Pynk Xmas Teaser 2021 from Seth.
This a transcription of the last video published from Seth Ward, CEO of Pynk, that you'll find later in this blog post:
Hello Pynksters and investors!
It's the end of the year so a good time for an end of year update .
Now, I don't want to bore you with that word that we've all heard too much this year, but of course I need to start by recognising what a horrible, tumultuous year this has been for so many of us.
My thoughts are with all of you who've really struggled yourselves or had people close to you who've really struggled .
Now we really feel very fortunate here at Pynk, that 2020 hasn't been too tough on us, fingers crossed we're not quite there yet but you know, looking back to last March, things did look pretty bleak. At Pynk we were around I think six or seven months into raising a second seed round when Covid really started to affect things in Europe and we lost our main investor almost as a direct result, and so with with minimal funds in the bank, we really had to pull together as a team .
We had instituted a hiring freeze , we went to all having tiny salaries, we had to shift our focus from we were expecting to launch in the summer and we had to go back to the drawing board and restart our funding round almost from scratch and you know , having to do that in the middle of a real uncertainty from the beginning of the the pandemic, you know we did pull!
Together united we stood!
It wasn't just our employees, but also you! Our crowd and our investors and in that context I want to thank all of you who gave us your support.
So, we now have over a thousand investors thanks to both Seedrs and Founderbeam crowdfunding platforms as well as a few vcs and and angels. So, thanks to all of you we have more than forty thousand crowd members now!
Thanks to all of you.
The same goes to the more than twenty thousand people on our global investor wait list. Thanks to you and of course our team of employees and advisors all over the world who've been so crucial to where we are today.
Thanks to all of you!
I suppose I should also thank the UK Government who implemented something called “the future fund”, in order to help early-stage startups that were in a particularly precarious position.
You know, facing a complete lack of funds unexpectedly, many of whom didn't have any revenue at all and so, that fund that scheme , has actually really helped boost our funding ground.
It added six figures to the pot which was really critical .
So you know, bear with me on this one, I don't think I've ever had to thank politicians directly before so thank you.
To the UK public, who are now effectively Pynk investors, we have taken people powered to another level yet again and together all of you, have allowed us to get to where we are today and
you know, we really are on the verge of starting our mission for real by enabling that first people-powered investment portfolio.
We're putting everyday investors at the heart of the investment decision making process .
We're building what we call a collaborative finance, changing the way the world of investment works, democratizing access to hedge fund grade investment tools and research and knowledge,
encouraging positive long-term financial habits and helping people everywhere to create a better financial future and all that, while making investment fun!
All of that starts of course with the imminent launch of our investor wallet.
So first and foremost, that highly anticipated launch allowing people to invest into the “Pynk Thesis Portfolio“: the first of many portfolios and products that we're planning to offer.
So that, the investment portfolio itself and the technology that delivers, it is pretty much ready to rock now.
We're pending a few tweaks and final tests. So you know it was so so close we were hoping for a pre-christmas launch, but there's one final thing just holding that up and it doesn't quite look like that's going to happen.
So the markets now, closed for the holiday period, it seems likely that it's going to have to wait until the new year. We'll be inviting trenches of you, tranches of pinksters, through into the wallet from that point. So, a little surprise I'm pleased to tell you, that we're actually able to give you a little sneak peek now of how the investor wallet registration process and the wallet itself might look when you're able to get in.
It's just a demo, so there you go a quick preview of how it's all going to look when it launches very very soon.
Now, if you're one of our loyal pynksters and you're involved with the the app itself, you'll be keen to hear what's happening with the next round of wisdom points conversions.
Well, I'm pleased to say that your wisdom points are also going to be converted in the new year just before the launch of the investor wallet, which actually means that those of you who have earned it, will be among the very first to see the inside of the portfolio.
https://youtu.be/mXcYw3-AzEE?t=296
Really can't wait for this to go live. So that's the action feed coming to an app near you very soon now.
One thing that you may be wondering, is what is our portfolio actually going to look like when it launches...well, while we have something called a core within the portfolio, that does keep us involved in a slip number of assets that are fairly typical of the market overall, this core element gives you fairly similar exposure to what you might see in those vanilla and interesting investment portfolios that you can get elsewhere, but with us, that is of course only a fairly small element of our whole portfolio.
What you're really buying into with Pynk, is a series of investment themes.
We call them, THESIS pronounced that correctly, that we've developed in a collaboration with our crowd and investors.
Now some of you have been involved in, helping us already decide on some of the exciting investment concepts that will feature that show investment promise and some of you, have also been involved in identifying suitable assets that fit into each thesis and even more of you, will be involved in the future and you'll be helping us to do all of the above as well as rebalancing our allocations and adding and removing assets to and from each of them.
So each THESIS, follows a separate investment concept and each of them has a number of assets that fit that concept, but we combine together these various investment concepts to give you what is a diversified portfolio overall.
Now I won't share all of the THESIS that will be in the portfolio at launch obviously. It's in a continual state of improvement and development, but here are a few that might feature, just to give you a flavor.
One is “Rembrandts in the attic”. This one, is identifying companies that have got hidden value that we and the crowd, don't believe is completely reflected in the current price of those assets.
So this THESIS is not, it's obviously not industry specific. You could see all kinds of companies in this THESIS as long as they have what we consider to be hidden value.
Another one is a new food tech and that includes but isn't restricted to, lab grown meat. Here generally we are following up on our belief that the world has to change the way that it feeds itself. We need less waste, less environmental destruction, reduced animal suffering and fewer harmful chemicals. In time we believe that the cost benefits of this new toy type of food production will be so big, that ethics will no longer be the only driver, or the main driver towards changing eating habits.
We think that cost savings will be another THESIS, is investments getting greener. Here, we're looking more generally at a variety of environmentally respectful businesses and technologies that are reducing energy waste and pollution.
Finally, the last one I'll mention, is medical marijuana and other innovative plant-based medicines and we've actually found some really interesting ways to get exposure to this exciting sector, without necessarily having to restrict ourselves to investing into marijuana producers themselves.
So there are many more features to come which we will talk about in some future updates.
One big thing to mention along those lines, is that we do have a lot of progression happening right now in terms of integrating the crowd more tightly, with what the investment committee does: Razvan Pouneh and Mark are already making significant headway with this, and you'll have no doubt seen and recognized that if you're regularly involved in the Pynk community but...that is just the start, because we'll be integrating the community and more collaboration features into the core of the app itself.
Then, we're planning other things like fun games and battles and combat, even collaborative play to up the ante and increase the fun factor, so you can compete with others and prove who is the best predictor, who's the best investor...
We're planning a native app, a way to get your hands on all kinds of alternative assets as well as solutions for you to have more influence and customize your personal portfolios that you hold with us and we're also planning ways, to bring you more cutting-edge information and education, that will help you and the crowd and all of our investors to be smarter investors!
So a little flavor there, our roadmap for 2021 and beyond will be published after the new year, so look out for that but don't just look for it.
We enable that wherever we can. It's not just a portfolio, it's the actual product development itself. So thanks for making it this far right to the end of this pretty long video.
That's it for now, I hope that you and yours managed to have a pretty decent end to this year at least and I don't know about you, but I cannot wait for next year so that Pynk can play its small part in making the years ahead of you that little bit better!
Adios 2020!
From Pynk CEO, Seth Ward.