The strategy for the investment app Stash is simple: onboard customers, teach them the basics, encourage them to invest.
Once that’s covered, introduce them to more complicated financial products and big-ticket investing. Which is exactly what Stash is going to do at the end of this year.
“Getting people to learn, and actually become comfortable with investing, that’s harder than building a really complex financial product,” Ed Robinson, co-founder of Stash, told Bank Innovation. “But our backgrounds are in finance, and we already have the foundation for building those products, and are preparing to launch some amazing things this year. We could potentially start a robo today, but we first wanted to make sure our customers had the basics.”
The startup, launched in 2015, currently has more than 400,000 active users, with an average of 3,000 users adding daily. “We are 15 months old, but are excited to see how quickly we are growing,” Robinson said. On average, the first batch of Stash users – those that signed up in October 2015 – currently have balances of $600 to $700, while new user balances are around $160. “We prefer customers to start off small, so they can learn with small amounts.”
The company is currently working on creating a more personalized educational content for its users. “We have a lot of valuable data on customer behavior — so things like risk factors, or how much time they spend reading a particular post — and we will use that data to deliver better content to each user.”
As opposed to some of its competitors, such as the free robo-advising app WiseBanyan, Stash is not looking to build a bank, yet.
The startup raised $25 million in Series B funding in December, following its $9.25 million Series A past August.
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