Tell me about your vision.
Yeah, so for context, I'll keep it really quick
on what Ticker is.
Ticker is a platform, a subscription platform
that helps people confidently buy and sell stocks.
And there are about 400 million retail investors
in about 16 countries.
Right now we have about 9,000 customers
in about 50 countries around the world.
And we want to help more people
that are entering the market invest with confidence.
So for example, Nvidia is all the rage as we speak.
Is Nvidia actually a good or bad investment?
Same thing with Tesla, same thing with Apple,
same thing with Microsoft.
But we do that with a lot of stocks
around the world and our platform.
And not only that, people know what decisions to make,
like when to buy, when to sell, how to reduce the risk.
So really we're focused on getting to a million subscribers
over the coming years.
And based on the size of the market,
we know we can get there.
Okay, so starting from the beginning,
where did your vision come from?
What sparked this in you?
Yeah, so I'll keep this high level.
I've got about 20 years in business,
about 15 years in investing.
And I started the hard way with investing.
I went through a merger of a business in the 2000s.
It was just an agency, a service business.
So there wasn't like a multiple.
It was like, hey, all debts and liabilities,
wipe clean and you get a fresh start.
So I knew at that point in 2010,
I wanted to create some kind of SaaS business.
And in the same time, get into investing.
Instead of me, long story short,
instead of me working for money,
how do I flip that equation to get money working for me?
So investing, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger,
they're really the guys a lot of people look up to.
So I started Angel Investing.
We're investing in private companies.
And that's a losing game for most people.
I made some money, lost some money,
did that for five years.
And in 2015 or 16, I'm like,
I have to do this the right way.
I have to follow Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger.
So I went down the YouTube rabbit hole.
I read as many books on investing as I could.
And I found a guy by the name of Phil Town
who provided some of the mathematics,
some of the calculus equations in a book.
I won't talk about those here.
But people can check out Ticker.
We are open source with our calculations
so people can use those calculations.
We always say, go create your own version of Ticker.
We really don't care.
But I wanted to create a green light,
red light decision-making process.
When you're sitting at the stoplight in your car,
it's not like, maybe should I go forward?
It's like you trust the green light,
red light rating system.
How do we do that with stocks?
So I created a gamified experience in Excel,
used it for four years,
making returns that are about 15 to 50% per year.
For context, the S&P 500 is about 8% after inflation.
So I'm like, all right, it's beating the market.
2019 comes around and I start sharing this Excel sheet
with a few people and everybody's like,
hey, you should turn this into a software
to share with others.
So after like 10 years, I finally have a SaaS idea.
It just took overnight to get this thing moving.
But it took about a year to build the first version of Ticker.
And then it took six months to get the first paying customer,
but that's what building a SaaS is.
You gotta get people on the platform for free,
but in return, you gotta ask for feedback
on how to make it better for them.
Because it's not my tool,
it then becomes my customer's tool.
So yeah, then fast forward to today, in 2024,
we have over 9,000 customers.
So that's the backstory on the platform.
That's incredible, man.
I mean, you gotta start somewhere
and you started from the hard point, huh?
Right, I guess I always like to make it difficult.
I mean, I think it's the best way to learn
is whenever you headstrong, you just dive into it
and you face headfirst all of the issues
that you're going into
and you just figure it out from there.
Right on, right on.
So in your personal life, what is your why?
What's pushing you forward?
Freedom, in my 20s, when I had that business
and that service business,
I was working like 60, 70 hours a week
and it was around age 29, age 30,
after that merger happened,
I'm like, I cannot do this anymore.
I have to work smarter, not harder.
So my driver is financial freedom.
Fortunately, it was a year ago.
I'm just over 40 now, I'm 41 and it was at age 40,
I was able to go full time with Ticker.
I bootstrapped it for three years, so kept the day job.
I did, since that merger, I'll keep this quick,
I did a lot of corporate contract and project management
for a lot of big companies and that was great experience.
But I'm like, I don't wanna work in big business,
I don't wanna work in corporate America,
I wanna create my own schedule.
So I get to wake up and do whatever I want every day.
I love serving my customers, I love building Ticker.
During the summer, I take Fridays off,
I do not work Fridays, I actually play golf
or I should phrase that, I try to play golf.
But my wife and I, we enjoy work life balanced
to the nth degree, life is about living, not working.
So that's my wife.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun,
we'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.
I'll talk to you soon, bye bye.