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Ask HN: I need some help with an investing-based startup

6 points by Legend ↗ HN
My friend is working on a product focused on investing. He has been looking for guidance all over and I told him I would get some feedback from the HN community. This is what he emailed me. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. I would be happy to ask him for any other information that might be needed.

""" My interest in finance started when I saved up $5000. I wanted to invest it and approached a stockbroker who suggested that I invest in China (back in 2006) for 22% returns. I walked out of the deal thinking a compounded 22% return was impossible. While practicing medicine, I’ve pursued a MBA to learn more about finance.

I’ve started working on a product that estimates the amount of risk you can take, the amount of risk you need to take to achieve your goals and then suggest a simple investment plan that required about 1-4 hours per year. The estimated learning curve is about 10 hours. My initial target market is professionals with little to no knowledge in finance (MDs, non finance PhDs etc..,).

The goal of the product is to provide enough information to allow individuals to invest efficiently and help them pick the right financial planners (advisors who charge less and advocate the right practices). I would have no affiliation with any advisors (to avoid conflict of interest) and our revenue may be through selling this product.

Since some of you may be potential customers or have more experience in financial planning, could you point out how I may fail in this venture and how I could avoid failing. Once concern is having no customers since they don’t want to spend adequate time. Another concern is establishing credibility.

I’ve also composed a survey with a few elements I need to validate and if you have some time (approx. 10 minutes), I would greatly appreciate the feedback.

http://goo.gl/NR54hu

Thank you for your help! """

9 comments

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sharemywin
I read an interesting article about Mint.com. I think your product could follow a similar marketing path. It revolved around a blog to establish credibility first.

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-mint-grew/

Legend
This is an excellent and a very interesting post. Thank you for sharing!
staunch
I'm sure there are many people working on this stuff, but this one I came across recently and it looks good: https://www.wealthfront.com/questions
Legend
Definitely looks interesting. Can you also elaborate on how you came across this startup? Were you googling around for something related or did you hear this through a friend?
staunch
IIRC I saw it on This Week in Startups.
Legend
Looks cool. Just subscribed to it. Thanks for the tip.
beat
As others have pointed out, blogging is absolutely essential to a product like this. Free content for conversion is also really valuable.

Don't be too wedded to your initial revenue model. There are lots of ways you can make money here - subscription, ads, etc. The middle-class investment industry relies heavily on getting a finger on the pulse of the cash flow for ordinary people. If you're deliberately avoiding touching that pulse, and deliberately avoiding remarketing to investment businesses, you may have a hard time getting reasonable return for your work from subscriptions or whatever.

You might want to look into investment clubs and how they work, not as a market but rather as an insight into your customers.