Micro-investing mobile startup Stash Invest has just raised $9.25 million in a Series A round, money that is earmarked for the expansion of its userbase and the creation of a data-driven investment model for its customers. The raise was announced yesterday. According to CEO and co-founder Brandon Krieg, the company focuses on first-time investors, and aims not only to provide investment services, but to encourage financial literacy among its users.
“We are driven to educate people slowly and in bite-size chucks, because a lot of the financial jargon out there is confusing, and it’s a problem,” said Krieg, who left a Wall Street job along with co-founder Ed Robinson to focus on the often overlooked needs of the individual investor. “Not only are people not investing, but there’s a lack of understanding of all things money that needs to be addressed.”
At the core of Stash Invest’s business is this drive to educate its users, removing all of the confusion that can occur for a first-time investor which is great for millennial customers like me, as my normal response to finances is wails of lament with optional tears.
Right now Stash is only available through its mobile app, though the company is currently looking to build web services and could change from a mobile-first platform “if that’s what our users want,” Krieg said.
Stash Invest lets users invest as little as $5 to start, and the service is completely free for the first three months. After that point, it charges a flat $1 a month fee until your account reaches $5,000, when the charge rises slightly to about $12.50 a year.
The company is one of the fastest growing millennial-focused startups in the fintech industry. It launched last year and has around 150,000 users at the moment. Krieg and company plan to enhance customer service by building data-driven models like its personal guidance system, the Learn Screen, details of which will be announced next week.
This tight focus on user experience seems to be paying off for Stash, as its newest funding round can attest. Moreover, the company reports that 40% of investors on the platform are female, a number substantially higher than the average.
“When people invest with Stash they invest with intent, which doesn’t just teach financial literary, it is financial literacy,” said Krieg, adding that the age of the average Stash investor is around 28 years old, squarely in the millennial range. “Our goal is to get people off of the sidelines and investing, so we are building this data-driven model as a more intelligent way of presenting data to our customers so it’s more easily understood.”
To learn more about fintech funding, join us at Bank Innovation Israel this November 1-3 in Tel Aviv. Learn more and register here.