Valuu.io is entering the investment research market for individual investors. CEO and Co-founder Martin Migge talks to us about the idea and how the team is working on a solution to make private stock investments a real alternative to managed investment products.
by: Silicon Luxembourg
photo: Valuu.io
featured: Martin Migge
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Tell us about your startup.
Valuu.io is an online service that helps self-directed investors make well informed investment decisions in the stock market. Through our website, private investors can validate their investment ideas and strategies.
After a successful beta phase with lots of valuable feedback from our test users and post our participation in the Fit 4 Start acceleration program, we have now launched our first commercial service.
We are based in the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT) from where we provide our services to individual investors around the globe.
How did you come up with the idea?
Several years ago, I started to make my first investments in company shares. To be honest, the first few stock picks were not based on any facts, but rather on gut feeling. Then, I started to read many books on Fundamental Analysis and was fascinated by how research can drastically reduce risk and improve performance. It also quickly became clear to me that it is quite time-consuming to do that.
That’s when I was convinced that this process needs to be drastically simplified, if self-managed stock portfolios should were to be a real alternative to professionally managed financial products.
What are your products/services?
We have developed a software automation tool that collects thousands of data points on more than 45,000 publicly listed companies every day and makes this information accessible through short and comprehensive Company Reviews. We provide these Company Reviews along with a stock screener and other tools on our website.
“We want to be a neutral partner and help Investors with an unbiased view to understand how companies are operating and how they are financially positioned.”
How do you differentiate yourself from other websites or information provided by stock brokers?
Online stock brokers usually charge a fee on the transactions of shares that investors make. Therefore, we see that the information investors receive today is often focusing on short-term trends and daily press headlines, which aims to motivate investors to trade more frequently.
Nonetheless, around 85% of private investors are following a long-term oriented “buy-and-hold” strategy and are quite successful with that. For them, we want to be a neutral partner and help them with an unbiased view to understand how companies are operating and how they are financially positioned.
What is your business model?
We provide Valuu.io as a “Freemium” subscription. This means, our users can take as much time as they want to try out the free service and then upgrade to the premium subscription, once they are familiar with our services and it helps them manage and execute their own investment strategy.
Who are your clients?
Our clients are individuals who have made their first experiences with stock investment and now want to validate and improve their stock portfolios. Additionally, our service is also a great exercise for those that do not have a lot of experience with stock investments (yet). They can use it to get a better understanding of how things work, before investing any actual money.
What’s next?
Throughout 2020 we will be adding many more elements to our service. We are currently preparing for a fundraising round that will enable us to grow our team and further extend our services. As a next feature, we will be adding a portfolio analysis tool and we are working on localization to make our service available to a broader audience as well.
