Social Trading Platform Shines at N.Y. FinTech Demo Day

The event, in which each startup gave five-minute presentation followed by a five-minute Q&A, was held in New York, and five innovative startup companies took the stage. The presenters were Brooke Boyd of OpenCrowd, Charles Strout of Prudena, Erez Katz of Lucena Research, Frida Polli of Pymetrics, and Nguyen Nguyen of TrustingSocial.

TrustingSocial, which also presented at the Innotribe NYC Startup Challenge, is an interesting company using social media tools to help authenticate users. Based on a user’s interactions on social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, users can “self-authenticate” their digital personas and send an anonymous report. The report won’t feature any identifying data, but scores based on authenticity, network quality, and financial credibility. The authenticity report can be sent via email or chat, and can help add legitimacy to online postings forums like Craigslist.

Lucena Research specializes in trying to predict how a user’s portfolio will react to different events in the market. Lucena uses its QuantCast program that consolidates five specific functions into one program: price forecaster, portfolio optimizer, hedge finder, event analyzer, and back tester. The program is effective in its 10-day and 20-day analysis, but is having difficulty maintaining accuracy in analysis extending out past 1 month. That being said, the program looked very sleek and well-made, and uses both fundamental and technical analysis in its algorithm to come up with the most accurate assessment possible.

The New York FinTech startup scene continues to show signs of life, with more events and meetups for startups every month.