Opto Investments Adds Two Product Leaders to Private Markets Push

By Grace Kim

Opto Investments appointed Justin Mills as Principal Product Manager and Rachel Hallock as Head of Design, two senior hires aimed at expanding the private-markets technology platform for wealth managers, family offices and institutional investors.

Opto said the appointments will support work to make its platform simpler, faster and more personalized as advisors and chief investment officers scale private-markets programs.

Mills will lead efforts to streamline and advance the company’s technology products. His initial focus is extending Opto’s core platform to simplify client onboarding and tailor the experience to the specific requirements of different firms.

What will Mills change?

Mills brings decades of experience across technology and alternative investments, according to Opto Investments. He spent 15 years at Quellos Capital Management, which was later acquired by BlackRock. He was responsible for risk, research and quantitative analytics products supporting more than $80 billion across hedge funds, private equity and real assets.

Mills later built product and program teams at Smartsheet during the company’s high-growth period.

Dan Piehler, Head of Product at Opto Investments, said: “Justin has spent years building technology for investment firms and deeply understands the complexity of getting a client from interested to invested. Rachel has designed fund software used by thousands of firms and knows how to make complex financial information feel simple.”

Piehler’s assessment links both hires to the same customer problem: moving a client from interest to an investment while making dense financial information easier to use.

Mills’s first assignment is concrete: make onboarding faster and adapt the core platform to the different firms that use it.

What will Hallock redesign?

Opto said Hallock will lead design across its platform, including the applications chief investment officers and advisors use to bring clients into private markets and the internal systems used by Opto’s investment team.

According to Opto, Hallock brings more than 14 years of product design and financial technology experience. She previously worked at DesignMap before joining Carta, where she served as Director of Product Design.

At Carta, Hallock led design for the company’s Fund Administration portfolio as the business expanded from approximately 300 firms to 4,000.

At Opto, Hallock must carry that design experience across an external client journey and an internal investment workflow.

The practical test is whether complex financial information and workflows feel simpler to clients and staff.

What is Opto trying to automate?

Opto operates as a private-markets outsourced chief investment officer and provides technology designed to help firms build, execute and service private investment programs.

Opto said the hires arrive as alternative investments become a larger component of client portfolios. Wealth firms, it said, face increasingly complex operational requirements spanning four areas:

• Due diligence
• Onboarding
• Execution
• Ongoing reporting

The stated automation target sits after an investment decision and before capital deployment. Opto aims to automate much of the operational work in that interval, allowing wealth-management teams to spend more time on client relationships and portfolio decisions.

Ryan VanGorder, CEO of Opto Investments, said: “We’re bringing on senior, seasoned talent to take advantage of the growth that’s ahead of us. Firms come to Opto for investment experience backed by technology that handles the operational work.”

His framing ties the two hires to a single proposition: clients receive Opto’s investment experience, while its technology handles the work around that experience.

According to Opto Investments, the company was founded by Joe Lonsdale and has backing from 8VC and Michael Dell’s DFO Management.

With growth ahead, the test for Mills and Hallock is whether simpler, more tailored software can also reduce manual work for wealth teams.