Startup Spotlight #49: Finary

Finary is Reddit for investors.

Nov 02, 2020

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I got the chance to speak with Roger Cawdette, co-founder of Finary, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.

Built for millennials and Gen-Z, Finary is an investing discussion site where people can follow other investors, join groups on a wide range of investing topics, and make trades. Think Reddit for investors.

Finary will launch to the public in November.

Originally from Boston, MA, Cawdette is a rising junior at Harvard College studying Technological & Social Innovation. Right now, he’s on a year-long leave of absence from school to work full time on Finary. His background is in venture capital and he is currently a Venture Partner at Contrary, and was previously an intern at Blackship Ventures.

Startup Spotlight: Finary

Finary cofounders (from top row to bottom row, left to right): Roger Cawdette, Jack Phifer, Darian Bhathena, and Michael Liu.

Problem: Investing as a young person is incredibly scary. We have very few people to talk about investments with and it can be very difficult to find quality investing discussion online.

Market: In the US alone, there are about 43 million millennials who invest in the stock market. On top of that, there are tens of millions who visit investing discussion sites, with the most popular having 15 million users.

Solution: Similar to Twitter, Finary allows anyone to follow the investing opinions of others. What is different from us, however, is that our users are able to share their thoughts with features specific to investing, they’re able to display their actual portfolio and its performance, and they’re also able to make trades directly from the site.

Team: Our co-founding team is a collection of students from Harvard and MIT including myself, Mike Liu, Jack Phifer, and Darian Bhathena. We found one another through our shared interests in startups as well as our frustration with the investing experience for people our age.

Recent Success:

Cawdette: I’m particularly proud of the team that we’ve built, and that includes our advisors. In addition to Mike who has an exceptional mind for the product, and Jack and Darian who are fantastic engineers (one might refer to them as ‘stallions’), we also have two amazing designers, Yaxin and Irving, who have really been able to bring our vision to fruition. As the first two members, it took months before Mike and I were able to find our first technical co-founder, so to realize that we have such a capable team today is really awesome.

We’re also lucky to be mentored by Patrick Lu and Bart Decrem, who has 25 #1 App Store hits and started the company behind Tap Tap Revenge. Their collective decades of experience and guidance has made all the difference in helping us build a great product that we believe people will actually want to use.

Recent Struggle:

Cawdette: Working on Finary while also being college students has definitely presented its fair share of challenges. Early on, we had to figure out how to balance working on the product while also doing school and internships. Fortunately, we’ve all taken time off from college and are now able to devote far more time and attention to the venture.

That being said, there are also a number of challenges associated with being first-time founders and having a limited amount of professional experience. We’ve made countless mistakes ranging from not being prepared for VC meetings to spending weeks on a hastily built backend that eventually had to be redone, but each of these experiences has been a crucial learning experience for us.

Founder Advice:

Cawdette: For the young college founders in particular: if you’re thinking about doing a startup, do it!

At school, we have a culture that says unless you’re Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, you need to graduate, go work somewhere for a couple of years, then maybe get an MBA before you’re really ‘qualified’ to build a cool company; I disagree with that. There are so many stories of founders starting great companies while in college, two notable examples being the Collison brothers of Stripe and Evan Spiegel of Snap.

It won’t be as glamorous and straightforward as movies like the Social Network might make it seem, at least at the beginning, but there’s so much opportunity for personal growth and learning, and I’d say it’s definitely worth it.

For any founder: hearing the stories of other founders is super useful, almost like a playbook. I’d recommend the ‘How I Built This with Guy Raz’ or ‘Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman’ podcasts.

Four Cool Founders You Should Know About:

Cawdette: Here are four founders you should check out next!

Harshal Singh, Founder at Troav Delivery: Troav Delivery provides on-demand snack delivery in minutes
Alex Wulff, Founder at Distributed Spectrum: Distributed Spectrum builds inexpensive, capable sensors and a wide variety of algorithms for distributed spectrum monitoring in industrial and urban environments.
Scott Xiao, Founder of Luminopia: Luminopia’s mission is to improve the lives of children and families through captivating, rigorously developed digital therapeutics.
Juwon Lee, Founder of Chestnut AI: Chestnut AI helps companies build and integrate a recommendation engine for their platforms in record time.

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