Vanilla provides a comprehensive, fully digital Estate Advisory Platform that helps advisors visualize plan structures, create on-demand trust and estate documents, and monitor plans over time. The platform includes Vanilla Document BuilderTM and V/AITM, the company’s embedded AI technology for estate planning. Vanilla serves over 10,000 end-clients across net worths from $1 million to over $1 billion and has visualized more than 12,500 estate documents. The company reports a tenfold increase in its customer base since launch and has released over 50 features and enhancements this year. Vanilla’s customers range from small RIAs to large firms such as Vanguard, Mariner Wealth Advisors, Balentine, and Avantax. The company says it will use the new funding to expand its platform and accelerate adoption of its embedded AI and document offerings. Vanilla offers a comprehensive, fully digital estate planning platform that supports the legacy-building process end to end, including client and advisor education, visualizing and optimizing plan structure, proactive monitoring, document creation, and plan execution. The platform is designed to allow investment advisors, broker-dealers, and other financial services providers to digitize estate planning and deepen client relationships, with the aim of improving retention and assets under management over time. Vanilla is partnering with industry-leading investment and financial advisory firms to refine product–market fit and expects to make an enhanced platform generally available in the second half of 2022. The company added senior product and technology executives to its leadership team, including CEO Gene Farrell, CTO Amjad Hussain, and SVP of Revenue Robin Melnick, to support scaling. Vanilla was founded in 2019 and is based in Los Angeles, California. Financially, the company announced a $30 million Series B to accelerate product development and customer adoption. Vanilla is a Los Angeles–based digital estate planning platform founded in 2019 by Steve Lockshin. The company provides a digital estate planning solution that proactively monitors client estate planning, visualizes existing planning, and facilitates document creation. After releasing its initial offering in November 2020, Vanilla expanded from generating core estate planning documents to reviewing existing documents and serving as a proactive estate-planning management platform. Vanilla has partnered with wealth-management technology providers—Addepar and Orion Advisor Solutions—to integrate and deliver its suite to their users. The company has been deployed by Mariner Wealth Advisors, Carson Group, AdvicePeriod, and 435 other RIAs. Vanilla’s board includes F. William McNabb III, Venrock’s Nick Beim, and Robert Thornton.

Total raised

$42M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Apr 2022