Altruist VP was cited in Vanguard’s 2025 Just Invest lawsuit

Altruist VP of sales Robert Mennow was mentioned in a now-settled lawsuit alleging Vanguard mishandled its 2021 acquisition of Just Invest, adding a notable personnel connection between the custodian startup and its new parent company. 

Mennow was not a defendant in the case; Vanguard was a defendant. Mennow joined Altruist in 2023 after previously working for Vanguard from 1999 to 2022, according to his FINRA BrokerCheck registration. Mennow was mentioned in a complaint filed in 2025 from the founders of Just Invest, a direct indexing startup that was bought by Vanguard in 2021 as the firm’s first and only acquisition until last week’s move for Altruist. 

Mennow was cited as being head of West Coast RIA Sales for Vanguard at the time of its 2021 sale to Just Invest, which alleged that Vanguard misrepresented its plans to support the startup after its acquisition and then acted to minimize earn-out payments owed to Just Invest. Vanguard settled the lawsuit brought by the shareholders of Just Invest on July 29, coming weeks before it acquired Altruist for $4.6 billion. 

Mennow allegedly told Just Invest’s principals that $10 billion in first-year AUM was achievable based on an expanding sales pipeline, according to the complaint filed last year. The target was significant because performance payments from Vanguard were tied to post-merger growth. Just Invest claimed Vanguard did not hire a dedicated sales professional focused on bringing in new clients until early 2023, when it added one salesperson in a business-development role. 

InvestmentNews sought comment from Vanguard on Aug. 27 regarding the Just Invest settlement, the company’s Altruist acquisition and whether any lessons from the Just Invest integration would carry over to the Altruist deal. Vanguard did not respond to the request sent by email. 

"Vanguard is a great company with a lot of talented people and they strive to learn from everything,” Just Invest co-founder Jonathan Hudacko told InvestmentNews last week. Hudacko is now the CEO of AI tax planning startup Worthy after he and two other Just Invest co-founders were allegedly terminated in “retaliation and without cause” by Vanguard in June 2024.

Just Invest is the only known previous acquisition made by Vanguard since its inception in 1975. Vanguard rebranded Just Invest as Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management, but the company has thus far indicated that Altruist will keep its leadership and brand identity led by founder Jason Wenk “as a standalone business” under Vanguard’s ownership. 

“For us, Altruist really kind of helps solve that gap between how do you take the need for great fee-based advice and through technology, how can you scale it so that more and more people can benefit from it,” Vanguard CEO Salim Ramji said on a podcast hosted by Creative Planning CEO Peter Mallouk. “We anticipate Altruist will be a division of Vanguard. It'll run completely independently.” 

That structure could help Altruist maintain the pace of product development that has helped distinguish the fintech from its much larger new parent. But the two companies operate at vastly different scales and speeds — a potential challenge as Vanguard integrates its second-ever acquisition. 

“Altruist is very tech forward. Vanguard is not. What does this mean for Altruist's tech rollouts?” said Justin Whitehead, founder and CEO of Pebble Finance, a fintech that embeds AI into investment portfolios.  

“I have first hand experience at the type of integration Jason and team are about to embark on. It will be an impedance mismatch at the start for sure.  A 300-person company and a 20,000-person company make decisions and operate at different speeds,” said Whitehead. 

Since the Vanguard acquisition announcement, Altruist already announced that its AI platform Hazel is expanding into financial planning. Hazel is best known for its AI tax planning agent that triggered a selloff in brokerage stocks earlier this year. 

“I’d imagine here in the early days Altruist will still be functionally separate and that means you should continue to see the pace of development continue for the foreseeable future.  I think everyone just needs to pay attention over the next two years,” said Whitehead. 

Pennsylvania-based Vanguard and California-based Altruist may appear to come from different worlds when it comes to technology and product development. Yet their relationship predates the acquisition: Vanguard first invested in Altruist in 2020, and former Vanguard CEO Bill McNabb has served on Altruist’s board for several years. 

Altruist and Vanguard’s cultures may be more aligned than their size differences suggest, says advisor recruiter Louis Diamond of Diamond Consultants.  

“Vanguard’s mission or just their ethos has always been, let’s be a disruptor. We’re going to dramatically lower the cost, shake things up, be a threat to major incumbents,” Diamond told InvestmentNews. “That’s kind of been Altruist’s mission and vision all along too, so it definitely seems to make sense culturally. But obviously deals of this size and magnitude, there's a lot of things to figure out and a lot of integration that has to happen.”