StockTwits with Rishi Khanna | E284
Social media for investing and trading.
On this episode, host Jason Pereira talks to Rishi Khanna, CEO of StockTwits. It is a social media platform for the retail investing and trading community, known for inventing the cash tag. Rishi talks about his vision involving horizontal expansion to become a global platform and vertical expansion into diverse asset classes, while leveraging the culture of money and markets and the significance of live interactions.
Episode Highlights
01:00: StockTwits has expanded beyond U.S. stocks to cover Canadian equities, Indian equities, cryptocurrencies, and other assets.
01:16: The company aims to provide a highly engaging place for global investors to connect, learn, and have fun while profiting.
01:23: Rishi Khanna discusses the history of StockTwits, which was founded in the late 2000s and initially built on top of Twitter's APIs before developing its own community network.
02:10: StockTwits differentiates itself by organizing conversations based on ticker symbols, allowing users to follow specific stocks rather than individuals.
03:10: Rishi Khanna got involved with StockTwits in late 2019 after knowing the company for several years. He was invited to help build the next phase of StockTwits' vision, expanding its value to the investing community throughout the investing life cycle.
03:35: Rishi mentions joining in January 2020 and how the world changed drastically during that time.
04:07: Jason suggests having a dedicated social media outlet for a specific community of interest.
04:19: Jason talks about expanding the value chain beyond communication and social aspects.
04:45: Rishi explains the investing life cycle: ideation, research, execution, and management.
06:08: Rishi discusses unlocking and utilizing unique data points, such as social sentiment data, trending activity data, and messaging bonds.
07:37: Rishi highlights the importance of enriching the execution experience and providing a comprehensive toolset for users.
08:30: The current monetization strategy primarily relies on advertising, but they are also exploring transactional business models through execution services.
08:57: Rishi discusses the challenges of the equity trading business model.
10:26: Jason mentions the monetization strategy of advertising on the social media platform.
11:01: The two dimensions of expansion are global coverage and live interactions, says Rishi.
12:55: Rishi discusses the opportunity to expand into different asset classes and cater to specific communities within the investing and trading world.
13:13 Rishi discusses the different types of investors, such as value-based fundamental investors, growth investors, sector-specific investors, and SPAC investors.
13:34 Rishi emphasizes the need to expand the conversation and enable retail investors to access various asset classes beyond stocks and mutual funds, such as stock ETFs, cryptocurrencies, real estate, yield-producing products, PE funds, venture funds, and direct investing in private companies.
14:46 Premium rooms are akin to a creator solution, allowing influential community members to monetize their following by creating rooms where they offer ideation, discussions, and set their own price for access, says Rishi.
18:14: Rishi emphasizes the importance of social moderation and community rules, highlighting the platform's efforts to address these challenges through technology, partnerships, community involvement in reporting posts/users, and an in-house moderation team.
20:45: The conversation touches on the introduction of trending streams and the importance of trust and quality conversations on the platform.
22:20: Rishi Khanna expresses his wish to change the default position of cynicism and distrust in communications.
23:17: The biggest challenge for StockTwits is mentioned as the tension between making changes and satisfying long-time users.
24:32: Rishi Khanna shares his excitement about working with a small, passionate team to tackle the challenges in the social community and market.
3 Key Points
Rishi talks about the importance of data and information in the investing life cycle.
Rishi discusses the challenges of the equity trading business model, particularly in the US where it is highly commoditized and most big platforms offer free trading.
Rishi explains how to facilitate and enable investors to explore and connect with different asset classes, find their tribes, engage in conversations, learn, and potentially build wealth.
Tweetable Quotes
"Equity trading is not a great business model. It's very hard to generate revenue to cover costs." - Rishi
"We are focused on launching our tools and data business, providing premium value and unique information to our community through subscriptions." - Rishi
"We're expanding globally to become the go-to platform for the retail investing community. Launching in India is just the beginning." - Rishi
"Our goal is to expand the asset classes and cater to the diverse interests within the investing and trading community. There are many micro-communities within this space." - Rishi
"We have over the recent few years switched to a default of cynicism and distrust, which maybe is the right position from a markets perspective, but to have healthy conversation, you have to come from a place of, OK, not everyone is being malicious and attacking." - Rishi Khanna
"Changing things is a challenge... users hate change, especially if they've been using [the platform] for 10 plus years." - Rishi Khanna
"We punch way above our weight class... getting to take on these challenges and problems every day is fun." - Rishi Khanna
Resources Mentioned:
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