Nathaniel Thiele

Humans have been investing for centuries. The first publicly traded company was the Dutch East India Company. With the rise of commission-free brokers and global internet usage investors from around the globe can invest in foreign countries. 

Comparison between Indian and USA key market indexes

International investing helps diversify risk and potentially has higher returns than in the home country.

Most investors coming from developed nations such as the USA, Sweden, or the UK invest internationally. Only recently have emerging markets such as India, UAE, and Kuwait participated in international investing. 

Stockal is a startup that targets developing markets, allowing them to invest internationally. Stockal has over +150,000 users and $500+ million have been traded using this platform. Stockal’s primary market is in India, Kuwait, Omar, and UAE. 

One of the problems with Stockal’s website is that it has no newsletter and their app isn’t optimized. 

Why is this a problem?

With the rise of newsletters such as Morning Brew, a new era of newsletters has occurred. 

People are less interested in a lot of content and instead like short informative blog posts. If an app is developed poorly then the perception of the app and platform are less favorable.

Without a newsletter and app redevelopment, the company will lose subscribers and hurt the bottom line. 

To solve this problem I decided to build a newsletter for subscribers who sign up for the app and find a potential app developer that they could work with to create a better mobile experience. 

By implementing these strategies, Stockal would be able to thrive in achieving revenue growth and customer satisfaction.

Here are all of the key traits of a potential retail investor:

What a potential customers could look like

Interests: Innovation, finance, financial stability, multiple streams of income, diversification

Demographic: Third-world country, upper class, ages 20-45, any gender, college-educated

App Optimization

First I created a lead list using Hunter.io searching for potential leads on redeveloping their mobile app. Next with the lead list, I sent a personalized email using Hunter.io. I recorded a video on how the process works. 

The app optimization would allow a 20% higher conversion rate from desktop to mobile. Mobile allows us to reach 1 million customers and achieve margins of 20% or greater. 

Mobile platforms allow us to reach more customers. Mobile platforms can be used anywhere and allow customers to not be dependent on wifi and allow the utilization of mobile data. 

Mobile platforms’ experience must be streamlined to fit the constants of a phone. The experience with our app would be different than our website.

With the rise of the subscription model of business, we could potentially create subscription levels for Stockal and make a constant stream of reliable cash.

With a redesign, we could obtain/retain high-paying, mobile customers and create more value for consumers.

App Optimization Video

Lead List for App Redesign Video

Newsletter

After creating the video, I built a newsletter that highlights the key functions of Stockal. 

The goal of the newsletter will be to encourage investors who are currently investing and help them to utilize all of our investment strategies. 

Stockal would make the newsletter as mobile-friendly as possible to ensure that its main readers would get valuable content from our newsletter and encourage them to keep investing with Stockal.

The goal of the newsletter is to reach 100k subscribers from 1 million members on our mobile platform. Right now we have 50K subscribers on our app. 

By creating a newsletter, we could learn how to potentially create a subscription model to ensure cash flow and revenue generation.

The goal would also be to capture email addresses so we could send targeted ads toward potential customers in proximity to current subscribers.

Target customers would include cousins, friends, brothers, sisters, and significant others. 

Listed below is our newsletter:

Newsletter example

Stockal impact on a new stock market

Stockal has created a new unheard trend in investing. Now third-world investors are buying developed stocks. This has brought a new era for investing and brought foreign investment into the previously isolationist USA and Europe markets. 

Stockal will innovate and grow because of the rapid increase of living standards in third-world countries. In the future, the major driving force of developed markets may no longer be their citizens but rather foreign investors. 

In this project, I learned how to create a newsletter and build sales leads. By building this project, I got a first-hand look into a real fintech startup and the impact of a global economy.