AI Investment Advisors and Net Worth Tracking for Private Investors | Andrew Izyumov - EP47

Steven Weinstock (00:00) Hi and welcome back to another episode of The Wealth Clock, where we break down strategies, systems, and mindsets by elite investors. My guest today, Andrew Izyumov He spent years on the front lines of global capital markets as a principal investing director at Goldman Sachs. After underwriting major institutional deals and making early-stage angel bets in over 20 startups. He set out to bridge the gap between institutional wealth, management, and private investors as the founder and CEO of Eight Figures. Today we're doing a deep dive into his origin story. We're gonna ask some personal questions. We're gonna ask him where he's from, and we're gonna ask him how he got here. Andrew, thank you so much for coming on. Andrew Izyumov (00:47) Thanks a lot, Steven. Thanks for having me here. Steven Weinstock (00:49) Okay, before we start, tell me where are you right now? Andrew Izyumov (00:53) I'm in the Bay Area in the city called San Mateo. Steven Weinstock (00:56) Okay, yeah, sure. I guess most people will call it the San Francisco area or Silicon Valley. at least that's what here in New York is what I would call it. tell me about Goldman Sachs. When did you start? How old were you? How'd you get that job? Was it your first job out of college? talk to me Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs is behemoth. you know, people are going to get a job over there. And you had it and you were there for quite a few years. tell the audience how you got that job at Goldman Sachs. Andrew Izyumov (01:25) Right. well I I I landed an internship at KPMG, the big four audit firm, straight out of college. And then back in twenty nine I got into Goldman first as an intern again, and then I grew through the ranks up to the executive director position when I left the firm in twenty twenty one. Steven Weinstock (01:47) wow. so you got there in nine. this is during a global recession. I know Goldman Sachs definitely bailed out quite a few companies back then, so Goldman Sachs was in the news a lot back then. You were based in San Francisco back then when you got the job with Goldman, or were you somewhere else? Andrew Izyumov (02:04) I was based in Moscow, Russia, but Steven Weinstock (02:06) wow. Andrew Izyumov (02:06) I was a part of the global special situations group, that was the name back then, with major offices in New York, London, and Asia. So we got this kind of global presence and it's effectively investing, principal investing arm inside bigger banks. Steven Weinstock (02:24) So Goldman Sachs does have an office in Moscow. Andrew Izyumov (02:27) It used to have it used to have one. Yeah. Steven Weinstock (02:28) used to have. Is this is is this until the Ukrainian war or is this you know Andrew Izyumov (02:34) Yeah, that's right. That's right. the Ukrainian war in twenty twenty two kinda triggered exit the bank from the country. So they gradually kind of phased out the operations and eventually exited. But I left the bank back in twenty twenty one, before that started. Steven Weinstock (02:49) Got it. Yeah, I do remember there was this mass exodus of everything Russian back then. a lot of people, you know, innocent people had a lot of things pulled out from under the rug just by being Russian. I guess that was gonna go going to be my next question. Where's your accent from? but I guess you answered that very well. so you were in Russia, you're now in the San Francisco area. You got here recently, you're traveling, w you know, what's what does your day look like? what zip code do you call home? Andrew Izyumov (03:19) Right. Yeah, right now I'm traveling. my co founder is based here in in the Bay Area, in San Francisco if you wish. And I I'm kind of traveling a lot, but I'm based in Cyprus, that's a Mediterranean island next to Greece, you know, Israel, Turkey, Egypt if you if you've been there I'm not sure. it's a relatively small Steven Weinstock (03:39) Yes, sir. Andrew Izyumov (03:40) island, but it's a part of European Union. It's relatively well developed with a relatively good infrastructure and ecosystem there, and a lot of, you know, companies based there actually, with global operations including in the US. Steven Weinstock (03:54) yeah, I travel to Israel a lot and I know there's quite a few companies that are based in Cyprus. I guess they're tax they have good tax advantages compared to other countries. Cyprus is definitely a beautiful country. I've never been there yet. I I've been to about thirty five countries, but I've not made it to Cyprus yet. But I guess one of these days. tell me about this new co Andrew Izyumov (04:15) It's just a short flight from Israel to to to Cyprus, just forty minutes. Steven Weinstock (04:19) Yeah, no, I I know. actually my my son was in spending a year in Israel and when the flights were canceled because of the Iranian war, in order to get people out of the country that were just doing short flights. So people were either either flying to Cyprus, I think some people took a boat to Cyprus. my son had that option. He ended up driving about twelve hours to Cairo, or maybe it was even more than twelve hours, and took a flight out of Cairo. but that was about a year a year ago, maybe a l maybe a little more. it was about a year ago. About a year ago. okay. Andrew Izyumov (04:53) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steven Weinstock (04:54) talk to me about your company Eight Figures. How'd you start it? Why is it called that? I guess I could figure out why it's called that. but t t tell me about this company, what do you guys do, and how'd you get involved? Andrew Izyumov (05:06) Sure. we are building AI investment advisor, a network tracker. Basically, our app enables private, self-direct investors to track all their assets in one place. So you can connect all your accounts, broker, bank, crypto, real estate, and see this all in one place with all the metrics like IRAs and you know dividends and coupons for bonds. So basically every single metric you care about. And then on top of that, you've got AI investment team. What I mean by that, we have AI agents that are trained as portfolio manager, risk officer, tax advisor, portfolio planner, equity research analyst. You know, in each of those agents, they analyze your portfolio from every angle, talk to each other, and come up with useful recommendations to improve the quality of your capital management. Steven Weinstock (05:57) Is there a lot of regulatory when it comes to the AI advisor part of the business? Andrew Izyumov (06:02) Absolutely. as you know, financial advice is a regulatory field and that's why we've got SAC registration. So we are registered investment advisor and this is yeah part part of part of what we do. Steven Weinstock (06:15) Is this is this app, is this business targeting Americans for now or is it global? Andrew Izyumov (06:21) It's global, but the biggest part of our users is from the US. And answering your your your second question about the name, basically eight figures you know stands for the amount starting from ten million dollars. And from our perspective, this is about the right networks where you start feeling this kind of financial freedom. that that's therefore the name is coming from there. Steven Weinstock (06:46) Got it, got it. Okay, yeah. No, I I f I figured eight figures had to do with something along those lines. who is your I guess who is the target audience for this company? Is it somebody who's only worth ten million dollars? if somebody has a million and a half dollars spread out among, you know, twelve different accounts, is he able to be a client? is the eight figures just something aspirational, but yet Even somebody who makes thirty five thousand dollars a year is able to sign up for the app. Andrew Izyumov (07:16) Absolutely. eight figures as you said is is more of an aspirational target for people. you can pretty much start using it with any networks, but we see most of our users they are within let's say hundredk to one million dollar range in terms of their networks. that there are you know some higher earners as well, but you know, most of the people they fall into that range. And the reason for that is you know, y you gotta start thinking strategically about your portfolio, about your capital earlier on if you wanna hit those let's say eight figures targets. Steven Weinstock (07:51) yeah. being that this is AI based, I'm gonna guess, and I could be wrong, so excuse me if I'm wrong. I'm gonna guess that most of the people who are interested in using your service, your app, your website, I'm gonna guess that these are people who are younger. somebody who's maybe in their twenties, possibly their thirties. I'm gonna guess that most people in their sixties or seventies even though if they're fully involved in tech, they may not either trust or you know, it's hard to change people's behaviors, you know, they've been doing well for thirty years, forty years before this came out. Who is your target in terms of age? I you know, I'm assuming, you know, anybody who wants to sign up you would let, but who do you feel, you know, you have the most success And conversion. Is it the young the young people as they say? Andrew Izyumov (08:42) Say the range is between 25 years old to 50. That's roughly the the the the range. And the reason for that is before 25, you probably don't have that much to to track, to analyze, to invest. You're still just trying to, you know, make your first money and land a good job and so on and so forth. And as you correctly said, after 50, some people, even though we do have users older than that. But some people are are are not, you know, maybe as good with technology or or they have, you know, you their financial advisors they've been working on with like for twenty plus years and it's not that easy for them to just switch to some new tool to try a new tool and so Steven Weinstock (09:25) I got it. I got it. what what are the fees involved? is there a free option? Is it is there different tiers based on how much you're worth or how much how much you're taking out of the service. Talk to me about some of the fees involved. Andrew Izyumov (09:41) Sure. we made our investment or we call it network tracker free. So you can track literally every account, every investment for free. But then we charge only $20 a month subscription for AI advice. So it's relatively inexpensive if you compare to you know to the regular, let's say, financial advisor that would charge you at least one percent of assets under management and probably offer you some other let's say funds or notes, structured notes on top where even higher fees are embedded. So you know we we are trying to actually democratize access to high quality financial advice. a lot of people they see that kind of minimum threshold of 500k or or one million dollar net worth before they can even start talking to financial advisor. For us, we are open to everyone, so you can start tracking and get AI adv investment advice with any networks. Steven Weinstock (10:40) Got it. So if somebody signs up, maybe they use it first as a tracker. they have the free option. you know, I guess in the computer app the business, you know, there's something, you know, you we give away for free and hopefully, you know, there's a percentage that actually convert. some people call it the freemium model where you give something free to enough people and all you need is you know, one, two or ten percent to convert into a paying customer. to make it a viable business. we see that with just about everything. we see that with the apps. You know, there's games that are for free. Candy Crush, you know, it has a billion players. all you need is, you know, 1% paying for you know extra coins or candies or whatever it is that my kids are always asking me to buy them. And you know that makes the business model. So, you know, with your service you could have somebody sign up, get the tracker, be comfortable with it, start adding in all their accounts. maybe they have two different brokerage accounts. Maybe they play with some crypto. maybe they have some retirement accounts and as time goes on and they feel more comfortable if they like the app, if they like the interface, they can just sign up and start getting advice from the from AI. Andrew Izyumov (11:53) Absolutely, that's the perfect summary. I would only add, maybe relevant for your audience, we also have relatively advanced tracking of real estate. So you can literally see your levered returns, unlevered returns, you can effectively link mortgage to your property, you can see home equity, so you can you can you can add cash flows, you know, th th th th this is all there as well. And then you eventually can see the returns the professional investors do the way I did it back at Goldman. we try to replicate that in our app as well. Maybe in a bit simplified way. Of course we don't have this low we we don't have enough space for long spreadsheets inside the mobile app, but you know, some basic core metrics like a levered and unlevered returns and IRRs with all the cash flows we model there for every single investment. Steven Weinstock (12:40) Okay, so that actually is something I'm interested in, especially when you mention the real estate. in terms of aggregating different brokerage accounts, I've seen that before. I've seen that I I think twenty years ago, with you could have multiple brokerage accounts, multiple bank accounts, maybe some credit cards. I think there was an app tried to think this could be twenty-five years ago. Maybe it was called Yodli, Y O D L E E E. maybe it's still around, maybe it's not. It may be the back end of some other company systems. I do remember that. you know, my my I'm in the real estate space, in all different aspects of real estate. Yes, I own some stocks, yes, I have a Roth IRA, yes, I have some retirement accounts, etc. obviously I have bank accounts. But as far as real estate, real estate, there's so many different variables. I mean, so many. I could own, you know, two single family homes that both have a mortgage, you know, has rental income. We could plug in the value of it minus my my mortgage balance, etc. How do we plug in and and maybe it's it's maybe it can't be done, but what if I'm an investor into other people's real estate? So hey I invested a hundred grand into this twenty-five million dollar apartment complex I'm just a small piece of the action. You know, they raised, you know, ten million dollars or seven million dollars. I'm just a hundred grand. yes, the value is worth twenty five million or thirty million, but again, I'm just a small piece. How does and and maybe I'm wrong, how does this get integrated or c or can it be integrated? Andrew Izyumov (14:14) Well, unlike your brokerage account, we can't you we usually can't connect directly to that GP or operator that runs that effectively a r real estate fund. typically it's structured as a fund. but you can add that manually. And typically, if you have such a small sliver of a bigger fund, you you record it as such, as a fund investment rather than a real estate investment. You got real for real estate investment. You can have a share, like I don't know, you you bought a home fifty-fifty with someone else, you can obviously outline your share and then see like returns for your share and so on. But if you are just a small let's say investor in in in a bigger fund, then you just have effectively a fund position. And then for the fund, the metrics are I know that rings the bell, like O I C MOIC, like multiple invested capital or T VPI, you know, like you know, the DPI, th there are different metrics. fund specific metrics and the underlying investment could be real estate, it could be venture capital, it could be private equity. It's pretty much, you know, indifferent in in terms of tracking. you know, of course if you wanna go into details of the real estate asset specifically that was bought by that fund, well then you can probably just kind of model it separately. It's it's not part of the of of your position. It's more of a bigger kind of you know and anal analysis or a exercise to model it properly, maybe in it even in Excel. you can you can probably add it as a separate real estate with really tiny share, like two percent. I won two percent of that of that complex, but I would rather track it as as a in terms of asset class as a fund investment. Steven Weinstock (15:51) Got it. So this would have to be done manually because unlike Schwab or Fidelity, you know, there's no a global interface for you to either log in or for me to log in or to get an API or some sort of login token. these types of investments would need a manual way of doing it. Am I correct? Andrew Izyumov (16:11) There is only one way to automate real estate. You can get zillow data, like you know, zestimate and all all all their kind of particular real estate properties, including the the like rough valuation. you can get that. but beyond that, that as you said, there are no APIs or automation or the the way to like plug in your real estate and that will automatically calculate. Steven Weinstock (16:35) I got it. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. I you know, years I haven't done it in a while, but years ago I used to, you know, play with some of these aggregators and since I'm mostly in real estate, it was very h you know, there was no way I I don't think back then they even offered, you know, the manual way of doing it. It was either Fidelity or Schwab or Chase Bank or Capital One or you know, nothing. So yeah, when it came to real estate, it was very hard to, you know, just see those kind of snapshots. now in terms of the AI offering advice, so so just walk me through this. Since I'm inputting all my information into the the system, into the program, into the app, I'm putting I guess it knows my age, probably knows my location, it knows roughly you know, where my money is and what I'm invested in. And when I ask the AI for advice, it's going to base their the the research will be done on my specific my specific net worth and then it will give me different ideas. how how does that work? Is it gonna only look at what I do and then You know, do I answer do I ask questions like, hey, I have an 18 year old and I'm about to pay for college, I'm single, I'm never getting married, and you know, I I could care less about saving for the future. How does the AI, other than reading all my accounts and data, how does it know you know what I'm interested in, what I'm looking to do? Hey, I'm you know, looking to save up for a sports car. Hey, I'm looking to never spend a penny because I wanna, you know, take it to the grave with me. How does that how does that work? Andrew Izyumov (18:09) Right. well, apart from seeing your portfolio, we obviously have investment investor profile where you outline your your financial goals, your your your time horizon, your risk tolerance and so on. But also we have memory, like similar to what you have in your let's say GPT chart or whatever other LLM you use. we also have memory. So the more you you you you talk to your AI investment advisor, the more it knows about you. And that also serves as a context for all other AI agents to give you better advice. the questions you've been asking right now about financial planning, well, we have AI financial planner that does exactly that, you know, builds your financial plan and analyzes your portfolio from financial planning perspective. But maybe then you might have a question about your portfolio allocations, your the diversification in your portfolio and whether you gotta do something about it. Or maybe you want to model a stress test scenario. What if AI goes down? Like what if AI investments do not pay off as people currently expect, and the market goes, I don't know, 30% down. What's gonna happen with your specific portfolio, with your specific exposures? You might be wanna model that and you might or might not wanna do something about it. So all these kind of questions AI is answering based on your specific holdings and allocations. Steven Weinstock (19:27) Is the AI going to offer advice in terms of specific stocks? Like if I say, you know, hey, I got an extra 50 grand, I want to splash around in industrial stocks or you know, the big seven or mag seven or whatever they're called, does it you know, does the AI then say, Hey, this might be a good time to sell some Nvidia? And buy some, you know, anthropic. Or are they gonna say you own tons of Chase Bank, maybe pair off some because you like dividends, and buy, you know, these four large regional banks. and and these are the ticker symbols. Is that something that could happen? Is there actual specific advice like you know, the old days used to be stockbrokers would call with cold call people? You know, I r I still remember when you know stockbrokers would cold call, they'd get a list, a bunch of rich doctors or lawyers in Greenwich, Connecticut. let's call them up and you know tell them about you know three stocks, get them in, and you know, you know, great. And now you know they're a client. is that something that the AI with eight figures will offer as an option? Is it only offering mutual funds because those are deemed safer and my hands are on ear quotes? how how does that work with specifics? Andrew Izyumov (20:41) yes, we do offer advice on single name stocks and for that reason as part of our AI investment team there is equity research AI analyst that does exactly that, does the fundamental analysis of single name stocks and can advise and you know suggest to let's say add something to to to the portfolio. But the more important is that since we don't have custody over users' funds. There is no incentive for us to offer specific like mutual funds or specific like structured notes or even specific stock names. We always try to prioritize users' best interest and we always try to advise if we if we recommend adding something to the portfolio, we always try to analyze it in in the whole portfolio context, not just separate. it's a great investment opportunity, let's buy it, let's make return. Well, does it fit your investment strategy? Does it fit your financial goals? Does it fit your overall portfolio diversification? We we always try to analyze it in the portfolio context and that's why it's so powerful. I mean you can I you can you can find other tools and instruments that might analyze a single stock in and out based on all the public information available. But then it's very important not only know if that particular stock is is is a good stock, but rather is it a good investment in your whole portfolio context? And that that's what our AI team actually does. Steven Weinstock (22:07) I got it. And you you hit it on the nose when you said that you guys don't actually have custody of you know, the accounts. My money is still in Schwab or Fidelity or Morgan Stanley as opposed to the example I gave with the stockbrokers, they typically held your account. And excuse me, and for them, it was all about action, you know, buy, sell, buy sell, because that's where, you know, they made their money so to speak. And They weren't looking for people to just, you know, buy it hold forever. So yeah, that's actually a very good point. you guys aren't in control of the money. the money is still kept safely in the accounts that the customers already know, love and trust. So that that is a big deal. talk to me about the business eight figures. is it already launched yet? is it something you're still working on? Are you tweaking it? What's the What what's the game plan? Andrew Izyumov (22:59) It's launched and it's available in on App Store and Google Play. You can download the app, you can connect your accounts, you could get AI advice. So it's fully kind of operational. We are improving the quality of our advice almost daily. We are a adding additional knowledge bases and you know databases to make sure our AI really knows like what's going on in the markets right now, can monitor all the news and so on. But you know, it's everything is live, everything could be could be tested. Steven Weinstock (23:28) Very interesting. Andrew, I I had a good time talking to you. I like your background. I didn't get more into it exactly, you know, which little city you're from and how you know how many times you visited the US. You know, I I I like those types of questions. I love hearing about people's travel. I like hearing about people's demographics, is that the right word? Or sociology or you know, I just like hearing their their story and You know, if you're born somewhere else and you're you know, here in America, you know, to me it's just more interesting because I like to just hear about it. but I didn't want to get too into it on the on the podcast. Maybe privately I'll start asking you questions. but Andrew, I I had a very good time talking to you. tell the audience where they could reach out to you, where they could find your company, how they could contact you if they want. I'll I'll also put it in the show notes, but tell everybody. Andrew Izyumov (24:19) Sure. Our website is eightfigures.com. you can go there and check us out. for me personally, you can connect with me. I'm mostly on LinkedIn. I I have an X account, but I'm mostly active on LinkedIn. You can find me there by my first and last name, Andrew Izumov, is at Y U O V. And then also we have a YouTube channel where you can follow us, subscribe, ask. actually questions in in in comments. I try to reply to every single one where we share, I personally share all my investing experience from Goldman and as a private investor, f for for people to you know improve the financial education. I think it's very, very important piece of our mission here to really fill that gap. People we're supposed to learn this stuff at school. Unfortunately they don't teach financial literacy at schools. That's why we are trying to close that. Steven Weinstock (25:14) yeah, that's a whole podcast series in itself about the lack of the financial education in school. I just wish I wish I knew or was taught just some basic things in school. something like a credit report. what helps a credit report, what doesn't help a credit report, compound interest. I wish they taught me that when I was six years old, seven years old. I try to teach my kids that. some of my kids are big savers because of it. but it's a certain discipline. And you know, the more knowledge, the more better off we all are, especially at a young age. Andrew, it was great talking to you. Let me just tell the audience your last name it's Izumov, I Z. I know you said the letter is Z because, you know, you're a foreigner and in America we say Z. I I Andrew Izyumov (25:59) Okay. Steven Weinstock (25:59) learned I I learned that from one of my Canadian friends back in when I was in summer camp. He kept saying Z and I didn't know what he was talking about. Your last name is I Z-Y U-M-O-V. Andrew, we could find you on LinkedIn. it was great talking to you. for everybody else, if you made it to the end of the episode, please comment the word awesome so I know you made it to the end. Thank you very much, Andrew. I appreciate it. Please like, share, and subscribe. Have a great one. Andrew Izyumov (26:29) Thanks a lot, Steven, and thanks everyone for listening. Steven Weinstock (26:32) Alrighty.