TipRanks

URI GRUENBAUM

Co-founder & CEO at TipRanks

Q TipRanks recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. To what do you attribute your success?

Our first step was identifying a real need in the financial markets – a lack of transparency in equity research which was disadvantaging retail investors.

Historically, investors had little choice but to trust financial experts who claimed that they outperformed the markets, and to follow their advice. However, without mechanisms available to check these claims, investors would regularly follow bad advice and suffer significant financial losses as a result.

We set out to challenge this status quo by using technology to create financial transparency. And we succeeded. We created a Financial Accountability Engine™ that brought transparency to online investment advice for the first time.

Against all odds, TipRanks has become the standard for Wall Street accountability, not only for retail investors, but also for most institutional investors, and even for analysts themselves.

We didn’t stop there. We have spent the past decade creating alternative datasets and easy-to-use research tools that give retail investors the same research capabilities as the biggest asset managers, at a fraction of the cost.

Q What is TipRanks doing to overcome competition?

TipRanks is focused on innovation, which differentiates us from other research providers and is the best way to overcome competition. We developed a proprietary technology-based solution that basically ‘reads’ information published on the internet and available analyst research reports. This creates a big moat for competitors.

In the past 12 months alone, we created two unique new datasets and made them available to retail investors.

The first enables the average “Joe and Jane” to understand any risks that publicly traded companies submit to the SEC in their reports. The data is presented visually, making it easy for retail investors to understand.

The other new dataset measures the website traffic of online companies such as gaming, e-commerce, and streaming companies that rely on visits to their websites to generate revenue. This tool shows our users which companies are likely to report surprising results ahead of earnings, which is powerful data.

These are examples of the type of data that institutional investors use, which have been unavailable to retail investors, until now. It is also data that retail investors can access only on TipRanks.

Q Over the past couple of years, TipRanks has started reporting stock news and analysis, first by creating a news portal and more recently by expanding into video content. What made you take this direction?

We thought that we had something unique to offer by incorporating TipRanks’ insights into market news. We were already producing articles with unique insights based on our data, such as analyst ratings, corporate insider trades, and changes to hedge fund portfolios. These articles were proving very popular, and we believed investors would also want to see this sort of data in their market news.

And it turns out we were right. Not only do millions of investors read our articles directly on TipRanks, but some of the world’s leading financial publications incorporate TipRanks into their reporting. TipRanks’ articles often dominate the Yahoo Finance homepage, and major outlets such as CNBC and the Telegraph in the UK regularly publish articles using our data.

We have built a team of over 40 financial writers, and we are often the first portal to cover breaking financial news.

We then realized that if our news portal was popular, investors would also be interested in video content. Our YouTube channel currently has over 50 thousand users, and is rapidly growing. We’re having a lot of fun with video content. We interview leading Wall Street analysts, explore different sectors, and of course, talk about stocks.

Q In the past few months, TipRanks ads have been spotted in the New York and London Underground, and TipRanks was recently a sponsor for a journalists’ award ceremony in the UK. Can we expect to see TipRanks in other places?

Yes. In the past, we focused on online marketing, which worked well for us. For 2022, we thought it would be interesting to experiment with offline advertising to raise brand awareness. We were delighted that these efforts exceeded our expectations and as a result more people are using TipRanks.

We will continue to investigate offline opportunities, and yes, you can expect to see TipRanks in new, and perhaps surprising, places.

Q Which achievements make you most proud of TipRanks?

We were the first company in the world to invest in retail investors and were the first to focus on leveling the playing field for them. This is a great source of satisfaction. The trend we started has since grown, with many other platforms aspiring to provide more data and knowledge to the everyday investor.

I am also proud of the partnerships that TipRanks has built with tier one banks and exchanges, from Nasdaq, TD Bank, Morgan Stanley, and other big names, to local investment houses in the Far East.

The TipRanks team brings me great pride. It is a privilege to be surrounded by amazing people with great energy while working in a beautiful office. It also gives me satisfaction that we manage the work/ life balance well. TipRanks is a family-friendly environment

and 53% of our staff in our Tel Aviv headquarters have children. We recently organized a fun day for our employees’ children in the office, which was a huge success.

Most of all, the volunteer work we perform, and the donations we make, to Holocaust survivors through the Amcha Center in Tel Aviv, bring me the greatest satisfaction.

Q Tell us more about your work with Holocaust survivors. How did you get involved?

Our previous office was next door to Amcha, an incredible organization that provides psychosocial support for Holocaust survivors. As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, this struck a chord with me and so I went to visit them to learn more. I was blown away by the organization and the work they do with these people who have been through and witnessed so much, as well as with their families. It is a great privilege to be in a situation where I can provide support to these incredible people, especially given my own family history.

We’ve had members of TipRanks volunteer at events and while during the pandemic we were not able to attend in-person, we did continue to support the organization in other ways. This is the achievement I am most proud of.

Q What advice do you have for other founders?

These are my top 3 pieces of advice: 1. If you invest in your employees, they will invest in your customers 2. Learn how to delegate 3. Enjoy the ride!

Q And finally, what can we expect next from TipRanks?

We will continue to innovate and find more ways to help retail investors with their research and help them make data-driven decisions that will serve them well for their financial futures.

One way we are doing this is by expanding our research capabilities to different types of investments such as ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and mutual funds, as well as to more international markets. We have also been working hard to find a way to bring transparency to crypto-investors and recently launched exciting new tools that give them unique insights into digital currencies, which we are expanding to cover all major coins.

In addition to ensuring that TipRanks continues to be the best research platform in the world, we will continue to expand our partnerships, with banks, trading platforms, and financial news providers.