Start-up Society #69: Endex
Keeping the American Dream Alive
Welcome to the 69th edition of Start-up Society! This is a weekly blog that promotes nationwide entrepreneurship and highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.
Make sure you check out the previous issue, if you have not already, here!
Endex
HQ: New York City, NY
Founded: 2021
Total Employees: 5 (on LinkedIn)
This week, we are doing an exclusive podcast and article for our conversation with Brittany Wright, Co-Founder & CEO and Kevin Loo, Co-Founder & CFO of Endex.
Endex is a social investment platform that makes creating & investing in peer-managed custom indexes simple, easy, safe & fun. Join the waitlist at https://endex.app
For the full conversation, tap into the podcast here!
What is Endex?
Endex is a broker agnostic social investment platform. We allow retail investors who have a brokerage account to use our application without switching brokerage accounts. Additionally, we have a social element, so people can interact with their friends and family and other investors to build a curated investment community around them. We allow users to create custom stock indices called Endexes, which can easily be shared with other users as you would a playlist on Apple Music or Spotify.
What about your background, what inspired you two to bring this to the investment community?
Brittany was always fascinated by the stock market and investing. She nurtured her interest with a sales and trading position at Deutsche Bank. After going through the process of thinking through stocks and educating her family on her own investing philosophies, she asked herself, “Why isn’t there a better way to do that?”
Kevin has been working in private equity and took that experience into identifying undervalued businesses. The inspiration was rooted in a group chat we had where we shared daily updates on our portfolios and opinions about stocks.
How is innovating in a highly regulated space?
The most ingenious thing we are doing is our implementation of custom indices. We have a similar technology that other companies have called copy trading. We are taking a safer and more holistic approach by allowing the copying of a full portfolio. We leave the control in the hands of the user so they can ultimately decide how their portfolio looks.
We went through the SEC’s no-action letters in order to gain an understanding of why other companies in our space were shut down in the past. Ultimately, regulation will lag behind innovation. Certain guidelines are intentionally vague so those who are participating in misconduct can be pursued. Understanding and managing that risk is the best approach.
What goals you are focused on for Endex right now?
We want the platform to be centered around organic content so our users can connect and learn from each other. We want people to gather on Endex to talk and share and access each other portfolios with ease. Optimizing for brokerage integrations is a key metric we want to focus on as we roll out our product.
The more people we get involved in investing the better. Making the learning curve as low as possible and making the platform fun to use will help bring the most people into the space.
How do you see Endex as a learning platform?
Endex has something for everyone at every stage of investing. For beginners, we see that social media is a primary vehicle for newcomers into the market. We see Endex as a place for those individuals to curate their interests.
Why is Endex broker-dealer agnostic?
This is part of the vision of making Endex accessible for everyone. We do not want to restrict anyone primarily because of the brokerage that they choose to use. If you look at the retail investment space, as soon as the infrastructure for feeless trading took place, there was an increase in investing. We saw another increase in investing with the rise of meme stocks like Gamestop and AMC. We wish to accelerate this increase.
Additionally, there needs to be a change in the flow of information. Before, the institutions control the flow of information accessing it early and passing it on after. We are tunneling between the users between brokerages to make information flow more seamless. There are many platforms that retail investors are taking advantage of in order to participate in the markets. Endex is going to be a hub for these use cases and the community will really benefit from that.
What do you see as the future of Fintech?
The great wealth transfer is about to happen, about $68 Trillion will transfer onto us — the younger generation. The retail investment space is heating up as people are seeking to take control of their capital. Millennials are a lot more conscious of new parameters like ESG compliance and Endex will allow people to create ESG portfolios as well as other themes. We will have Yummy stocks — alternative meat and dairy stocks as an example. The future of custom Endex investing is very bright, it hits the sweet spot between passive and active investing. The ability to customize these portfolios is where the opportunities lie as that also allows our users to find others in their communities. Actually going and creating a legal ETF is a complicated, drawn-out, and expensive process.
Have you thought about Crypto and other alternative investment areas?
We have been asked that question maybe 30+ times haha. Yes! We are going to democratize everything for everyone. We are well connected in the crypto space and want to pursue that as soon as we start getting the product rolled out.
What does the first release of Endex look like?
We are scheduled for Q1 2022. We are looking into various developmental road maps, with all of them ending at the beginning of next year. Five brokerage integrations and a fully built out social platform are the goals. As we bring users in we expect other brokerages to want to be involved in what we are building. Alpaca, Robinhood, and maybe Fidelity for now. Having a linked brokerage firm is not required to use the platform, we want everyone to share and participate in the Endex community.
Where can folks learn more?
Endex.app is a great place to learn more about our value props and what you can use Endex for. Join the waitlist to see our demo and get clued in on future updates and asks. Check out our social media and discord as well. We will be dropping NFTs and other exciting things into our community.
If you could only buy one stock for the rest of your life?
Brittany: Cloudflare (NYSE: NET)
Kevin: Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)
If you could only buy one Cryptocurrency for the rest of your life?
Brittany: Ethereum (ETH)
Kevin: Ethereum (ETH)
If you could pick one famous investor to join Endex, who would you pick?
Brittany: Cathie Woods
Kevin: Ray Dalio
Thank you for reading this article! Feel free to leave a comment, clap, and follow. Stay tuned for next week’s write-up, posted every Monday at 5 AM ET.
Authored by Arteen Zahiri and Rumeer Keshwani
