Customer Success Spotlight: Stonk Tech

At Intrinio, we are known for being a top provider of financial data. Our powerful technology is paving the way for developers and large enterprises across the globe and is positively changing the way our dispersed financial sector operates. Intrinio’s advanced, reliable platform delivers premium data packages that allow innovators to build with a peace of mind.  

We are proud to collaborate with some of the most innovative and impactful entrepreneurs and businesses, and we’re delighted to showcase their leading-edge work in our blog. Intrinio's Customer Success Spotlight series will focus on a client that has used our powerful technology to build something revolutionary.

Meet Stonk Tech! Stonk is a new digital brokerage platform designed for retail traders and investors. The platform is on a mission to “make the market fair and free from manipulation.” With Stonk, users can connect with top traders, learn modern trading skills, and gain free access to professional tools (join the waitlist to stay updated.) We recently had the opportunity to speak with one of the Co-founders of Stonk, Marc Chen, and spoke about the company’s biggest challenges and successes, discussed what sets them apart from competitors, and what inspired them to start the platform.

Give us the elevator pitch for your company.

We are Stonk, a fintech startup dedicated to building a social-network oriented brokerage for retail investors. Please imagine us to be the combination of a financial content exclusive Tik-Tok and Robinhood put together. Different from traditional or newer online brokerages, our focus will lean more towards the synergies among investing, trading, and social media.

What is your professional background?

We have three Co-founders here at Stonk, Mike, Lic, and Marc, all three of them have had experiences at both finance firms and tech firms. Mike and Lic both got their PhDs in math from Penn State University and Marc holds a law degree from UC Berkeley.

What inspired you to start your company?

After years of working with large institutions and recognizing how they promote imbalances in the financial market, we witnessed the rise of free commission stock trading and a huge increase in retail trading participants. Along with this growth, we also observed major problems within the financial industry: In big banks and funds, a well-equipped team supports a trader’s operations. The team provides resources that include, but are not limited to, tech support, quantitative support, research support, and risk management support. What else keeps retail investors from performing as well as institutions? A lack of access to professional tools and data. Frankly, some of these tools and data are just too expensive and exclusive to individual investors. This divide is why we founded Stonk Tech. As retail investors, we need to collaborate, share knowledge, and be the tech or research support team for one another. Our collective knowledge and wisdom can help gap the performance bridge between retail traders and institutional traders. We got onto this venture to unite retail traders and arm them with professional tools. Our goal is to make the market fair and free from manipulation. So that we can trade smarter, together.  

What have been your biggest challenges, and what did you learn from them?

The biggest challenge has been locating the cheapest path to our very first customers. The first users are always the hardest, and especially for a platform product. Looking back, we’ve learned many valuable things from this process, but one most crucial element is to be specific. Knowing specifically what are the problems that our target users are having issues finding solutions helped us getting in touch with them and brought exactly what they need to them.

What have been your biggest successes?

We are still in line to launch next month, so there aren’t many successes worth bragging about. However, we do love that we are recording industry leading cost per lead with our campaigns, and we hope it stays that way in the future.  

How do you set yourself apart from your competitors?

We figured that placing an order (both buy or sell) only makes a very small part in an investor’s investing related activities. Most of the time spent on such activities are more likely to be researches, information hunting, working with data, and many other tasks; which are mostly done through different platforms especially social media platforms. Robinhood sort of liberated the retail trading market by providing commission free trading giving people the access to investing, but never provided the right gears for its clients so that not only they can invest, but also know how to invest. That’s what we are trying to do, gearing our retail investors up with information, trading ideas, and tools. We are providing a space where retail investors help each other out.

Why did you choose to work with Intrinio?  

We started working with Intrinio since day one, even before we had any codes. One meeting with Intrinio we kicked off. Intrinio is the most accommodating data vendor any of us have ever worked with. They are willing to come up with plans to meet specific demands, and most importantly, they know how to work with startups and are super willing to do so.

Are you interested or have questions about our data feeds and packages? Find out more information at intrinio.com or request a consultation today.