Schools
Stanford Start-Up Makes Investing Easy
For many recent college grads, pairing up with investors isn't even an option. Accevia Inc. makes it possible.
As a recent Stanford graduate, Smita Saxena was frustrated with the limited options she had for investment opportunity. She, along with millions of other recent grads, was a small player in the big pond of high-profile investors with more money than any recent graduate could realistically invest.
Saxena and co-founder Erik Kuefler started Accevia Inc. in January for a computer science class project. In April when they applied to join Stanford's start-up incubator, Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) Labs, they knew exactly who their target audience was: recent graduates just like them.
"We're essentially an aggregator platform at the end of the day," Saxena said. "We take people with similar portfolios and then match them with an adviser. I wanted to create a platform for, essentially, me."
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Kuefler added, "Entrepreneurship is something new to me, but there's definitely a start-up culture at Stanford. Smita had a great business idea, and I wanted to take part in it."
Kuefler explained that before Accevia, there was no way for smaller investors to get access to investment advisers. There are significant limits on the clients they'll accept.
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"Most investors won't take clients who have less than a quarter of a million dollars," he said. "We're just not worth their while."
Accevia intern Sean Mandell explained that the company aimed to be "personal therapists" for its clients. Everything is made simple and is precisely tailored to their needs. Each user can create a profile as specific as wanting to make enough money to purchase a car in a few years. He or she will then get paired with similar users to create a larger portfolio.
"If 20 of us at SSE Labs each have $5,000, and we all go in together, we become $100,000 and are instantly more attractive," Saxena said.
Accevia is in private alpha phase, meaning invited users test the product and provide feedback. Rather than allowing just anyone to use the product, Saxena said the "invite-only" by current members will naturally attract people with similar profiles. Saxena hopes members will invite their friends and create natural aggregations. The company is still debating whether to make the website completely open to the public.
"We want to focus on providing each user with a quality experience," she said. "It's not about numbers."
Cameron Teitelman, director of SSE Labs, noted how well the two partners complement each other.
"They're both hard-working but play different roles that make the team run smoothly," Teitelman said.
Saxena and Kuefler have a few interns who work on the business development and graphic design of the site.
Because Saxena was working on Accevia full-time this summer, she was also "working every second she could," Teitelman said.
"This was never just a project for her," he added. "It's what she does. At any point, she'll just want to code. During the summer she would rarely take dinner breaks and ask us, 'Can I go back and code?'"
Saxena credits SSE Labs with helping provide structure to the development of their product. By having constant feedback and testing the product on users provided by SSE Labs, Saxena and Kuefler could constantly iterate.
"The vision was always the same, but the business model completely changed," Saxena said. "SSE Labs helped us define a model where we would be unique from other companies."
Though their year with SSE Labs is ending, Saxena was found in the office the day after Demo Day. She and Kuefler are still testing the product on users because the coding is near complete. Saxena said finalizing the business model will be the next big hurdle.
"This is really unchartered territory," she said. "We're really excited to complete the product and provide a service for clients that hasn't been explored."
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