneficial. They’ve assembled a team from MIT, Amazon, Google, IBM, and other leading companies to shake up an industry undergoing massive change led by CEO Satayan Mahajan. Backed by $9M from Link Ventures, this growing startup has recently announced it has brought on veteran CTO Andy Berkheimer (most recently from Meta) and Chief Design Officer Puneet Thariani (most recently from Amazon) to help execute their vision. Under Satayan’s leadership, the Datalign team is focused on product, design, and messaging for their marketplace. They even read memos “Amazon style” for 15-30 minutes at the beginning of their meetings (Jeff Bezos would be proud!).
Customers get connected to advisors through an intentionally designed questionnaire that builds a profile of an investor to create accurate, intuitive pictures of your financial standing today (and tomorrow). This intake form factors in retirement timelines, communication style, goals, and more.
On the advisory side, there is filtering in place to make sure geography, specializations, and other key measurables are properly considered for advisors to be matched with their ideal customer profiles. Through a bidding system, a qualified introduction will be made similar to a programmatic advertising auction.
A crucial third layer is Datalign’s ability to reach consumers directly, a capability launching in 2025. This effort complements existing partnerships with a publisher network which drives form intakes on publishers like Forbes to enter the Datalign alignment funnel. In the quarters ahead, they’ll be redesigning and expanding their acquisition strategy to become the de facto connection highway for wealth management.
In 2024, Datalign connected $40B in assets to 13,000 advisors with best-in-class retention and doubled their revenue per employee through their data-driven growth strategy. They are on pace to connect $80B+ in assets in 2025.
Datalign continues to grow in Boston in 2025, with key executive hires ahead and engineering team growth a major initiative for this year. They will be bringing on a VP of Finance, Product Managers, Front & Back End Engineers, and AI/ML specialists (particularly PhDs) to drive their technology roadmap forward with the majority of the team based here in Boston.
Datalign isn’t just aiming to build better technology, it aims to reinvent the financial advisory category. In the quarters ahead they will be building out a more expansive platform for financial advisors to make their lives easier and more productive. The team will be leading with experimentation and documentation to build more intuitive products for their customers and constituents alike.
Operators to Know:
- Jessica Dereli, Head of Analytics
- Julian Franky, Business Development
- Veronika Tyukova, Strategic Partnerships
- Alyssa Griffin, Head of Partnerships
- Angel Jehng, Product Manager
- Ulli Klein, Chief of Staff
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Datalign team I’m sure I missed a bunch of up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired:
- Principal Product Manager IC
- VP Finance
- AI/ML Engineers
Future 2025 hires:
- Backend/Front End Engineers
- PhDs Data Science, Economics, AI, etc.
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
- What are the key milestones for Datalign Advisory in 2025?
- What are the competitive advantages Datalign brings to the financial advisory industry?
- What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team past 25 employees?
- What is the long term vision for the company?
- What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in 2025 // teams that need the most help?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Datalign you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more investors & advisors into the age of AI. See you around town!