It has been little more than one year since we started tradimo.com. The site now boasts over 110,000 registered users and over 90,000 unique visitors per month. It has been a crazy ride on the road of spreading financial literacy.

Bringing a new business model into an industry = challenge + media buzz

At tradimo, users get free articles and videos about trading, access to trading offers, free €100 starting capital, exclusive discounts and even premium services where a professional trader will analyze their trades.

tradimo has produced more than 4,000 pieces of learning content in English, German and Russian, which can be accessed for free (and we launched in these three languages at the same time!). Premium content and services are accessible to those using a tracked partner broker or, a recent addition for US customers and those that don’t want to trade tracked, you can subscribe for a fee.

This alone brought the company some media buzz and also criticism from media such as the now bankrupt Financial Times Deutschland stating that the easy entry into financial markets made it likely that newbies would lose money trading while tradimo would still benefit from their activity. Of course if this were true, it would be to the detriment of any trading school as acquisition costs would quickly outweigh lifetime values. However, traditional media seemed to not think in those terms when looking for a title story.

As our business model was new to the industry, it also raised the interest of financial regulators. Our legal bills mounted and in hindsight we would recommend to anyone in the same position, to go ahead, read the legislation and contact the regulators directly. In our experience, once they understood the model and the benefits for our users, they were extremely helpful!

From poker to trading — focusing on a niche

There are a lot of similarities between poker and trading, therefore tradimo initially targeted professional poker players who are adapt at working hard and self education.

Focusing on a niche was great. At the same time, you really got to know the particularities, also the negative ones: poker players focused excessively on the question whether the financial market was beatable, meaning: why should I as the retail trader be able to outsmart a hedge fund manager. This question is largely irrelevant to most people who might intuitively understand that there is a basic market trend that can be followed or simply trust the development of a particular stock. Many poker players however discuss this question for months before starting to trade. We are not saying that’s bad, especially in our German community, it created a great amount of trading philosophy discussions AND successful traders, nevertheless it was initially a challenge.

Starting capital

What ultimately convinced the masses was a unique offer we brought to the industry: free starting capital to experience real-money trading without risking your own capital (not available for US citizens).

In addition, we launched our first social trading offer, which allowed users to simply and automatically execute the same trades as traders they met in the tradimo community and whom they trust through what is known as social trading.

From group company to startup

As a company we have experienced a lot. From unlimited funding as part of a large group to being focused on adding one little piece of additional value to our members at a time.

Each phase has brought us closer to where we are today:

As a company, we have been though the turmoil of the sale of our our sister company, PokerStrategy.com, and with it the departure of many colleagues who were involved in the project. As our group evolved, our focus has changed.

The initial launch would not have been possible without the help we had from dozens of people while being part of a larger group of companies.

The product would not have the same quality if it was not for intense quality assurance and long, internal discussions.

Today’s product would not be as simple and useful if we had not focused more on what adds most value to our next user.

And it would not exist if we had continued excessive internal discussions instead of adopting the trial and error approach associated with lean startups.

The option to pay for content makes users appreciate your work

With no monetary value attached to the tradimo.com content and premium services, it seems that some users didn’t understand the benefit of trading through these brokerages.

Recently, we added the option for people to join our live trading classroom for a monthly fee or get it for free if they are a platinum member (our highest status). Oddly enough, since then, the interest in our brokerage pages has picked up. It’s almost as if the original business model had been too innovative for human nature as the “You get what you pay for” is still deeply ingrained.

Another way of looking at it is that it is more difficult to advertise something that is perceived as free as opposed to something that can be paid for. Offering both options ensures there is a perceived value for the free service.

Thanks for reading! Want more?

If you are interested in joining us, register at www.tradimo.com or send us an email at support@tradimo.com.

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