GZV #27: Everything Is About Investing
Startups. Trends. Markets. All from a Gen Z view.
Share with your friends who want to know what the young kids are up to!
Real time updates on twitter! (And sometimes hockey stuff)
Enjoy!
💥GZV Sourced is my paid newsletter that exclusively focuses on early stage startups that are currently raising capital.
Every other week I release multiple startups who are currently raising rounds that I believe are worth doing some due diligence on.💥
Let me introduce you to… Qooore.
Website:
Problem:
“We are tired of losing to Wall Street wolves. Exhausted of watching them shower in money. In our money. That is why we decided to rewrite the rules and make the investment process available to everyone.”
Solution/Product:
“We are TikTok in the investment world: no more guys in suits, dusty numbers, large sums of money. We offer AI-powered solutions in a gamified format. We are on a mission to change the way young people invest their savings. “
Differentiating factors:
Gamified product -> Gen Z routinely becomes attracted to products that have this kind of set up.
The colorful, yet unique UI/UX design of this app allows it to be really attractive to a Gen Z and younger audience.
The app has a very familiar format; Tik-Tok. As we know, Gen Z hates change, so Qooore replicates a simple, and lovable format.
Gen Z Take:
Some kids I know are too advanced for a product like this, but others who are new to the game, and those just turning 18 (the age where you can open a trading account), this could be a huge hit.
Like I said above, the familiar landscape of Tik-Tok would be an immediate advantage for customer acquisition.
Investing for some of Gen Z is boring, and combating this problem has been tough, but Qooore may have figured out one of the solutions.
Recommendation:
Make it easy for kids under 18 to invest. I remember it took a while for my Dad to set up a custodial account for me in high school, let’s try to make this process easier.
💸💸💸 Fundraising? 💸💸💸
Unaware of fundraising efforts at the moment, but never hurts to start a conversation.
Here is a link to their WhatsApp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/GGIqee1UHIgBQvmpqSzO5f
Investing in Creators as an Asset.
Has anyone ever listened to the founder of Lululemon on the podcast “How I built this”?. Chip Wilson has a principle when noticing trends; look for it 3 times. Chip noticed “Yoga” 3 times over a few weeks, so he decided to check it out. He realized that there really wasn’t any good clothes for yoga, so Lululemon was born.
I’ve taken this same principle into my life. Investing in the creator class has been something I’ve been seeing on Twitter more than 3 times over the last 1-2 months.
Here’s why it can work.
In 2020 we saw an explosion of two sectors, the creator economy, mainly thanks to Tik-Tok, and the investing sector. For Gen Z, investing in the stock market came during the boredom of quarantine. Some have stuck with it, but others have found it boring. Something that isn’t boring to my generation? Creators and Influencers. We love watching new videos and content as soon as they land on a platform.
Gen Z has also gained a unique skill by growing up with the internet, we can spot a future great creator when they only have a few hundred thousand fans. I know that hundreds of thousands seems like a lot, but the best creators have tens of millions of fans across platforms.
Let’s think about this like a public company, if you find a company you believe is really undervalued and has great future potential, you can buy shares in their stock. You can even do the same thing with wine, art, and shoes. If you think they have great future value, you can buy the asset and hold. So why can’t Gen Z invest in something they know has future value? I mean in the end, that is the whole purpose of investing. Buying something low in value based on the belief it will increase in value over the short or long term.
Now onto the future of the creator economy. In recent dream job surveys of kids in high school and middle school, we have seen most of the responses say “I want to be a professional youtuber”. A few years ago there was this rhetoric that this dream was stupid and you couldn’t actually be a Youtuber as a job, now you couldn’t be more wrong. A 9-year old made $29.5 million in 2020, it’s possible. This dream has become a reality for those willing to work hard. The creator economy will continue to grow simply due to the fact that there will be more and more creators rising each year.
The belief that this will be investable class in the coming 1-2 years makes sense, now we just have to figure out how to do it.
Feel free to email or text with any questions or comments about the newsletter, Gen Z, or startups.
thomas@genzvoice.com