**”One-Click Copy Trading” Pelosi and the Federal Reserve?**
Do you also want “one-click copy trading” to perfectly replicate the stock portfolios of Wall Street moguls and celebrities? Professional institutional investors have countless advantages, such as vast networks and specialized research teams, while retail investors can only seek investment references from financial news, financial reports, or even social media.
Steven Wang was perplexed by this situation until the “GameStop incident” unfolded, prompting him to think of a startup idea: enabling everyone to trade like successful individuals.
**The GameStop Incident**: Numerous hedge funds in the United States shorted the well-known video game retailer GameStop, which is publicly traded. However, Reddit forum users, known as “Roaring Kitty,” believed that GameStop’s stock price was “overly shorted,” leading to a situation where “internet users clashed with Wall Street titans.”
**How does Dub address retail investor pain points?**
Historically, the investment market has been dominated by professional institutions, and ordinary investors often find themselves at a disadvantage due to information asymmetry or lack of expertise, resulting in frequent losses in the investment market. Steven Wang founded the investment platform Dub with the core philosophy of “choosing investors, not stocks.” Dub offers “Copy Trading” services that allow users to directly follow the investment portfolios of top Wall Street investors, hedge fund managers, and even politicians, perfectly achieving “one-click trading.”
Dub provides “Copy Trading” technology, enabling users to directly follow the investment portfolios of top Wall Street investors, hedge fund managers, and even politicians.
Image / Dub Official Website
Steven Wang explained that U.S. Congress members and government officials must report their stock trades to the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), and these records are publicly transparent. Dub utilizes the trading disclosure data regulated by the SEC to compile the “Pelosi Portfolio,” allowing retail investors to directly follow the investment strategies of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He added that this portfolio has yielded a return rate of over 70% in 2023.
Image / Dub Official Website
Users only need to download Dub, register an account, and browse the portfolios on the platform. Each portfolio displayed will show past return rates, risk assessments, and investment targets, allowing investors to choose suitable targets based on their capabilities. Unlike typical social investing, Dub employs a rigorous screening mechanism for investment experts to ensure that the subjects users follow have professional backgrounds and excellent investment records. Steven Wang emphasized that the investment portfolios provided by Dub come from publicly available SEC trading records, covering trades by figures such as Bill Ackman and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, to ensure the reliability of the portfolios.
Moreover, Dub’s investment team consists of quantitative analysts from Wall Street hedge funds, including experts from Millennium Management, Goldman Sachs traders, and data scientists and mathematicians from MIT and Harvard. They filter out investors suitable for the platform and analyze appropriate investment strategies. Steven Wang further explained that once a portfolio is selected, Dub automatically executes trades to ensure that users’ capital allocation is synchronized with the investment experts, eliminating the need for manual buying and selling, thus making the investment process more efficient. Currently, Dub has achieved 800,000 downloads.
**Witnessing the GameStop Short Squeeze, He Decided to Leave Harvard to Found Dub**
Where did Dub’s philosophy originate? Founder Steven Wang hails from a Chinese immigrant family in Detroit, recalling that his father’s annual salary was only $10,000, which barely covered basic living expenses. From the second grade, Steven began learning to invest using a custodial account opened by his parents with Scottrade, hoping to help his family escape financial pressure as soon as possible.
His entrepreneurial talents became apparent in high school. At just 16 years old, Steven Wang decided to drop out and founded a VR education company called Realism, aiming to enable immersive learning through VR technology. Realism launched projects including lunar landing simulations and medical research, even designing a course that allowed students to practice Spanish in a virtual environment.
“Even with the best technology, without a way to enter the market, these technologies cannot be transformed into successful business models.” Steven Wang admitted that at such a young age, pushing Realism into the market faced numerous obstacles. Due to the complicated procurement decisions of public schools, the products launched by Realism needed to go through multiple approvals from school officials, teachers, and parents, resulting in prolonged sales cycles. “The educational technology industry might be the hardest of all industries,” he confessed.
Despite this, Realism’s VR education technology was well-received by the MIT Media Lab, and Steven Wang and his team secured $220,000 and entered a three-month Play Labs accelerator program. He recalled that the team was sleeping on the floor in a small apartment in Boston, fully devoted to developing VR products. Steven Wang believes that although Realism ultimately failed to commercialize successfully and was eventually acquired by another company, he rapidly built connections and obtained startup funding from the accelerator program.
He later entered Harvard University, where he engaged in a lot of day trading and witnessed the emergence of the investment forum WallStreetBets, which sparked a “retail investor versus hedge fund” battle known as the GameStop incident. “My parents are typical Asian parents who want me to become a lawyer, doctor, or an entrepreneur like Zuckerberg.” Therefore, Steven Wang thought it would be cool to drop out of Harvard to start a business.
**Further Reading**: Is it really Robin Hood? An overview of the business model, competitors, and future of the investment platform favored by young people: Robinhood.
After witnessing millions of retail investors impact the entire financial market, Steven Wang observed that many investors in the market made decisions not based on rational analysis but rather influenced by social media, following so-called investment gurus or rumors within groups. “I didn’t want to just randomly bet in the market; I wanted to build a platform that genuinely helps retail investors.” Thus, Steven Wang chose to drop out for the second time and founded Dub, hoping to launch a platform that allows retail investors to “follow the right people” in their investments.
Image / Steven Wang LinkedIn
**How is Dub different from Robinhood?**
Dub’s service positioning is easily reminiscent of the investment platform Robinhood, which played a key role in the GameStop incident. Robinhood also provides a platform for retail investors to trade stocks directly, but Dub’s revenue model differs.
Robinhood primarily profits through “Payment for Order Flow” (PFOF), selling users’ trading information to high-frequency trading institutions (HFT), enabling these institutions to know in advance which stocks are about to be significantly bought or sold, thus profiting. In contrast, Dub operates on a subscription fee and investment management fee model. Both platforms cater to general retail investors, but the differences in their profit models highlight that Dub stands more on the side of ordinary retail investors.
During the 2021 GameStop incident, Robinhood faced accusations of violating fair trading principles for restricting users from buying GameStop shares, even leading to an SEC investigation. Steven Wang shared that their platform, Dub, is the first in the U.S. to receive SEC and FINRA approval for “Copy Trading,” ensuring that all trades are supervised and do not rely on PFOF for profit. “We aim to create a truly transparent and trustworthy investment platform, rather than making retail investors victims of financial institutions.” Steven Wang stated that through a $10 monthly subscription and investment management fees, Dub ensures that its operational model does not depend on “Payment for Order Flow,” unlike traditional brokerage firms, providing a more transparent trading environment.
Additionally, Dub will charge management fees for certain specific “premium portfolios,” meaning that users who wish to follow top investment experts in the market will need to pay extra fees, which will be shared between Dub and the investment expert.
**Seed Round Completed, Dub Plans for IPO**
Currently, Dub has raised $17 million in seed funding, including investments from Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and OneRepublic lead singer Ryan Tedder.
Our Series Seed Fundraising and Public Launch Announcement, a thread: pic.twitter.com/9KIzVxEk0B— dub (@dubinvest) February 22, 2024
Steven Wang expressed his hope that retail investors can easily replicate expert investment models on the Dub platform without spending excessive time on stock analysis. He also revealed plans for an IPO in the coming years, stating, “We hope the Dub investment platform can make the financial market more fair and open.”
Reference Materials: “CNBC,” “Business Insider,” “TechCrunch,” “AUDIOCRAIC,” “Dub.”