This group of TechCrunch50 companies is focused on Investing and financial tools. The companies include; PersonalRIA, Emerginvest, ExchangeP, Me-trics, and iCharts.
The TechCrunch Panel of Experts are; Mark Cuban (HDnet, Dallas Mavericks), Don Dodge (Microsoft), Roelof Botha (Sequoia Capital), and Kevin Rose (Digg).
PERSONALRIA Did you ever wish you could invest your money like the pros? PersonalRIA replaces mutual funds as the primary investment vehicle available to retail investors. There are two key participants in the platform: Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), and small retail investors. RIAs are investment professionals that usually cater to the high-net-worth market segment. PersonalRIA creates a virtual fund managed by registered investment advisors (RIAs). Each real-money professional portfolio managed directly by one of our RIAs can be replicated, on a proportionate basis, as an identical portfolio for small retail investors.
Huge market, very competitive, but just a small percentage of the market can generate nice revenues.
Problem/Solution - Professional investment advice for small retail investors
Business Model - Commissions
Possible Competitors - Mutual funds
Emerginvest Deliver targeted, on-the-ground commentary and macroeconomic analysis of Emerging Markets, as well as tools to help you understand your portfolio's global diversification. Emerginvest also enables bloggers or analysts to embed unique international stock data and charts anywhere on the web. The world is full of strong investment opportunities in undiscovered markets; Emerginvest brings them all to you. Another big market where a small percentage can generate nice revenues. Mark Cuban suggested that they sell their information to financial services companies as a service.
Problem/Solution - Professional investment advice in emerging markets
Business Model - Advertising
Possible Competitors - Mutual funds
exchangeP A fantasy stock market for betting on the future success (or failure) of private companies. Registration is free and cash prizes are awarded to the top traders. exchangeP uses the collective wisdom of crowds to provide real-time consensus valuations of the hottest, most debated, private companies. Trading a share of a company listed on exchangeP is equivalent to betting on the future outcome of that company – IPO, Acquisition or Deadpool. How much is that company really worth? Let the market decide. Fantasys markets for sports, stocks, and other things could be a big market.
Problem/Solution - Fantasy sports betting meets stock market investing
Business Model - Commissions
Possible Competitors - Casinos, Options traders?
Me-trics Me-trics seeks to aggregate that personal data, allowing users to monitor and learn from their own behavior. As technology becomes increasingly pervasive in our daily lives, a growing number of seemingly mundane activities include a digital component. Our financial transactions are recorded and accessible through our bank or a growing number of independent financial management sites. Much of our health and fitness data, from our morning run to heart rate, blood pressure, and glucose levels can be easily tracked with a combination of hardware and web interfaces. Even work activity can be tracked based on software usage, or time and productivity tracking applications.
Problem/Solution - Keep track of our personal data
Business Model - Subscription
Possible Competitors - Gyminee, traineo, and lots of health sites
iCharts makes interactive charting simple. A portal where everyone can search and share charts. Integrated into the portal is iCharts Studio that allows anyone to create high quality, interactive charts within minutes for private use or for publishing. Every iChart comes with a host of interactive features such as audio comments, data value pop-ups, zoom in/out and show/hide data series. iCharts can be embedded into any web-site where they can be updated by simply uploading new data to icharts.net.
Problem/Solution - Online interactive charts
Business Model - Advertising
Possible Competitors - ??
TechCrunch Panel of Experts - Mark Cuban (HDnet, Dallas Mavericks), Don Dodge (Microsoft), Roelof Botha (Sequoia Capital), and Kevin Rose (Digg).
