Social media modified the whole lot from information consumption to buying. Now, Dub thinks it could do the identical for investing by an influencer-driven market the place customers can comply with the trades of prime buyers with a couple of faucets. Think of it as TikTok meets Wall Street.
Founded by 23-year-old Steven Wang — a Harvard drop-out who started investing in second grade along with his mother and father’ blessing – Dub is betting the way forward for investing isn’t about selecting shares however selecting folks. The app permits customers to comply with the methods of merchants, hedge funds, and even these mimicking high-profile politicians. Instead of creating particular person commerce choices, Dub customers can copy complete portfolios.
The idea has struck a chord. Dub has already surpassed 800,000 downloads and raised $17 million in seed funding – with a brand new spherical seemingly within the works. Less clear is whether or not Dub can keep away from the pitfalls of earlier fintech startups.
Inspired by GameStop
Retail investing has developed dramatically over the previous 20 years. The days of $7 buying and selling commissions and clunky brokerage interfaces have been blown aside roughly a decade in the past by mobile-first platforms like Robinhood that invited folks to commerce totally free. At the identical time, social media is reshaping how folks, and significantly members of Gen Z, make monetary choices.
As a Harvard pupil throughout the pandemic — one who was buying and selling from his dorm room “because you couldn’t really do anything at school” — Wang got here to imagine these two tendencies, retail investing and influencer-driven decision-making, have been on a collision course. Between the GameStop saga, Elon Musk’s potential to “move the Dogecoin and Bitcoin markets with every tweet,” and other people’s willingness to “really follow ideas and individuals to a whole new level,” Wang determined to drop out in 2021 and begin constructing Dub.
Right now, the platform’s common consumer is between 30 and 35, says Wang, although New York-based Dub is clearly discovering its method in entrance of a good youthful viewers. In latest weeks, this editor’s 15-year-old has requested greater than as soon as about “investing like Nancy Pelosi” after marinating in Dub advertisements on Instagram.
Pelosi isn’t personally buying and selling on Dub; it’s only a dealer on the platform mirroring her disclosed strikes. Still, the concept has caught fireplace. “Nancy Pelosi is up 123% on Dub with real capital,” says Wang, “and we’ve made our customers millions of dollars since that portfolio was launched on the platform.”
Dub isn’t free. Wang was decided to generate income from the outset, and Dub does that in the present day by a $10-per-month subscription mannequin. Wang says additional that some “top” portfolios on the platform cost administration charges and Dub takes a 25% reduce of these charges.
In the meantime, Dub has scaled partly by natural development. “Creators who are good traders on the app are incentivized to bring their audience,” says Wang, whose mother and father immigrated from China and who grew up in Detroit.
Dub can also be investing aggressively in promoting, leaning closely into Meta advertisements specifically to accumulate customers, together with on Instagram. “We’ve been really lucky where I think the broader American population really believes there are other people out there that have an edge over them when it comes to the investing world,” says Wang.
Fighting phrases
The query now’s whether or not Dub will comply with an identical path as different fast-growing fintech startups, a lot of which have discovered themselves within the crosshairs of regulators. Robinhood disrupted finance by making buying and selling free, nevertheless it additionally confronted regulatory scrutiny forward of its 2021 IPO, finally ditching a characteristic that showered customers with digital confetti each time they made a commerce.
Dub says it’s eager to keep away from the identical errors. The firm spent greater than two years working with FINRA and the SEC earlier than launching, guaranteeing its mannequin complied with monetary rules. “We didn’t simply navigate…
