Start-up company Stockflare aims to make the stock market more attainable for everyone, and is offering an investment opportunity on Crowdcube. With most traditional stockbrokers looking for people with £500,000+ to invest, the company feel that the 1.6 billion people with anything less than that are just not catered for in the current financial market, and have set out to make investment opportunities available for everyone.
CEO Shane Leonard is a 20 year City veteran, previously working at Credit Suisse & Citigroup and passionately believes that investing is for everyone, not just for the ultra rich. With a clear, easy to use website he has created a platform in which anyone can easily search, understand and invest in stocks, turning complex financial data into easy to understand analysis.
Unlike other sites aimed at providing insight or a trading platform for investors, Stockflare is completely free to join and has no advertising or monthly subscription. The site provides easy to understand analysis of every stock in the world, a search tool designed to help the user find the right stocks for them and alerts if something happens to the stocks that they should be aware of.
Furthermore, they are about to launch an investment service in partnership with US broker platform, letting anyone in the world open an investment account with as little as $50 and buy US shares, at the cost of $3 a trade – a very low price compared to similar platforms. The money comes from helping people to find investment ideas via Stockflare, and integrating with the best low-cost brokerage partners in each market to help them purchase it; each of the future brokerage partners will then pay a percentage of the revenue to them.
So far, Stockflare have 10,000 users across the world; over 40% of users are based in the US, with the UK being the second most important market. These users have all been achieved through word of mouth or prominent blogger recommendation, and the company have engaged in next to no marketing to date. To that end, Stockflare are hoping to use the money raised on Crowdcube to begin properly marketing the company and have recently hired several advisors with a strong marketing and PR background, including Kate Simon, currently the head of Marketing at TransferWise, Martin Campbell, formerly head of PR & Communications at Virgin Direct and Richard Ireland, previously the Head of Digital Marketing at Zopa, one of the leading peer-to-peer FinTech businesses in the UK.
Stockflare are offering two types of shares; investments of £1,000 or more will be A-shares which have full voting rights, and those of less than £1,000 will be B-shares, which do not. The company aim to provide investors with a way to exit their investment within three years, preferably by floating on the stock market.
Stockflare are currently crowdfunding for £300,000. For more information on their crowdfunding campaign, visit Seedrs.com
