The second way is by exploiting something. Exploiting people's desires to provide for their children. Exploiting their financial illiteracy. Scamming people, in other words. This is also a successful business model, in that it works for the business (bad for society, of course).
We have something that looks like a duck and walks like a duck. We have not actually heard it quack like a duck, not yet. But the question in my mind is, how COULD this be a successful business? The product being offered has zero or negative value to almost everyone[1], and this is an age of financial scams of various sorts, the "grifter economy" as it has been dubbed. Am I so off-base in suggesting that this might be one of them? Am I crazy?
[1] Just a caveat: trust funds can be useful in a few cases, but you aren't rich enough to benefit.
Trust funds are a liability shield.
> ... your parents should have kept the money in their bank account.
Where it can be taken in a personal injury claim, or seized as alimony by a vindictive ex wife, or spent down by a the parent's medical trustee, or hundreds of other financial disasters.
The point of establishing a trust fund is to give a young person money that cannot easily be diverted or frittered away. Strings can be attached so that a teenager does not destroy themselves with money.
P.S. Companies like this make money by keeping overhead low and scaling up to bazillions of customers. You don't have to be a cheat or even expensive if you can get 10,000,000 customers.