Instavest is a social investing platform that lets experts share their stock trades and rationale for others to view and potentially replicate. The original product let experts receive optional donations when their picks performed well; the company has kept that model. Instavest added paid subscription newsletters allowing experts to charge $50–$100 per month for earlier access to tips, with those tips released to non-paying users a few days later. The site recently integrated directly with 10 popular online brokerages (including E*Trade and OptionsHouse) via each broker's API so users can buy and sell without leaving Instavest after a one-time authentication. That direct-brokerage integration soft-launched about two weeks prior to the article, and the total value of stock held by users on the platform has already grown 10x. The company launched roughly a year and a half before the article and is part of Y Combinator's Winter 2015 class; it also announced a $1.7M seed raise.

Total raised

$2M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Aug 2016