myshare

Name of the project What’s the working title of your project?

myshare

Elevator pitch In three sentences - what’s your idea?

Interested in Profiting from Global Capital Markets? Ready to Buy Shares at Your Local Grocery Store? Looking for a Unique Gift? myshare will change the investing landscape in brings the Global Capital Markets as voucher to your doorstep!

1.Large barriers of entry for new and small investors exclude a large number of people from participating in the securities market - one of the few options to make money in the low interest financial environment.

2.There are also plenty of potential clients who would prefer to give the gift of shares but who hand out money or retailers’ gift cards for the same reason.

3.myshare makes it easy and affordable for our clients to buy shares by the euro, or give gifts of shares by the euro to family or friends.

Screenshot Please make a screenshot of your project and insert it here (use markdown)

See screenshot and Video below.

Type of the project web app, mobile app, data visualization?

Mobile app (online & offline link)

MVP What’s the minimum viable product? Which features does it have?

The minimum viable product includes functions for signing up of customers to open a free trading account and trading 30 shares from the German DAX ® Index (execution-only-basis). The payment account collects the funds for investments.

The deposits are initially being done through electronic e-gifts or physical gift cards purchasable in shops redeemable for shares. In addition, direct electronic transfers into the depository will be feasible. In case of a gift the giver just chooses a particular share and the euro amount one wants to give (say, €50 of Siemens shares), inform myshare who the recipient is, and pay using a debit or credit card. The recipient gets the card by email, and redeems the card by clicking on a button in the email and logging in or signing up for a free myshare account.

The gift cards will be available in denominations of €25, €50 and €100, meaning the purchase will often be a fractional share of the share. For example, if Siemens is trading at €100 per share, one doesn’t need to come up with €100 to get started. Clients can spend €50 to buy 0.5 shares of Siemens shares. There is a small transaction fee on the gift cards as well as on each share sell transaction.

Target group Who should use your product?

myshare will be useful to a very large variety of investors who are seeking capital gains but cannot afford to hold safe or well-diversified portfolios due to a lack of financial literacy or access to services. We believe that we can make investing attractive and fun to first time investors (most of whom, we anticipate, will be millennials). Our ideal client is a non-savvy investor who is able to put aside at least around €25/month. We are not targeting large multimillion-euro investors since such individuals can easily afford personal asset managers or buy into expensive portfolios. In 2014, an average of around 4.14 million direct shareholders were registered in Germany down from a high of of 6.21 million in 2000. Our rough calculations show that we can expect to obtain approximately 100,000 clients over a five-year period after launch.

Use Case How will users typically use this product?

myshares’ business model provides an easier and more cost effective way to begin growing the savings of our clients. Plenty of people would happily become shareholders in companies like BMW and Siemens if the process of buying stock were simpler. Also many of people would prefer to give the gift of shares but who hand out money or retailers’ gift cards for the same reason. Everything in our brokerage is purely digital. All the confirmations and statements are in PDF form, so we do not have the legacy cost of paper and can lower the costs and barriers to entry.

Challenges & solutions What was the most difficult part of the project? What problems did you encounter? How did you solve them?

Currently, there are no APIs for stock trading on mobile platforms available in Germany. Therefore, we had to built the MVP with our own mock-up system. We still need to iron out some regulatory issues such as the obtaining a license as a broker-dealer or how to collect information on the knowledge and experience of the investors (according to § 31 Abs. 5 WpHG).

We are confident that the contemplated fee structure, interest earned on the pre-paid cards as well as other potential revenue sources will make myshare a viable business model. The operating margin assumptions as well as the likely client acquisition costs versus their life-time value need to be further validated.

Scalability How can the project be further developed?

Once we have a working prototype running we will be able to show the feasibility of myshare on a small scale in Germany. We finished designing the basic front end of our Mobile app and started with the initial development of our backend for a fully-fledged Beta-Version to be tested with a select initial test user base. First of all, we need to integrate real time prices into our Mobile app. This a problem many trading Apps are facing at the moment. The investable shares portfolio has to be enlarged by shares from outside Germany and Europe. Clients may want to invest into a diversified portfolio not only consisting of shares. We plan to offer several ETFs that cover fixed income bonds and physical assets such as gold. .

myshare will be working closely with banks, where one will be able to easily buy or sell stock from those financial institutions. myshare will be behind the scenes, but one will see “powered by myshare.” myshare’s aim is to become a platform service, meaning clients can come through a third-party app or partner site or application or through a physical retailer because the platform is open. myshare can connect with anyone anywhere anytime: Consumers, employees, and enterprise customers can send any amount of stock to almost anyone, anywhere using myshares platform services.

Bringing this concept even further, it might even be considered to allow the transaction of shares between myshare users. This enhances the mobile character of this app and continues the path of rethinking online trading myshare is following.