They call it a potential game changer – something that could end 401k investment decisions woes.
[highlight]Built by three Goizueta Business School graduates[/highlight], WikiWealth is an investing app that goes beyond the limits of similar tools. It helps investors decipher between buy, sell and hold.
“Other apps just give you the stats to make a decision. We take Wall Street analysis and put it in an easy-to-understand application.” said founder and CEO David Durant.
Durant made the app with other business partners. They’ve worked together for about seven months.
Durant, a first generation American, pursued a career in the investment industry after he realized at a soccer practice that sports weren’t the only way to pay for college.
Among the features WikiWealth boasts to more than two million users is 2,500 financial stock reports that Wall Street provides clients. But WikiWealth gives for free. It includes a “value-dometer,” which combines cash flow, comparative and Warren Buffett approaches for financial analysis.
During the 2008 financial crisis, Durant said he used his Wall Street background to invest. It was what he calls the “best time” to put money to work. His investment earned a 1,300 percent return. He invested gains into WikiWealth.com that would eventually produce more than 5,000 research reports and record 125,000 monthly visitors.
[pullquote]”If you find yourself cheering when a stock or fund goes down, then WikiWealth’s app is doing its job. In the end, WikiWealth doesn’t need to make millions to be a success. It just wants to help everyday investors have somewhere to turn for help.”[/pullquote]
“I went to Emory to figure out how to be a successful entrepreneur,” Durant said. “While in business school, I wanted to go back and do this project.”
The app gives users access to his 10,000 hours of investment research, failed experiments, time on Wall Street and years as a starving entrepreneur.
“With those insights, I wanted to pave the way for others to follow without my lifelong commitment to studying,” he said.
As students, the team learned marketing tools from Goizueta’s Charlie Goetz, a Senior Lecturer in Organization and Management. Goetz said creating apps is popular, and building them is not prohibitively expensive. But what he tried to help the students with was standing out from the crowd and attracting new markets.
WikiWealth uses research to offer the same kind of high-quality research to regular Joe’s that is available to financial professionals.
“Morningstar popularized this notion that historical results correlate with future performance, but academic research disproved this theory long ago,” Durant said. “WikiWealth’s app uses a revolutionary approach that is more accurate and easier to understand.”
While the app began with stocks, a second version due out this week that includes mutual fund and ETF research. This version will help investors pick the best investments for their 401ks.
“If you find yourself cheering when a stock or fund goes down, then WikiWealth’s app is doing its job,” Durant said. “In the end, WikiWealth doesn’t need to make millions to be a success. It just wants to help everyday investors have somewhere to turn for help.”
Click here to download the app.
