Before we built our current startup, we spent seven years building retail investment platforms that introduced millions of people to investing for the first time.
Sharesies and Lightyear were highly regulated companies that now manage more than £7 billion in assets, and time and time again customers would ask us: what should I invest in? It frustrated us that we couldn’t help them in any meaningful way.
In moments of extreme volatility, the Trump tariffs, the pandemic, all we could do was send an email that said, in effect, “don’t panic.” Markets go up, markets go down. That was as far as we could go because we had no way to give real advice. So, we watched customers buying high and selling low. It was incredibly frustrating because we just couldn’t help.
In the background, customers were making incredibly complex financial decisions – about retirement, growing a family, inheritance or buying their first home – which weren’t just investment questions but life changing moments, where good advice was critical.
And yet most people weren’t getting it.
