Kiwis backing KiwisKiwis backing Kiwis

19 years ago, Trade Me was a small Wellington start-up. Now they’re a listed company worth over $2b, they employ over 600 people, and on average, more than 800,000 Kiwis visit them every day. Wow! So when we heard that Trade Me love what we’re doing and wanted to see how they could help, we were stoked!

Trade Me’s vision is to make Kiwis’ lives better through online experiences they love. It’s similar to ours. At Sharesies, we want to help create a more financially empowered generation. We’ve created a loveable online experience where someone can start to grow an investment portfolio with as little as $5. We want to give Kiwis access to investing, and help Sharesies investors feel confident and motivated when it comes to growing their wealth.

(Since this post was written, there is no longer a $5 minimum investment. You can invest as much or as little as you can afford.)

To achieve this vision, we need two things:

• Capital—so we can continue to invest in building Sharesies, so that someone with $5 can have the same investment opportunities as someone with $500,000

• People—who are passionate about helping us bring this to life.

Trade Me were keen to play a small part in both! They've invested $4m for a 15% stake. This will help us develop Sharesies so that more Kiwis can have access to investing, and become more confident and motivated.

Trade Me have also offered to have a leader from their team join our board, so that we can get even more expertise and guidance as we grow Sharesies throughout New Zealand.

What’s going to change for you, as a Sharesies investor? You probably won’t notice anything too different. What you will notice is how we’ll be building out our product further so you can feel even more confident as an investor.

If you have ideas of how you’d love to see Trade Me and Sharesies come together, then please flick us a message at help@sharesies.co.nz.