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A Brief, But Impactful History

It started with a simple question in a San Francisco apartment back in 2018: “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could have a hedge fund in your pocket?” Morgan and I were kicking around the idea, dreaming of a tool that could bring elite investing power to people like us. At the same time, I was grinding alongside Shri, building quantitative strategies and chasing the vision of fully autonomous alpha. We had the skills, honed over years of crafting quant models, and we knew how to generate an edge. But the cost was brutal: endless stress, missed moments with family and friends, time stolen from us by all the intricacies and tedious tasks needed to execute high-alpha investing. Three seasoned investors with the chops to make it work, yet we kept asking: why isn’t this easier?

The answer hit us like a ton of bricks. Time is the ultimate currency. And the deeper we looked, the uglier it got. The investment industry was a mess: opaque, outdated, maddening. Robo-advisors and managers peddled stale strategies like the 60/40, bragging about gains while hiding risks that crushed investors in 2008, 2020, and beyond. They wouldn’t share the metrics we lived by, like Sharpe Ratios, Sortino Ratios, volatility, and drawdowns, because their numbers wouldn’t stand the light. We scoured for a platform that laid it bare but found nothing—not because they couldn’t, but because they wouldn’t. Self-preservation trumped serving the modern investor.

As entrepreneurs and quants, we couldn’t just sit still. We wanted to tear down the curtain, expose the flaws, and set a new standard that put risk-adjusted returns and transparency first. Sidepocket wasn’t just about lowering the bar to elite strategies or building something user-friendly. It was about proving hedging and cutting drawdowns could redefine investing and forcing the industry to catch up. We saw a gap. Relatively sophisticated people, folks who may already be investing but have realized it’s really hard to do well without the right tools, deserve premium strategies without barriers or burdens. Our ultimate dream stretched bigger: to empower thousands of financial education, copy-trading, stock market simulation, and other investing apps—none of which are SEC-registered or able to directly add features to provide automated investing—with modern strategies powered by decades of research and a real track-record.

We started directly with consumers to prove it could work, validating our models in the real world and staying true to that long-term vision. Today, Sidepocket stands tall as a deep tech firm building the next generation of asset allocation and investing strategies, forged with over $10 million dollars worth of man and woman hours poured into research, quantitative development, and real-world implementation. We’ve got a three-year track record managing capital through one of the roughest markets in a century: 2022, what Bank of America called the 60/40’s worst performance in 100 years. We didn’t just survive; we shined. As a fiduciary, we're obliged to act in your best interest, delivering clarity and trust our clients rely on—not just for our strategies, but for the relationships we build to guide their financial journeys.

But great things come to those who act, not sit on their hands—alpha isn’t infinitely scalable. Unlike the old guard, we don’t gate-keep by net worth and who you know, but by action: first come, first serve. Those who take initiative win. This isn’t a mass-market gimmick or a shady bot with no accountability or fiduciary duty. Sidepocket is for strategic minds who’ve wrestled with investing and know it takes more than grit; it takes the right tools and partners. Sidepocket is quant-driven, research-backed, and ready to protect your nest egg or grow your dreams while paving the way for a future where thousands of apps carry our vision forward.

Daniel Idzkowski
CEO, Sidepocket Financial