CEO Craig Findley works in the Venture Lab.
Courtesy of Venture Visionary Partners
Walking into Venture Visionary Partners’ gleaming Sylvania, Ohio headquarters just outside of Toledo feels less like entering a wealth management firm and more like stepping into the lobby of a Silicon Valley innovator. A serene waterfall greets you at the door; sleek glass offices line the halls, while oversized digital screens pulse with real-time data and market updates. But the real centerpiece—and increasingly a beating heart of the operation—is tucked beyond the conference rooms up on the second floor: the Venture Visionary Lab.
A brainchild of founder and CEO Craig Findley, the high tech control room is an unusual setting for a wealth management industry steeped in virtues like patience and measured growth. “It’s like having a second brain in the room,” argues Findley with a smile, gesturing to the space where every wall is a floor-to-ceiling touch screen. Essentially a war room meant to resemble a mini New York Stock Exchange, it combines institutional-grade investment research with Venture’s proprietary tools—and a heavy dose of cutting-edge AI, powered by OpenAI.
The Lab is both an R&D center and an expensive client marketing tool used to impress its mostly midwestern clientele. “It helps clients see that we take this seriously,” says Findley, 55, a finance and marketing major who graduated from Michigan’s tiny, Christian, Hillsdale College in 1992. And for clients who love tech? “They’re frankly blown away.”
Originally envisioned as a trading, research and collaboration hub, the Lab has evolved into something much more ambitious. The room’s four walls are giant, interactive planar screens, connected to laptops through a simple barcode device. Facial recognition is required for entry, and a virtual AI assistant—cheerily nicknamed “Venture”—is ready to take notes, pull up investment research, or even recall a client’s last conversation at a moment’s notice.
Soon, Findley hopes, the Lab will be fully voice interactive. “Eventually, it will greet us—and clients—when we walk in,” he says. Today, it’s already partially there: Ask Venture about a company or client, and within seconds it retrieves curated information drawn from its approved research sources and CRM system.
Founded in 2019, the $5.1 billion (assets under management) registered investment advisory firm prides itself on building deep, personalized relationships with clients, but now technology has supercharged that approach. All that high technology is not free. Findlay figures his outfitting Venture Visionary Lab cost him no less than $500,000 to complete. In terms of fees his firm charges as much as 1.5% of assets, according to its SEC filings.
One of the keys to Findlay’s approach is the quality of his data inputs. New clients fill out a 62-question personality and values assessment, probing everything from relationship priorities to legacy goals. Questions vary from seemingly trivial matters about whether a client has hired a lawyer or made up a will to to more in-depth enquiries such as the core values that guide their work and personal lives.
Once complete, a client’s answers are reflected back to them across the Lab’s vast digital screen in a personalized “mind map.” While this discovery process isn’t new for Venture, displaying these answers for clients in the Lab over recent months has not only made it a more interactive process but also more efficient, where Findley and his team can better identify client priorities. “It allows us to better get in the weeds during the discovery process,” he adds.
The Lab doesn’t just wow clients—it helps Venture’s advisors work smarter with its AI capturing meeting notes and assigns follow ups. If a client mentioned their daughter’s college acceptance during a meeting six months ago? Venture will remember—and suggest a timely congratulatory follow-up at the next touchpoint.
Investment committee meetings take place inside the Venture lab.
Eric Eggly photography LLC
The Lab with its massive digital wall also plays a helpful role in Venture Visionary Partners’ process as a tool during investment committee meetings. Say Findley and his team are looking at Tesla stock for instance. The AI assistant can quickly pull up summarized analyst reports, financial documents and earnings calls for review, helping the firm spot patterns faster when it comes to portfolio management.
They have also begun leveraging Boosted.ai’s Alfa chatbot to improve the efficiency and accuracy of market research. For instance, the team recently prompted Alfa to analyze Russell 1000 companies that reported earnings over the past three months and identify those that beat both EPS and revenue estimates. “We then paired that data with Seeking Alpha’s Earnings Revision Scores to highlight ‘triple beat’ companies—those that not only exceeded earnings and revenue expectations but also raised forward guidance,” says Findley.
The firm’s flagship strategy is rising dividend stocks, primarily focusing on U.S. large-cap companies. For more aggressive investors, Venture offers a growth-at-a-reasonable-price strategy that seeks to capture long-term capital appreciation without chasing overheated momentum stocks. For opportunities that don’t neatly fit either profile, the firm runs an opportunistic strategy, giving the investment team flexibility to pursue compelling outliers.
Some of the team’s top stock picks from these strategies include tech giants Meta and Amazon, which are trading at lower price to earnings multiples than slow-growth consumer staples like Coke and lower than top retailers Walmart and Costco, respectively. Findley also likes brokerage app Robinhood, which he says was undervalued after the market drop in April and should continue to perform well thanks to rapid earnings growth. Another top stock pick is Morgan Stanley, which could see robust growth on the back of increased corporate dealmaking and rising markets. “The stock is still 11% below the February high and trades at a fairly reasonable 14 times earnings,” says Findley.
Venture also offers an ETF-based strategy that balances passive investing with tactical tilts toward sectors like technology and communications. On the fixed income side, the firm is content to take advantage of higher near-term yields by investing in government bonds, structured notes, and private credit opportunities.
“We try to take the emotions out of investing,” Findley says. “Clients get so caught up in politics or short-term news. History—and a visual—is worth a thousand words.” That discipline has been particularly important in recent months, as a barrage of headlines relating to Trump administration policies have whipsawed markets. Though major indexes like the S&P 500 tanked more than 10% following Trump’s initial tariff announcements in early April, the market has since leveled out and is now once again positive for the year.
“Tariff policy, although well intended, caused considerable uncertainty,” says Findley.
When asked about the future, Findley’s has a clear vision: Even more integration and automation—but always with a human touch. “I want a client to walk into the Lab, have it recognize them by face, greet them personally, recall their last visit, and pull up everything we need without lifting a finger,” he says. But will Findley’s expensive AI-fueled rocketship create higher returns for Venture Visionary’s clients? The jury is still out.
