Benzinga Talks To Social Trading App Shares.io Amid $40M Series A Funding

Shares, a community-based investing app, last week raised $40 million in a Series A funding round. Valar Ventures led the round while Singular, Global Founders Capital and Red Sea Ventures, among others, participated.

Benzinga spoke with Harjas Singh, the company’s chief product officer to learn more about what’s next for this new investing fintech.

Investing With Friends: Last year, Shares came online as a social investment platform that allows anyone to invest without minimums.

The company was looking to bring to the European market a well-designed, no-minimum and no-fee fractional investing app that lets users talk and learn from each other, as well as access unique market data insights.

After developing a proof of concept, the company raised $10 million in a seed round with the aim to take advantage of emerging trends in finance.

No longer are investors interested in being informed by big-name institutions, most of which are behind the curve when it comes to following trends. Rather, they look to their peer groups.

Singh, who is an engineer that’s worked at institutions and fintechs like Deutsche Bank AG DB and Revolut, realized early on that existing trading solutions were too focused on individuals.

“I was noticing that these retail trading products were very much single-player experiences,” he explained. “We are all kind of looking for signals around us to understand what good investment opportunities exist. Most importantly, we really care about what close friends are investing in.”

In merging the conversations he was having on platforms like Meta Platforms Inc’s FB WhatsApp, with the trading experiences offered by Robinhood Markets Inc HOOD and Revolut, Singh and his team started envisioning Shares.

“You have players in the U.S. which are like social trading companies, but what we saw with them was that they [would host] celebrities and high profile people [too often]. I didn’t really care about what a celebrity’s investment portfolio is because my income profile is not the same.”

In the end, the team at Shares thought it would be best to hone in on the small network effects between groups of four to six – people in universities and clubs. After testing the hypothesis, the company raised more funds and launched its app.

“It’s fully integrated. You can trade, talk and discuss, add friends and do virtually everything all in one place.”

Innovation Outlook: “The experience can’t feel complex,” Singh said on his team’s focus. “That’s because our target demographic is this new wave of investors.”

Beyond the social aspect of friending, commenting and messaging, all trading functionalities – including the way charts appear and executions are made – are tailored to elevate engagement.

Users do not need their tax information verified to join the conversation; they can download the app and join the community without having to trade.

“We have to build those tools that provide investors education and the right incentives to join.”

Going forward, the firm’s outlook is to expand across the rest of Europe, as well as add new products to trade, such as U.K. stocks and cryptocurrency in the next year.

“The key in this field is execution. There’s going to be a lot of players that come up but I think we just need to execute quick and fast in beefing up all of our features from a product side, but then, also, from a licensing and compliance standpoint.”