Imagine a retirement plan for small businesses that's both cheap and automated. That's what Honest Dollar says it plans to deliver.
The Austin, Texas-based financial tech startup, founded by Henry Yoshida and Will Hurley, is about to launch its online direct-contribution platform, according to the Wall Street Journal. Aimed at businesses of up to 50 employees, it will be unveiled at the South by Southwest festival in Austin on Friday.
Honest Dollar makes no bones about its goal on the company website, which says, "Soon you'll be able to set up your company's plan in under 90 seconds, (and) pay a flat fee of just $10 per employee per month."
Recommended For You
Yoshida, who is also the firm's chief strategy officer, is no stranger to retirement plans. He was also cofounder and principal of another firm that offered retirement plan investment advice. And the tech end should be no problem for CEO Hurley, who was formerly in research and development at Apple and an engineer at IBM.
One of the reasons small businesses avoid getting involved in retirement plans is the cost, but at $10 per employee, that argument could be toast — especially because Honest Dollar points out that employers can deduct the monthly fees as a business expense. The time involved in setting up a plan is another drawback for most plans, but a 90-second setup — online — pretty much skewers that argument, too.
But what kind of plan will employees be getting at $10 a head and with an automated process?
A range of them, actually. According to the Wall Street Journal, companies that want to put in an employer match or an annual contribution will get a Simple IRA program design. And if the company doesn't want to kick in, it can instead offer "standard pretax and Roth IRAs" and even combine it with a SEP-IRA.
Investment options will be made up of six basic ETF portfolios, garnered from Vanguard Group and other firms. Average fund expenses are expected to be in the neighborhood of 0.1 percent of assets per year, and which one participants get selected into depends on their risk tolerance.
Honest Dollar said it was close to wrapping up a $3 million seed round of funding led by Expansive Ventures, a venture-capital firm based in Mountain View, Calif.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
