Salt Lake City— Decheque, a Salt Lake City startup building an online marketplace for investors and investment funds, has raised $100,000 in early funding. 

Originally founded in May 2019 by a team out of the University of Utah, Decheque is on a mission to change the private investment industry. The company uses matching algorithms to improve the fundraising process for both investors and private funds.  

Currently, most funds raise money using cold calls and networking, which isn’t ideal for most managers.

“Right now, the whole process is terrible,” says Decheque founder and CEO Andrew Pignanelli. “Whether you’re an investor or a fund, you sit at a desk and make phone calls until someone replies. Some managers I know use blogs for all of their inbound traffic. As an investor, the whole world is closed off to you. It took me weeks and thousands of dollars to just buy a database to look at funds – imagine doing that as an individual who wants to make an investment. With Decheque, the whole process is easier. We use matching, built-in messaging, and report generating to make everything instant.”  

Decheque is making the process more objective for financial advisors as well. “We switched from targeting individuals to targeting financial advisory firms, which ultimately made our go-to-market faster. Now we’re lining up a few firms that have hundreds of high net-worth clients instead of spending all of this money advertising.”

This also comes with the announcement of their closed beta, launching on March 10. The beta will have a capped number of hedge funds and financial advisors while serving as a proof of concept for their full platform.

“I’m excited for it, I really am. The software looks sexy [laughs], and it’s really fast. Can’t wait to release it to the world.”