A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders He pitched 100 VC and spent 3 years building— then grew to $7B AUM. | Doug Scott, Founder of Ethic
Sep 29, 2025
In this engaging talk, Doug Scott, Founder and CEO of Ethic, shares his journey from investment banking in Australia to leading a values-based fintech with $7B AUM. He discusses the challenges of building technology without traction and the pivotal moment when Ethic's focus on helping advisors win clients skyrocketed their growth from $5M to $250M AUM in just a year. Doug emphasizes the importance of pitching to over 100 investors and the invaluable insights gained from customer-driven product development. His candid reflections on the struggles of entrepreneurship make it a must-listen.
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Personalization Is The Product
- Ethic builds personalized investment portfolios by mapping clients' values, tax and financial preferences to investable portfolios.
- They act as both technology and sub-advisor across multiple custodial partners to deliver and manage those portfolios.
All-In Move To The Bay Area
- Doug left investment banking in Australia, sold his stuff, and moved to the Bay Area within three weeks with no firm idea of the company.
- He followed curiosity, built community, and pulled threads until a fintech opportunity emerged.
Organic Finance Framed The Opportunity
- The “organic finance” metaphor connected consumer demand for transparency to investing and seeded Ethic's personalization OS idea.
- Personalization at scale requires complex workflows for trading and managing many individualized portfolios.