The Launch of Follow —
Believing in Individuals Over Institutions
I recently had the opportunity to invest in Follow, a cutting-edge social investment platform that revolutionizes how people invest. Follow connects followers with financial leaders on social media by allowing them to invest directly in the Leader’s portfolio, with the aim to empower individual consumers rather than institutions by making investing accessible to anyone dedicated and willing to put in the effort to become an investor. Follow’s SEC-approved RIA allows followers to invest real dollars behind each Leader, so when a Leader trades her personal account, the follower’s account will copy trade the same investment in the same proportion (%) within seconds.
When I first met Miles Cole, I immediately took notice. Though only 22-years-old at the time, he had the characteristics that I’m constantly looking for, but rarely find: a natural leader, a big and strategic thinker, and the ability to see beyond our collective cultural horizon to where the zeitgeist is going. As a Princeton sophomore, Miles founded a medical device company with one of his professors, quickly dropped out of school, raised several rounds of venture funding, and then sold it at an age where most of us weren’t even quite sure what we wanted to do “when we grew up.”
So, in the height of the Fed-fueled economic mania that was 2021, Miles noticed that his friends’ newfound passion for investing was making it easier for individuals to invest in public stocks, and with meme-stocks making the news daily, there was no more exciting time to be an investor. Miles gravitated toward how his age cohort learned about and researched potential investments, investing solely on the insights and recommendations of new platforms like Fintwit, Reddit threads, paid Discord servers, and TikTok.
One glaring issue around receiving financial advice from the brave new world of Reddit, TikTok, and Discord is trust. For every diligent and judicious investor sharing a thesis, there might be an unethical huckster trying to get rich quick with a pump-and-dump scheme. Follow’s solution to this problem is to provide a platform where the Leaders’ trades, portfolios, and performance can be validated. The Leaders on the platform have been screened, and their performance has been vetted, ensuring that the followers receive quality financial advice. Follow charges a monthly fee for access to the Leaders’ research, insights, and portfolio holdings, and the only fees customers pay are the Follow fees.
For a startup to be successful, a great idea is important, but a great team is essential. Miles needed exceptional co-founders — so when he met Manning Field, he knew it couldn’t get much more exceptional. Manning, the longtime COO of Acorns, knew how to start and scale consumer facing fintech companies. Plus, with a house full of teenagers at home, Manning quickly realized that one could build a business around influencers in financial services, particularly in investing. With Manning onboard as Co-founder and CEO, Benjamin Rapaport joining from Google as Co-founder & CTO, and the superstar team of Jack Abraham, Chester Ng, and Danny Evens from Atomic providing company building expertise, Follow had their dream team. In addition, with venture capital investments from Atomic, Vera Equity, and Uncork Capital, Follow is well-equipped to tackle the challenge of bridging the gap between traditional investment gatekeepers and the new generation of investors.
As a supply-driven marketplace investor, I was particularly drawn to Follow’s potential to aggregate high-value but difficult-to-access supply, in this case, the emerging star investors. With the ability to bring significantly more demand to this hard-to-access supply and minimize friction in transactions, I see Follow becoming a generationally important company. The prospect of millions of consumers following thousands of Leaders from across the world and paying hundreds of millions of dollars in monthly fees is exciting. I am proud to have played a small role in helping Miles and his team bring Follow to life, and I look forward to supporting them in the future.
