**”One-Click Copy Trading” Pelosi, Federal Reserve**
Do you also want “one-click copy trading” to perfectly replicate the stock lists of Wall Street titans and celebrities?
Professional institutional investors have countless advantages, such as extensive networks and professional research teams, while retail investors often have to rely on financial news, financial reports, and even social media for investment guidance.
Steven Wang was puzzled by this situation until the “GameStop incident” unfolded, prompting him to think of a startup idea: allowing everyone to follow successful individuals’ trading decisions.
The GameStop incident: Several hedge funds in the United States shorted the well-known video game retail chain GameStop, but Reddit stock forum users, known as “Roaring Kitty,” believed that GameStop’s stock was “overly shorted,” leading to a scenario of “internet users vs. Wall Street sharks.”
**How does Dub address the pain points of retail investors?**
Historically, the investment market has been dominated by professional institutions, leaving ordinary investors at a disadvantage due to information asymmetry and lack of expertise, often resulting in losses in the investment market.
The core philosophy of the investment platform Dub, founded by Steven Wang, is “selecting investors rather than selecting stocks.” Dub offers a “Copy Trading” service that enables users to directly follow the investment portfolios of top Wall Street investors, hedge fund managers, and even political figures, perfectly achieving “one-click copy trading.”
Dub provides “Copy Trading” technology, allowing users to directly follow the investment portfolios of top Wall Street investors, hedge fund managers, and political figures.
Image / Dub official website
Steven Wang explains that since stock trades by U.S. congressional members and government officials must be reported to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), and these records are publicly available, Dub utilizes SEC-regulated trading disclosure data to organize the “Pelosi Portfolio,” allowing retail investors to directly follow the investment strategies of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the stock market. He also added that this investment portfolio achieved a return of over 70% in 2023.
Image / Dub official website
Users simply need to download Dub, register an account, and browse the investment portfolios on the platform. Each portfolio will display past returns, risk assessments, and investment targets, enabling investors to choose suitable options based on their capabilities.
Unlike general social investing, Dub has a strict screening mechanism for investment experts to ensure that the individuals users follow possess professional backgrounds and outstanding investment records. Steven Wang emphasized that the investment portfolios offered by Dub come from publicly available SEC trading records, covering trades from figures such as Bill Ackman and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, ensuring the reliability of the portfolios.
Additionally, Dub’s investment team consists of quantitative analysts from Wall Street hedge funds, including experts from Millennium Management, Goldman Sachs traders, and data scientists and mathematicians from MIT and Harvard, who select investors suitable for the platform and analyze appropriate investment strategies.
Steven Wang further explained that once the investment portfolio is selected, Dub automatically executes trades, ensuring that users’ capital allocation synchronizes with the investment experts without the need for manual buy or sell operations, making the investment process more efficient. Currently, Dub has achieved 800,000 downloads.
**Witnessing the GameStop Short Squeeze, He Decided to Leave Harvard and Found Dub**
Where did Dub’s philosophy originate?
Founder Steven Wang comes from a Chinese immigrant family in Detroit, USA. He recalls that his father’s annual salary was only $10,000, which barely maintained a basic standard of living. Therefore, Steven Wang began learning to invest using a custodial account set up by his parents at Scottrade since the second grade, hoping to help his family relieve financial pressure as soon as possible.
His entrepreneurial talent began to show in high school. At just 16, Steven Wang decided to drop out and founded a VR education company called Realism, hoping to use VR technology to enable immersive learning for students. Projects launched by Realism included lunar landing experiments, medical research, and even developing a course for students to practice Spanish in a virtual environment.
“Even with the best technology, if there is no market access, these technologies cannot translate into a successful business model,” Steven Wang candidly stated. At a young age, pushing Realism into the market was fraught with challenges; public school procurement decisions were complex, and products launched by Realism required multi-layer confirmations from school administrators, teachers, and parents, leading to a lengthy sales cycle. “The education technology industry might be the hardest to navigate among all industries,” he admitted.
Nevertheless, Realism’s VR education technology caught the attention of MIT Media Lab, and Steven Wang and his team received $220,000 and entered a three-month Play Labs accelerator program. He recalls that the team was sleeping on the floor in a small apartment in Boston, fully dedicated to developing VR products.
Steven Wang believes that although Realism ultimately failed to achieve commercialization and was acquired by another company, he quickly built a network and obtained startup funding from the accelerator program.
He later entered Harvard University, where he engaged in a lot of day trading and witnessed the investment forum WallStreetBets ignite a “retail vs. hedge fund” battle, namely the GameStop incident.
“My parents are typical Asian parents who want me to become a lawyer, a doctor, or an entrepreneur like Zuckerberg.” Hence, Steven Wang thought it would be really cool to leave Harvard midway to start a business.
**Related Reading:** Is it really Robin Hood? A comprehensive look at the business model, competitors, and future of the investment platform favored by young people, Robinhood.
After witnessing millions of retail investors impact the entire financial market, Steven Wang observed that many investors in the market did not make decisions based on rational analysis but were influenced by social media, choosing so-called investment gurus or following inside information from groups.
“I didn’t want to just place random bets in the market; I wanted to build a platform that could truly help retail investors.” Thus, Steven Wang chose to drop out a second time and founded Dub, hoping to create a platform that allows retail investors to “follow the right people” in investing.
Image / Steven Wang LinkedIn
**What distinguishes Dub from Robinhood?**
Dub’s service positioning easily evokes comparisons with the investment platform Robinhood, which played a key role during the GameStop incident.
Robinhood also provides a platform for retail investors to trade stocks directly; however, Dub and Robinhood differ in their revenue models.
Robinhood primarily profits through Payment for Order Flow (PFOF), selling users’ trading information to high-frequency trading firms (HFT), allowing these firms to anticipate which stocks are about to be bought or sold in bulk, thus profiting. In contrast, Dub operates on a subscription fee and investment management fee model.
Both platforms are accessible to retail investors, but their profit models indicate that Dub is more aligned with the interests of ordinary retail investors.
During the 2021 GameStop incident, Robinhood was accused of violating fair trading principles by restricting users from purchasing GameStop stock and was even investigated by the SEC. Steven Wang shared that the Dub platform they founded is the first “Copy Trading” platform in the U.S. approved by the SEC and FINRA, ensuring that all trades are supervised and not reliant on PFOF for profit.
“We aim to create a truly transparent and trustworthy investment platform, rather than making retail investors victims of financial institutions,” Steven Wang stated. Through a subscription model of $10 per month and portfolio management fees, Dub ensures that its operational model does not rely on PFOF, unlike traditional brokerages, providing a more transparent trading environment.
Additionally, Dub charges management fees for certain specific “premium portfolios,” meaning that users who want to follow the top investment experts in the market will need to pay an additional fee, which will be shared between Dub and the investment expert.
**Seed Round Completed, Dub Plans for IPO**
Currently, Dub has raised $17 million in seed funding, which includes investors such as Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and OneRepublic lead singer Ryan Tedder.
Our Series Seed Fundraising and Public Launch Announcement, a thread: pic.twitter.com/9KIzVxEk0B — dub (@dubinvest) February 22, 2024
Steven Wang stated that he hopes retail investors can easily replicate expert investment models on the Dub platform without spending a lot of time on stock analysis. He also revealed plans for an IPO in the coming years, saying, “We hope the Dub investment platform can make the financial market fairer and more open.”
References: “CNBC,” “Business Insider,” “TechCrunch,” “AUDIOCRAIC,” “Dub”