Wealth Management

Sep 22, 2021

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Michael Jordan’s First Direct Fintech Investment Is in Estate Planning

It was a routine call for Vanilla founder Steve Lockshin. He was talking with the head of the family office for one of his highest-profile clients, a billionaire known around the globe. During the call, Lockshin mentioned he was doing a capital raise for his estate planning startup and on the spot he had two additional investors.

NBA legend Michael Jordan, who has worked with Lockshin for 25 years, was so impressed with the advice and leadership he received from Lockshin, that he decided to make his first direct fintech investment in Vanilla. He joined Curtis Polk, Jordan’s family office manager and business partner, and venture capital firm Venrock, which has backed household names like Apple, Intel, Cloudflare, Personal Capital and Dataminr, to help Lockshin’s tech-enabled estate planning startup close a nearly $12 million Series A funding round last month.

For Jordan and Polk, the investment was a slam dunk. “Steve [Lockshin] has been a leader in demystifying and simplifying personal wealth management, investing and asset protection,” said Polk, who has known Lockshin for about 30 years. “Those are areas that he’s always been focused on. In his other companies, he was able to achieve progress in making people feel much more comfortable in their day-to-day wealth plans.”

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Read the full article here: Michael Jordan’s First Direct Fintech Investment Is in Estate Planning

[Samuel Steinberger, Investment News]