Betterment CEO Built His Business by Not Watching Stock Market

In 10 years, the man who helped popularize robo-advising has built a company that manages $20 billion on behalf of 500,000 customers and, at last count, was valued at $800 million. And, as he tells Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Joel Weber, he barely pays attention to the stock market.

JOEL WEBER: The financial-services industry has so many players. You jumped into the fray 10 years ago with Betterment. What motivated you to enter such a competitive landscape?

Jon Stein: I had graduated from college and opened, like, seven different brokerage accounts. And what I found was they were very ...