Democratising Investing - Alex Vynokur, Co-Founder and CEO, BetaShares [S6.E6]

After a mini hiatus, 'Scaling Up' is back, and we have some incredible guests lined up in the coming months, none more so than this episode.

Alex Vynokur came to Australia as a 16 year old from Soviet Ukraine, not speaking a work of English, but with a steely determination to make something of himself. And that is an understatement as to what he has achieved since – in the midst of the GFC, he co-founded BetaShares, a passive Exchange Traded Fund (or ETF) fund manager, with roughly $23b under management, making them the second largest in Australia and New Zealand.

An ETF mimics an index but allows it to be investible and bought and sold on an exchange. The industry has moved swiftly from fairly vanilla – think tracking the ASX 200 or S&P 500, to more thematic or exotic type indexes - be it ESG based,  or even more niche such as tracking a basket of companies involved in the creation of the metaverse.

BetaShares has been at the forefront of this innovation – continually pushing the boundaries in its mission to democratise the ability for anyone to invest, given the ease, diversified and low cost nature of investing ETFs.

BetaShares, despite having over 800k retail customer, will no doubt be an an under the radar success story to many listeners, but one I have been wanting to tell for a while now. You are about to hear why – it is a story of grit, and passion – and a little peek into what has driven the success of a massive business, with a huge opportunity still ahead of it.
To learn more or donate to the United Ukraine Appeal visit theukraineappeal.org

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Show notes

Alex’s background immigrating to Australia and lessons from growing up in the Soviet Union (3:14) 

Influence of the Soviet Union on BetaShare’s mission to democratise investing and encourage equal access (6:42) 

BetaShares Founding Story and the opportunity in the ETF industry (9:20) 

Turning a great idea into a great business and disrupting incumbents in the ETF industry (12:13) 

Nuances in the Australian retail ETF market that allowed for BetaShares growth (14:06) 

The movement of the ETF industry to thematic and ESG investing (17:44) 

Diversification and innovation in the index industry led by new index providers such as Solactive (21:41) 

The future of BetaShares (Horizon Two) – leveraging technology to improve financial literacy in Australia (23:24) 

People as BetaShare’s competitive advantage and secret sauce (26:06) 

Fostering innovation by fostering a culture that breaks down the stigma around failure as detrimental to performance (28:56) 

Lessons on empowering leaders, managers, and the team at large to see the benefit of failure and mistakes (30:39) 

Hiring and testing for innovation and curiosity (31:36) 

Diagnostic tools to measure innovation within BetaShares culture (32:45) 

How to balance giving customers what they want and innovating to provide something they haven’t even thought of (34:03) 

The United Ukraine Appeal –delivering non-military aid to the victims of war in Ukraine (37:30)