Transforming Wealth Transfer
Over the course of more than 20 years serving clients and overseeing over $100b in wealth management assets, David Barnard had a front row seat to seismic changes taking place in the industry. In 2021, he joined forces with Joe Lonsdale, a legendary software entrepreneur and venture capitalist, to start Luminary and build technology for the next generation of advisor services.
Successful client relationships always work backwards from well defined goals. However, when those included the tax efficient transfer of assets to generational and charitable beneficiaries, David recognized that analysis was exceedingly labor intensive for advisors and understanding strategy options was unnecessarily complicated for clients.
At the heart of the problem is trust & estate information stuck in original documents, compounded by disconnected tools used for simulating and presenting tax and beneficiary outcomes. And when work was done, it tended to be one-off rather than an ongoing service, missing an enormous opportunity to report tax-value created as part of the client deliverable.
Luminary is technology transforming wealth transfer. Using AI powered tools to connect analog trust & estate data directly into scalable tools for modeling, visualizing, and reporting, we enable wealth, legal, and tax advisors to work together to elevate client engagement, differentiate their practices in the marketplace, and grow with scale efficiency.
We are a team of experienced industry experts and successful software business builders. Our investors are visionary venture capitalists and leaders in wealth management.
David Barnard
David led the private wealth business at AllianceBernstein, overseeing more than $100 billion in client assets, and was also a Partner and member of the Operating Committee. He lives in the New York City area and is Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees at Bronx Charter School for the Arts.
Mary Huang
Mary is a strategic leader with over 15 years of experience in high-tech startups. Her experience spans cross-functional leadership and engineering roles at Peloton, 1stDibs, Advise Technologies, and Fitch Ratings. She is proud to have grown up in Brooklyn.
Our core values reflect who we are, how we work and how we approach building transformational products.
When our customer wins, we win.
Everything we do is centered around creating transparency, empowerment, and efficiency. Our mission is to help our customers unlock the meaning in their client’s money.
The best ideas come from healthy debate.
Any idea that stimulates a thoughtful, multi-dimensional discussion is worth considering. We have no pride in authorship and value diverse perspectives.
We go further together.
We believe that working together is the best way to achieve success. We are individually accountable but always support teammates in the achievement of our collective goals.
Sprint towards discovery.
We move quickly in our path to create reliable and intuitive products for our customers. We value testing and experimentation in R&D, over inaction.
Be REAL.
Be REAL: Resilient, Empathetic, Accountable, Low-ego. We persist through difficulties, listen to one another, own up to our word, and stay humble