Four Loudoun students launch business to provide investing platform for Gen Z-ers

Raaga Kodali, CMO at Minvest, agreed with him and said she was worried about the risk involved with investing and was unsure how to even go about starting the process.

Also on the team are Bi Nguyen, CFO, and Alex Rios, CTO.

Together, they spoke with over 50 people so they could get to the root of the problem and through that process identified three main barriers to investing – lack of time, fear of the risk and lack of knowledge about what it means to invest.

Their research also found that 26% of individuals between the ages of 16 and 29 invest and this investing gap among Gen Z leaves a potential $289 million market, they said.

With the results of the research, they tried to come up with a solution by developing a personalized user interface that can help make investment decisions based on goals, needs and preferences.

After a setback in the process last May when they did not win the Academies’ INCubator program, they decided to regroup over the summer.

Setty found the Modak Makers Competition, which gave them the opportunity to work with Silicon Valley professionals and business leaders for six weeks. In that competition, they placed first out of 93 teams and won a grant of $6,000 to kickstart the business.

“After we won that pitch, we took a lot of the knowledge and resources and went ahead to turn Minvest into a real thing,” Setty said.

They now have a staff of 15 interns and they have created a Minvest beta version which is in the process of being released to a test market in a website platform.

By answering questions, the product helps identify a personalized investing plan based on the results in an easy-to-understand way using letter grades, Setty said.

“We are here to simplify the investment research process,” Rios said. “We want to release the beta and see what the users are thinking. We want it to be dynamic.”

While there is no specific timeline, their current goal is to find an angel investor so they can turn Minvest into a product which they believe can solve investment problems for their generation.

“The focus is growing the beta version and making it the best we can and then scaling it up to make it something anyone can easily access,” Kodali said. “We want to make it exciting so it can be the best it can be for people.”