Social networks changed everything from news consumption to purchases. Now, Fold He believes that he can do the same to invest through a influence -based market where users can follow the operations of the main investors with some taps. Think about it as Tiktok meets Wall Street.
Founded by Steven Wang, 23, an abandonment of Harvard who began to invest in second degree with the blessing of his parents, Dub is betting on the future of investing is not to choose actions but to choose people. The application allows users to follow merchants’ strategies, coverage funds and even those who mimic high profile politicians. Instead of making individual commercial decisions, DUB users can copy complete wallets.
The concept has hit a chord. Dub has already exceeded 800,000 downloads and has raised $ 17 million In seed funds, with a new round apparently in process. It is less clear if Dub can avoid the traps of the new previous Fintech companies.
Inspired by Gamestop
Retail investment has evolved dramatically in the last two decades. The days of the $ 7 commercial commissions and the clumsy brokerage interfaces were unarmed about a decade ago by mobile platforms such as Robinhood that invite people to trade for free. At the same time, social networks are restructuring how people, and particularly members of the Z generation, make financial decisions.
As a Harvard student during the pandemic, one who was exchanging from his bedroom of his bedroom “because he really could not do anything at school,” Wang came to believe that these two trends, retail investments and decision making promoted by influencers They were in a collision course. Among the Gamestop saga, Elon Musk’s capacity to “move the markets of Dogecoin and Bitcoin with each tweet”, and the will of people “really follow ideas and individuals at a completely new level,” Wang decided to leave in 2021 and start building Dub.
At this time, the average user of the platform is between 30 and 35 years, says Wang, although Dub, based in New York, is clearly finding his way in front of an even younger audience. In recent weeks, the 15 -year -old from this editor has asked more than once about “invest as Nancy Pelosi” after marining in Instagram dubbing ads.
Pelosi is not sold personally with Dub; He is just a merchant on the platform that reflects his revealed movements. Even so, the idea has caught fire. “Nancy Pelosi has increased by 123% in DUB with real capital,” says Wang, “and we have made our clients millions of dollars since that portfolio was launched on the platform.”
Dub is not free. Wang was determined to generate income from the beginning, and Dub does it today through a subscription model of $ 10 per month. Wang also says that some “higher” portfolios in the cargo management rates of the platform and DUB require a cut of 25% of those rates.
Meanwhile, Dub has been partly reduced through organic growth. “The creators who are good merchants in the application are encouraged to bring to their audience,” says Wang, whose parents emigrated from China and grew in Detroit.
Dub is also aggressively investing in advertising, leaning strongly in the goal in particular to acquire users, even on Instagram. “We have been very lucky when I think that the widest American population really believes that there are other people who have an advantage over them when it comes to the world of investment,” says Wang.
Words of struggle
The question now is whether Dub will follow a path similar to other new Fintech companies of rapidly growing, many of which have been found in the regulators’ sights. Robinhood interrupted finance when doing free trade, but also faced regulatory scrutiny before his IPO of 2021, ultimately, he left a function that showed users with users with Digital Confeti Every time they made an exchange.
Dub says he is interested in avoiding the same mistakes. The company spent more than two years working with Finra and the SEC before launching, ensuring that its model complied with financial regulations. “Not only do we sail the regulation in DUB, we hug it,“Wang says (Like Robinhood, Dub is a license stockbroker.
A great distinction, argues Wang, is that DUB is designed to educate users, not just encourage blind speculation. The platform shows risk scores, risk -adjusted yields and portfolio stability metric to help investors make informed decisions, he says.
He suggests that it is safer for investors than Robinhood. Wang says: “I have a lot of respect for what [CEO] Vlad [Tenev] He has done it in doing trade for free. But at the end of the day, make it very easy to trade without expert orientation, without education, it is really a game for the wider population. ”
To underline its point, Wang points out Robinhood’s decision, together with Coinbase and other exchanges, so that the MEME Trump currency is available for customers before the inauguration of President Donald Trump. While initially increased in the price, its price has collapsed since then. Wang says: “I think that incentives are misaligned among these large platforms that are public companies now that they need to make money” and that “their customers generally” have probably lost money. ”
(It is worth pointing out: in a separate one, Recent conversation With Robinhood’s Tenev on Dub, Tenev proposed Techcrunch that copies trade could be of greater interest to regulators, and that the DUB is not yet under the “increase shell” due to its relatively smaller size).
Anyway, not everyone sold in Dub’s vision. The biggest blow against Such platformsCritics says, it is that the collection of low -performance long -term investment shares, with studies that show that most of the funds actively administered fail to overcome S&P 500.
It is a criticism with which Wang is familiar, and in which he rushes to reject. On the one hand, he argues that many of these studies are “selected by cherry.” (“I bet that many of them are sponsored by passive investment index companies,” he says).
In addition, says Wang, there is a reason why the coverage funds actively administered as Citadel are thriving. “If you look what the ultra can do, they are giving their money to Ken Griffin de Citadel, [because] They are constantly obtaining non -correlated returns year after year, ”he says.
If one more “analyzes the growth of the coverage funds and the asset management space,” Wang continues: “There is a reason why they are growing. It’s because they are earning money for their customers.”