Today we’d like to introduce you to Chuk Orakwue.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up in Nigeria and I came here at a young age for college. I studied engineering for four years, graduated, and started a job at Intel. I was an engineer designing semiconductor chips for almost a decade. I also worked for Qualcomm, Huawei, as well as Samsung before applying to McCombs for my MBA. One of the key challenges for me was the financial literacy gap.
As someone who grew up poor, and then went to work at some of the top tech firms in the world with a decent amount of pay; I lacked the necessary skills to invest my money. My ambition was to challenge myself to learn how the capital market works and leverage my engineering skillset so I can better navigate it. That’s how we started, meeting on the weekends and working with other partners to solve this challenge.
I decided to pursue my MBA to really refine my business world skillset, specifically with investment management. I had already been living in Austin at the time and didn’t want to move my family elsewhere, and McCombs offered a generous full-ride for me to attend, so it was an easy choice.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Unlike other businesses, investment advisory isn’t something you start. You need to iron out your investment process and test it across good & bad times to prove it’s more skill than luck. You need years. As Buffett said, you can’t bear a child in one month by impregnating nine women. It took us two years to research, build and tune the automated advisory engine. We put it to work with our own money for three years before offering it to a single paying customer. We had so many challenges raising money that we put our savings to get started. It was also a huge risk to leave a good-paying engineering job to go into full entrepreneurship. But I’m driven by passion and committed to getting this right. To leave a legacy!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Xantos is a mobile-first active investing platform. Our mission is to offer access to US stock markets through a low minimum, low fee, and professionally managed investment accounts to everyday folks, especially in Africa.
Any big plans?
We initially rolled out with US focus but realized there is higher demand in emerging markets. We recently launched our product in Africa, where so many don’t have access to the US stock market and have limited investing experience. We are excited to see where this goes!
Pricing:
- 1% annual advisory fees
Contact Info:
- Website: https://xantoslabs.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myxantos/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/myxantos
