They nicely define them as the “TripAdvisor” of investments, but make it clear that they are not personal finance gurus or teachers.
Two restless young people met in 2016 in a curious meeting held in a hairdresser’s and created this mechanism that today has more than 1,000 members between Argentina and Uruguay. They plan to continue growing and expanding in the region, in a “community of parents” format. One of them, nicholas rodriguezdirector and founder of Investor’s Clubspoke with scope.com about the innovative project.
– What is the Investor’s Club?
– It is a community of people interested in the world of investments, people who on average do not have money, who need to rely on other people to access greater opportunities and above all who until a while ago were not listened to since the retail investor Until very recently, I didn’t have many opportunities.
If you had millions of dollars you always had opportunities that both the bank and the companies provided you. However, if you picked up the phone and asked a stockbroker and told him “I have 5,000 dollars” they would answer that for less than 100,000 they could not give you attention.
The club is then a community of people in which we share experiences, invest and research together. Basically we do events with the different investment mechanisms, we take advantage of the fact of being a community to also do business with each other. We build relationships of trust, and through that path, basically a lot of super cool stuff comes out.
– How did it come about?
– My partner, Rodrigo, has a blog called Neurona Financiera. I came across that blog and wrote him an email. I told him that it would be great to hold events with people who were interested in all these topics and that’s how we started doing activities. Today we are about to reach 1,000 members, we are the largest investment community in Uruguay. We are also in Argentina, where we have not yet reached 100 members, but we are starting.
– How has the Argentine experience been?
– The idea was not ours, the queries began to arrive and we decided to take the step. We realized that we couldn’t build muscle there on our own and we decided to look for a local representative who would “pull” with us. We found people in Argentina who wanted to carry this project with us, they make us local ambassadors, Let’s say. At the beginning, people who wanted to invest in Uruguay approached, but then the local community began to be generated. Argentina for us today is not just a community, it is a place to learn about the internationalization of business.
– What is the profile of the club member?
– There is everything. The typical profile is a person who has savings and does not know what to do with that “excess”. It’s not someone who has millions of dollars and wants to see what he does. If you have $15,000, you don’t have 60 investment mechanisms. They tell us that we are a kind of TripAdvisor of investments.
– Now, does talking about investments mean teaching how to invest? How do you handle responsibility for something as delicate as other people’s money?
– We are not money managers, we do not raise people’s money, but each one makes their decision. We define the club as a “community of parents”, I am one more member where I learn with people and invest as if I were one more. We don’t take money from people, we tell them “look at him, in Uruguay the possibilities are these.” Let each one make the best decision for him. What we do is try to help make that decision the best one.
– Is there a “preferred” sector for Uruguayans to invest in? Stock market, cattle, cryptocurrencies?
– We always encourage the idea of diversifying, that is, not “putting all your eggs in the same basket”. If you want to divide the waters, there are two categories: people who invest money and people who invest money and time. The one that invests only money basically tries to diversify. Some prefer to do it in cattle, others in the stock market, some in real estate, there is not a single profile. Those who put time into it are the ones who also later turn it into a business. If you put that time in it, it will surely bring you another cost effectiveness.
– How much does it cost to be a member of the club?
It costs $18 per month or $150 per year. The form of payment is by credit card, debit card or bank transfer when the subscription is annual.
Source: Ambito
