David Goerz

David Goerz
Occupation	Chief Investment Officer, Co-founder of Powder
Known for	Co-founding Powder, an AI document analysis platform for wealth advisors
Education	BS in Applied Mathematics, UCLA; MS in Operations Research Engineering, Stanford University

David Goerz is an American investment professional and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Powder, an artificial intelligence platform that automates document analysis and sales proposal generation for wealth advisors. Powder participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch.

Career

Goerz holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master of Science in Operations Research Engineering from Stanford University. Over the course of a career spanning more than three decades, he has held senior investment management positions at several institutions. He served as CEO and Chief Investment Officer at Strategic Frontier Management, a firm providing investment strategy and asset management consulting services. He has also held roles at the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo), MUFG Union Bank, and mPower, where he developed expertise in global tactical asset allocation and investment management.

In 2023, Goerz co-founded Powder alongside Kanishk Parashar, Soo Yung Cho, and Dominic Tully. The company is headquartered in Los Altos, California. Powder is an AI-powered tool designed to help wealth advisors rapidly create personalized sales proposals for prospective clients. The platform uses large language models (LLMs) to automate manual tasks involved in the advisory sales process, including parsing financial documents and extracting insights from client conversations.

Powder's core features include a document parser that handles brokerage statements, tax returns, estate documents, 401(k) and IRA statements, and other financial records with claimed accuracy rates above 99 percent. The platform also includes a meeting note-taker that captures personalized insights from client conversations, and a portfolio analysis tool that evaluates portfolio returns, risk, and fees. The product is intended to reduce the time wealth advisors spend on manual data entry and analysis, allowing them to generate tailored proposals more efficiently.

As Chief Investment Officer at Powder, Goerz focuses on engineering the investment methodologies that underpin the platform's prospect engagement tools, drawing on his extensive background in portfolio strategy and institutional asset management.