How do we handle limited investment products?

A Bit of Context: How we Started

As a technology platform set out to democratise investments, starting with aggregating opportunities to fund farmers, we wanted to:

1. Protect investors’ funds by firstly, providing risk assessment services so that investors can easily identify safe investments, and then providing a vehicle (in this case, through a SEC-licensed institution — our Trustee) to invest as an institution in these opportunities. This provides a safer and more solid arrangement than investing directly as an individual investor.
2. Provide seamless access to diversity of portfolio by investing in products provided by multiple partners — but with a single account on a single platform — reQuid.com
3. Create an easy exit for investors by providing a secondary market where they can easily sell/liquidate their investments anytime before maturity.
4. Restructure the investment products into smaller units (of N5,000 per unit) so that more people can participate.

How has this turned out?

In the last seven months since we launched publicly,

1. We have successfully funded over 3,000 farmers with over N1 billion, covered over 10,000km in farm visits and verifications, and supported investors to liquidate over 3% of total investments for their needs and emergencies.
2. We have supported our partners to grow their businesses, restructure their risk management policies, and pushed some partners to redesign their insurance policies to better protect investor funds. Thanks to our our team of experts in quality control, risk, audit, insurance and compliance.
3. We have become the de facto platform for agro investors to verify trusted agri farms to fund.
4. We have supported over 3,000 users on reQuid consistently grow their wealth and live that life of their dreams

What’s the dilemma?

As a retail platform with growing users, demand is fast growing. While this has never been a challenge for other investment products on our platform, the same cannot be said for Farmsponsor’s poultry investment.

Why is this the case?

1. Compared to some other products on reQuid, the available units for this investment is usually very low — less than 20% volume of some other products on reQuid.
2. Unlike other platforms, in our bid to create a level playing field for everyone, our products open at a fixed time on the opening day. Maybe this is a mistake on our part as it significantly increases investor’s competition
3. Because of the above, the strain on our infrastructure is heightened as more than 3,000 users may be trying to invest at the same instant, creating a slightly buggy experience

How can we solve this challenge?

Finding a solution that benefits you has been challenging as all considered options have both pros and cons, which is why we need your help.

So far, this is what we have thought of (for this specific investment product):

1. Should we stop communicating the specific opening date for this investment?
2. Should we communicate the date but withhold the time?
3. Should we put a cap on the maximum a single investor can invest, so that we can more fairly distribute this scarce product?

We would love to hear from you.

Please, click here to give us your feedback (only three questions; should take less than a minute).

Thank you.

Image Credit: Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash