Unlocking the Collective Power of Everyday Investors
Over the past year, we’ve been in stealth mode — connecting with investors and advisors, defining and refining our strategy, and building upon our vision for Troop.
Today, we’re excited to share our mission with you, with a potential framework of how we can get there together.
The case for corporate accountability
Consider the facts that 50 firms in the world represent 28% of the global GDP, 100 companies emit 70% of the world’s greenhouse gases, and corporate lobbying spend has increased nearly every year since 1998.
Big businesses have major impacts on the world, from supply chains, labor markets, environmental impact, and politics, all the way to the taxes you pay and the news you read on a daily basis. Their influence isn’t going anywhere soon, and corporate power and influence is only increasing year over year, decade over decade.
We’re betting that corporate accountability will be essential to the steering of our collective future.
Our collective potential
Troop’s story emerges here, at the intersection of publicly traded companies and the role that we, as shareholders, can have on shaping corporate impact in the world.
Just a few months ago, CNBC reported that in 2020, individual investors owned 29% of total shares in the market. This represents a massive potential to impact shareholder resolutions, where votes often come down to the wire (see examples from Chevron’s 2021 Annual Shareholder Meeting below).
The shareholder proposals above represent two massively impactful resolutions that could have easily been swayed by the retail* vote. However, the same CNBC report noted that 72% of shares held by retail investors in 2021 were not voted upon.
*Retail refers to individual, everyday, regular, non-professional investors
An opportunity missed
While it seems like a simple ask, the mechanics of shareholder voting are slowed down by a cumbersome system where:
- The sheer number of active shareholder proposals for retail investors to vote on at any time is difficult to keep track of
- Voting requirements, deadlines, and mail-in voting cards create high frictions to participation
- Poor information design rarely equips shareholders to become advocates in coordinating and focusing their efforts
And thus, we live in a world where the will of the corporate few is imposed on the public.
Reimagining shareholder participation
This is where Troop comes in.
We believe that the voice of everyday retail investors is critical to defining the collective wealth of our planet.
We envision a future where retail investors have the tools to steer publicly traded companies with campaigns that have the greatest impact on our public good.
That’s why we’re working to revolutionize the way that retail investors are able to express their position on key shareholder activist campaigns that have the potential to drastically shape the health of our society, economy, and planet.
Our initial roadmap
Here are some key components we’ve identified for bringing our vision to life:
Frictionless Shareholder Participation
Making it easier for shareholders to express their vote
In the first stage of our technological development, Troop is working on a web app that will allow retail investors to link their brokerage accounts via an authenticator. By verifying your ownership of shares in companies that our shareholder activist campaigns are targeting, we’ll be able to provide a one-click solution to signal a vote in favor of the campaign proposal. This allows us to demonstrate the strength of a large retail consensus in ongoing shareholder activist campaigns.
Institutional and Industry Partners
Connecting you with a community of activist investors to facilitate big wins
As we build out our ecosystem of shareholder campaigns to participate in, Troop will be working with some of the most well-known and experienced activist hedge funds and shareholder advocacy groups in the industry. By doing so, we’ll be able to directly plug our community with flagship campaigns that strategically transform companies from the inside out, while also aligning public pressure in progressive contests happening on the corporate stage.
Reframing the Conversation Around Finance
Educating and empowering retail investors
Talk around finance is often centered around profit, when the topic is actually deeply intertwined with systems that define the public health of our world. That’s why we’re aiming to build a collaborative space to transform the ways that we talk about finance, in ways that go beyond the impact it has on our wallet. We’ll be working on newsletters to share insight into the world of shareholder activism, creating an education hub to make impact investing more accessible, as well as working towards a collaborative editorial platform that elevates views and opinions from the retail investor community.
Together, strong
This summer saw a small but impressive activist hedge fund, Engine No. 1, sway the hearts of institutional investors in a campaign that brought Exxon Mobil to heels over a hotly debated contest about the company’s strong underperformance relative to its peers in the oil & gas sector.
Engine No. 1 used a savvy mix of economical, financial, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) arguments to obtain 3 board seats at Exxon, with an explicit mandate to transition the company to renewable energy production on a short timeline — ultimately translating to real, tangible positive outcomes for society and the environment.
Everyday retail investors are generally left out of these action-packed campaigns because of reasons previously mentioned, and because of how difficult it is to solicit votes from individual shareholders at scale. But if there are any takeaways from $GME, $AMC, the rise of DAOs, and the legacy started by r/wallstreetbets, it’s that through coalition building, collective mobilization, coordination of capital, and strategic action, retail investors have only begun to scratch the surface of what we can accomplish together.
Troop aims to become the platform that helps activist hedge funds and shareholder advocacy groups reach the potential impact of the hundreds of millions of retail investors around the globe, while connecting everyday shareholders with major activist campaigns that will drastically shape our collective future.
We hope you’ll take the time to subscribe to the mailing list on our freshly redesigned website. There may be some sweet alpha hitting your inboxes soon if you sign up now :)
As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, any ideas you want to send us, or would like to get involved with Troop, shoot us a message at social@troop.org
And don’t forget to follow us on our socials:
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We look forward to seeing you as we grow the Troop,
🦍 The Troop Team 🦍
