Sava

What do they actually do

Sava is building software and AI “agents” that automate routine trust administration work—like onboarding, document assembly/signature, custodian data syncs, and basic KYC/AML checks—while keeping human trust professionals in the loop for reviews and approvals. The product centers on a dashboard and an API so advisors, attorneys, custodians and fintechs can see trust status, documents and audit trails in one place, and trigger actions programmatically or via the UI (site, YC).

Today, Sava has a live-style demo/dashboard and early-access pilots with at least one VC‑backed wealth‑tech customer and law‑firm workflows in testing. Importantly, Sava is not yet a chartered trust company and is not offering full trustee services until it secures the required regulatory approvals (site, YC).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Independent financial advisors / RIAs: Advisors lose hours to coordinating trust setup and maintenance (document chase, signatures, reconciling custodian accounts), which inflates costs and delays client work. They want a single place to see status and reduce back‑and‑forth (site, YC).
• Estate planning attorneys / law firms: Firms rely on support staff for repetitive form assembly, signature collection, and basic compliance checks, creating slow, error‑prone processes. They want automation that still preserves attorney review and control (site, YC).
• Wealth‑tech platforms and fintechs: Offering trust accounts requires costly custody integrations and regulated operations, or outsourcing to slow manual providers. They want APIs/embedded workflows to add trust capabilities without building a back office (site, YC).
• Trust officers / incumbent trust companies: Manual reconciliations and paperwork drive up operating cost and audit risk as volume grows. They want automation with human oversight and a reliable audit trail to scale operations (site, YC).
• Beneficiaries and individual clients: Trust timelines are opaque and distributions are slow, creating confusion and extra support burden. They want real‑time status, clearer workflows, and transparency into reviews and approvals (site).

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Founder‑led, high‑touch pilots with one VC‑backed wealth‑tech platform and one anchor law firm, plus a local RIA, to integrate the API/dashboard, automate a scoped onboarding/distribution workflow, and measure time/error reduction for case studies; add a single‑custodian integration and a senior trust officer advisor for credibility (site, YC).
• First 50: Replicate the pilot playbooks across similar fintechs and law firms, run cohort pilots by specialty, expand to additional custodians, and convert pilots to paid using published ROI and standard pricing; support with lightweight SDK/docs, targeted outbound to RIAs, partner referrals, and co‑hosted practitioner webinars.
• First 100: Scale with a self‑serve sandbox for fintechs, marketplace listings and custodian/CRM integrations, publish compliance artifacts once chartered, and build partner/reseller programs; add field sales and customer success to turn pilots into multi‑year contracts and announce integrations with major custodians to unlock advisor networks (site).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

The US advisor base alone is large: ~15,396 SEC‑registered RIAs in 2023 per the Investment Adviser Association’s 2024 snapshot, serving tens of millions of clients (IAA 2024). Separately, the IRS’s SOI studies show millions of fiduciary income tax returns (Form 1041) are filed annually, indicating a broad volume of trusts/estates requiring administration (IRS SOI overview, SOI highlights example).

Bottom-up calculation:

If 600,000 ongoing US trusts are professionally administered and in‑scope for automation (a conservative slice of annual 1041 filers), and Sava captures $300/year per active trust in software/automation fees, that implies ~$180M/year TAM for the software/admin layer; expanding pricing to embedded API/opening fees and multi‑custodian workflows could lift this to the ~$150–300M range, excluding asset‑based trustee fees.

Assumptions:

• Only a subset of annual Form 1041 filers are ongoing trusts suitable for software‑enabled administration (est. 600k).
• Average monetization of ~$300 per active trust per year via software/automation and API fees (excludes asset‑based custody/trustee fees).
• Focus is US market and professional/administered trusts; consumer‑only or one‑time estates largely excluded to avoid double counting.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• American Estate & Trust (AET): Nevada‑chartered trust company offering custody/fiduciary services plus developer APIs and portals—an existing “regulated trust + API” option for advisors and platforms (AET, About).
• Apex Fintech Solutions / Apex Clearing: Large clearing and custody provider with developer APIs, real‑time ledgering, and white‑label portals; practical for platforms needing trust account types and custody at scale (Apex).
• True Link Financial: Provides trust administration software, fiduciary services, and payments (e.g., Visa card) for professional fiduciaries and special‑needs trusts—strong on beneficiary UX in specific use cases (True Link).
• Estateably: Cloud software for estate and trust administration (document automation, accounting, reporting) used by law firms and administrators—competes for workflow automation without providing a trust charter (Estateably).
• FIS (Trust accounting / TrustDesk): Incumbent enterprise trust accounting/reporting software used by banks and trust companies—represents the legacy stack Sava would displace in established shops (FIS).