Ada Ventures Investment in Tickr
As the investing world was engrossed in the Gamestop retail investors vs. the hedge fund titans of Wall St, Ada Ventures closed our latest investment in what could be described as the antidote to this high risk madness — Tickr!
Tickr is an impact investment app for individuals who want to have a positive impact on issues that matter to them. Investors’ money is allocated by themes, chosen by you the investor: People or Planet. The themes are based on positive social impact, so you know that you are doing right by your values and your money. You can invest from £5, and Tickr offers ISAs and other efficient structures for UK investors, with more coming soon. Crucially, Tickr protects the investor, brilliantly described by Tom, one of Tickr’s founders in this piece, Trading isn’t Investing.
Tickr’s founders, Tom and Matt, have a brilliant shared backstory. From self-described humble backgrounds, they met on the Barclays grad scheme as two “token northern blokes” in a pool of international trust fund kids! After Barclays, Tom moved onto the Impact Investing team at Wellington, honing skills and experience that led to the ideas behind Tickr. Bonded for life, still friends years later, they decided to quit the rat race and found a business around their shared passion — impact investing for regular people, not just the institutions and super rich. Tickr was born!
Check and I first met Tom and Matt 12 months ago, when it was flagged to us by two great friends of Ada’s, Greg and Ste. We’re thrilled to finally become shareholders in this amazing company.
Why does Tickr fit the Ada thesis and what got us excited?
- Market dynamics. We are momentum-driven investors at Ada, searching for societal themes that will create long-term and lasting positive impact and value. Our investment case for Tickr was grounded in two huge such themes: (1) the democratisation of retail investing (±90% of Tickers customers are first time investors), and (2) impact investing itself, which is now a $502B (AUM) market, growing rapidly (over 50% of impact investing organisations made their first investments in the past decade). We believe that impact investing is going through its own “iPhone moment”. The demand for it is enormous — the International Finance Corporation (subsidiary of the World Bank) estimates that the demand for impact investing is $26 trillion — 50x the size of the 2018 impact investing market. With such big challenges facing the world — we need more investors directing their money towards positive impact and profits.
- Competition not focused on the underlying customers. There are lots and lots of consumer trading style investment apps. Many of these have risen to prominence recently, but our view at Ada is to invest in businesses that have their customers absolute best interests at heart. If access to the best and most interesting investment products is to be fairly and successfully opened up, we wanted to back a business that safeguarded its customers first and foremost. We liked that Tickr does not allow single stock investing, and provides the expert investment fund selection behind the thematic front end. Tickr has a compliance and customer-first driven culture, which aligns perfectly with our investment philosophies at Ada. Tickr is both FCA authorised and a certified B-Corp.
- Founders with an authentic mission-lock. Tom and Matt are on a mission, and its a big one. We’ve taken a year to get to know the team and the business, before becoming shareholders and, in that time, have grown to appreciate just how personal and genuine this business is for the founders. This authenticity has started to attract a star team to Tickr — follow them (@my_tickr) for announcements coming soon on this.
- Traction! Tickr has almost 100,000 customers (growing 20% m-o-m), and they are investing more with Tickr all the time: AUM is growing 30% m-o-m and monthly revenue is up 20X over the last 12 months. We hope that our investment will fuel these mighty metrics even more.
Going Forward
Tickr has a huge roadmap of tech and product development, driven by customer feedback and demand. Our investment will go some way to supporting this part of Tom and Matt’s plans. Its inevitable that Tickr will raise more capital as this is one of the most ambitious plans we’ve seen in a while, so on that front, watch this space…
