kaChing Gets $100M under Management and Gets All Wall Street with a New Name

kaChing is trading its blingy Web 2.0 image for something more befitting the Wall Street powerhouse it wants to become. The company is renaming itself Wealthfront today, ringing the closing bell of the NASDAQ, and announcing a shift in focus from talented amateurs to professional mutual fund managers. It's announcing new functionality that make the site less of a search engine for talented fund managers and more of a personalized, hand-holding recommendation engine. And it's also announcing a pretty significant milestone: In the last year it has attracted $100 million in assets to its investment platform that seeks to disrupt the clubby and anti-consumer mutual fund industry. CEO Andy Rachleff says that several fund managers wanted to see Wealthfront get to $100 million in assets before they'd take the platform seriously-- and they wanted them to change the name to something less "hot money" sounding. Done and done. So what's the next symbolic milestone to convince even more people the company is a legitimate player? "$1 billion," says Rachleff and he hopes the company is there in the next 18 months. Ambitious? Yes. But not out of the realm of possibility.