This fintech startup ideally wants to be “much more boring” than Robinhood

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Shortly after launching Ocho, a startup that offers personal financial support to business owners, Ankur Nagpal realized that the company’s debut product—a solo 401(k) retirement account—”is not a venture-backed business” per se. Despite landing nearly 300 customers with the first wedge, the entrepreneur is already focused on expanding the service to be more holistic and, for business owners just trying to figure out how to think about money, more realistic.

“We still haven’t found a single user who feels confident or comfortable with their financial knowledge,” Nagpal said. Along with solo 401(k) services, Ocho is now a brokerage that lets people invest in a variety of ETFs and stocks, has support services for financial advisors and is working on offering other types of accounts like IRAs and health savings accounts.

Robinhood, he says, is often an app related to buying and selling. He hopes that Ocho, because it’s for retirement, is about “buy and hold.” Ocho is extremely focused on education and conservative games. There will never be options trading on the platform. “We are very conservative – for example, if someone wants to buy Apple shares on our platform, of course they can. But we would also ask them to consider buying an index fund before they do so simply because it has historically been a safer option.”

“Ideally, we’re a lot more boring,” Nagpal said compared to Robinhood. “In an ideal world, I’d make love to someone you know, set up a bunch of like-to-like automations, automatically invest a few percent of their paycheck, and we’ll handle the rest. It’s not a lot of active trading.” The company only makes money from an annual subscription fee of $299 per year.

The refrain from being an “all-in-one solution” is all too common in the fintech world, as companies pivot and expand their services to land a larger scale. Ocho wants to avoid some of that price runoff, especially around customer acquisition costs.

Ocho also has discipline around one very specific budget: the company has spent $0 on paid marketing, and plans to keep it that way for the next few years. Nagpal also added that the 9-person team is unlikely to hire anyone new this year, and they continue to work with freelancers and contractors to handle demand without overspending.

For now, I’m looking to gain customer and brand trust by offering equity to some of the biggest tech influencers and builders in the area. Nagpal tells TechCrunch that Ocho has raised a $4.5 million seed round led by Vibe Capital, which is Nagpal’s own venture fund. He says he got approval from all the LPs and the round closed at a value of $12 million. The round also includes investments from over 200 techies, including Mercury’s Immad Akhund, AngelList’s Avlok Kohli and Elizabeth Yin’s Hustle Fund. Each investor was only allowed to contribute up to a $10,000 maximum, which Nagpal says was key to helping them create an “army of stakeholders and supporters and people vested in our success.”

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