Although we are in the longest bull market in U.S. history, rising some 330 percent since 2009, only 14 percent of Americans have purchased stock, not counting folks who invest indirectly through their retirement plans.
This isn’t about lack of time or money, says Boston entrepreneur Zoë Barry. Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on sports betting, and countless hours researching sports teams for their fantasy leagues. The rub here is that investing just isn’t as much fun as things like fantasy sports or betting.
“The reason why stock market participation is so low is because solo investing is hard and lonely, whereas something like fantasy sports is both competitive and social,” Barry told Built In via email. “If trading in the market was a competition between friends, it would transform investing into something people want to do.”
That’s why she created Zingeroo, a new startup that turns stock trading into a friendly competition between friends. The commission-free app launched this week with an $8.5 million investment from familiar faces like local serial entrepreneur Paul English and Social Leverage’s Howard Lindzon, with the ultimate goal of evening the financial playing field here in the United States.
“Hundreds of millions of Americans have sat on the sidelines while the stock market has generated tremendous wealth for a relatively small group of people. Our country, to flourish, needs a growing middle class, and we need to close the enormous wealth gap that’s growing greater by the year. To do this, to help people rise along the socioeconomic ladder, we need to get more Americans owning stock,” Barry said. “By making trading social and competitive, I think we can expand the market itself and make it accessible to countless new people who otherwise wouldn’t touch it.”
To accomplish this, Zingeroo provides a series of competitions called “zones” that are facilitated in private groups of friends, or “bullpens.” It also has a leaderboard that effectively serves as a scorecard, letting users see how their performance compares with their friends, peers and other top traders on the app. The idea, says Barry, is to provide a fun and educational experience so that people become more comfortable with buying and selling stocks.
Of course, Zingeroo is entering a space that is already pretty crowded. Between all the popular stock trading apps like Robinhood, SoFi and Acorns, some may figure there’s not much more innovation to be had in this sector. But Barry saw things differently, and was inspired by her early days working on Wall Street to create something that doesn’t merely facilitate stock trading, but makes it a fun, social activity.
“Friendly competition is the key ingredient missing from every other trading platform out there, even the social ones,” she said.
Incidentally, Barry is also one of just a few women launching startups in the fintech space at all. Before founding Zingeroo, she was the sole founder of digital health company ZappRx, which was bought by Allscripts last year after it raised $42 million total in funding.
“I am one of a handful of women that raised that much money, let alone solo let alone as a first time founder in Boston,” Barry said, adding that this perspective has driven her to help other women and underrepresented founders. “While female founders are underrepresented across all sectors, that’s particularly true in fintech, where only 7 percent of founders are female. When you drill further down within fintech to retail trading platforms, there’s just me. I am not aware of any other trading platform or brokerage for that matter that’s launched in the past 5 years that’s led by a woman.”
Now that it has launched, Barry says Zingeroo will use this fresh funding to add new educational features and develop a “campus ambassador program” to get the word out. The startup is also going to grow its engineering team, recruiting mainly Boston talent.
“Boston is a top city for startups, on the heels of NYC and SF,” Barry said. “Although NYC is the most famous financial center, Boston also has an extremely robust financial presence, as well as exceptional tech talent, VC firms and financial institutions.”
