Empowering the Next Generation of Investors through Rapunzl
When they realized that many of their own friends did not grasp , Rapunzl co-founders Myles Gage and Brian Curcio saw an enormous opportunity. By leveraging data-driven technology, they knew they could make investing accessible to a new generation of investors.
“We realized that there isn’t a great opportunity for people to learn about the stock market and to become financially literate and to better understand investing,” said Curcio. “So, the goal with Rapunzl was to take away kind of this fear, lack of exposure and lack of accessibility that a lot of young adults feel when approaching investing for the first time.”
Rapunzl Investments is a mobile investing app that allows individuals to create simulated stock portfolios. Shortly after the app’s launch, Gage and Curcio pitched the idea of hosting an investment competition for high school students to the Money Smart Week team at the Federal Reserve of Chicago. With their blessing and the backing of Ariel Investments, the competition was born. As they traveled the Chicago area, driving to over 100 high schools to get students to participate, they found that there were dozens upon dozens of financial literacy curriculums in place.
“It was clear that curriculum isn’t the problem,” Curcio said. “There’s only so many ways you can teach what a savings account is, but the piece that was missing was getting students to pay attention to that learning opportunity.”
“We knew just given our own personal backgrounds, the way that a lot of this stuff clicks is through experiential learning,” Gage added. “You learn by doing, and by presenting these students with a platform in which they can engage with financial markets, we knew that once they saw how it worked that they would be hooked, and that thesis was true.”
By improving financial literacy among students and young adults, Curcio believes they are on the path to creating a more equitable society.
“You can address a lot more of the systemic problems that extend far beyond financial services,” said Curcio. “Understanding not only that there are firms that are making that difference, but that we’re all consumers, and so, companies have to listen to us if we choose and make those choices with how we want the world to be presented.”
Gage elaborated, saying that financial literacy is knowing how to use money as a tool, managing and building wealth, which can then be passed on. To ensure that students would get the most out of their experience on the app, Rapunzl partnered with Nasdaq for real-time market data.
“We knew that the real-time market data was going be like the secret sauce because there are other simulators out there that have delayed data,” Gage said. “Nasdaq’s cloud API and the fact that it was able to stream to devices, versus other solutions, just made the app so much faster and a better user experience for students.”
Rapunzl’s mission to increase accessibility and participation in the markets coincides with Nasdaq’s Purpose Initiative and Smart Investing educational hub that strives to advance inclusive growth and prosperity. Data shows that 14% of Americans do not invest because they don’t know how, and “Nasdaq believes that greater access to educational resources can help drive increased investor engagement,” the company said in a press release.
“The whole idea is democratizing access to financial markets, and that’s where Nasdaq was such a great partner in aligning with our mission of wanting to make financial markets more accessible,” said Curcio.
“In the past, low-latency, real-time stock price data has been incredibly difficult for kind of commercial apps to offer, particularly for simulated traders,” Curcio continued. “Nasdaq was a critical partner in making those competitions realistic and also allowing us to achieve what we set out to do with Rapunzl in making investing accessible for everyone.”
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
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