Top 3 Tips for Scaling a Digital Investment Platform

Hello, I’m Rachel, the CEO of Intrinio. We’re a financial data company specializing in API access to core data sets like stock prices, fundamentals & more.

Our customers integrate our financial data into investment tools, apps, software, and algorithms. They’re building incredibly innovative solutions for the modern investor, powered by Intrinio data. We’ve worked with thousands of these fintech companies and witnessed every challenge you can imagine. Scaling up is hard for any business, but fintech companies have their own set of challenges.

So, we put this article together to cover our top three tips for scaling a digital investment platform.

1. Fresh Data = Client Growth

Data is the foundation of any investment strategy, and for fintech companies building digital investment platforms, it plays a dual purpose. Financial data is not just essential for analyzing investments in the backend; when displayed in front of users, it’s key for acquisition, engagement, and retention of clients.

There’s plenty of data to access and integrate out there, including real-time stock prices, options prices, fundamentals, earnings estimates, ETF holdings, ESG rankings, and more.

Starting simple with stock prices and fundamentals is common, but to truly scale your investment platform, you will need to open the firehose for some new feeds. Companies like Intrinio make all of this data available via API with plenty of resources that help you integrate this data in a matter of minutes. Get creative, and think about financial data integrations as a lever for scaling up. 

Remember, this isn’t just about using data to scale up new users and clients. If you don’t keep data visualization interesting in your app, your existing users might up and leave for a more dynamic solution.

2. Make Sure Your Inputs Scale

It should go without saying, but all of the technology that supports your product is going to have to scale alongside your user base. Hopefully, everybody reading this is already on “the cloud,” so the core backend of your investment app should already be ready to scale nicely.

But, it’s time to think beyond the database. Most fintech companies have their own unique set of integration partners and subscriptions that make their products tick. Are you subscribed to CRMs, software, financial data providers, or other services that are poised to jack up your prices the second you scale? Assess your technology and all of your inputs to make sure you are choosing scalable providers with reasonable price increases.

Of course, if you are scaling, you may be able to afford increased input costs, but some companies are really sketchy about pulling the rug out from underneath you. Failing to check for that could tank your unit economics and rain on your scaling-up parade.

At Intrinio, we’ve worked with enough fintechs to know that our own financial data feeds need to be scalable. We have bronze, silver, and gold packages so that your data scales with you.  Consider moving to a scalable provider before your platform kicks into high gear.

Looking ahead and choosing to work with scalable providers like Intrinio is critical for the future of your digital investment platform.

3. Invest in Customer Success

It’s tempting to focus on scaling your product team and your sales team, and by all means, you’ll need to but do not forget about your customer success team.

Far too many fintech platforms build products and scale users without a solid plan for supporting the scaled client base. When it comes to digital investment apps, this is critical. Your clients are likely using your product to invest, build investment strategies, or conduct critical research. Unlike other generic B2C apps, supporting your customers can have billion-dollar impacts. So,  grow this team ahead of time, before you think you need to, and invest in the best talent you can find.

A great customer success team will be able to handle your scaled-up customer base, but they can also develop up-sell, cross-sell, and referral strategies that can compound the growth. Once your investment app is on a thousand desktops at major banks or hits a million users, you will be grateful to have the team to support the growth.

Grow Your Digital Investment Platform Today!

Okay, there you have it, Intrinio’s top three tips for scaling up your digital investment platform.

If you are looking for a scalable, affordable data provider to integrate key data into your investment software, contact one of our experts today.

We’re excited to help you grow, and we can’t wait to see what you build.

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