Through InfiniGift, Aaron Galloway is providing friends and family a new gift giving option – investments. His platform enables couples to add stocks and mutual funds to gift registries just as you would linens and kitchenware. Read how he plans to package investments as gifts.
Aaron Gallow, founder and CEO of InfiniGift, and his wife moved in together a few month prior to their wedding last September. But already, they had more than enough stuff – “40 spoons, 3 crock pots, 3 blenders, 3 irons, 2 ironing boards” – you get the picture. But when it came time for them to compile their wedding registry – Galloway began to question their need for more stuff.
“Cash has become popular, but we didn’t want to take away the joy of people giving us gifts.” He says this in the least self-centered way – it’s more of honoring the wedding tradition. Even outside of cash, Honeyfund is becoming popular, but still, Galloway has found that guests prefer to give something more meaningful.
“Instead of cash which would be burnt on more stuff – I said ‘well, what if we did stocks?’”
It’s the same fundamental, reason why grandparents and relatives gifted treasury bonds for celebrations 30 years ago – a small investment early-on, and letting it mature goes a lot further than a crockpot or an iPad. Essentially, InfiniGift modernizes that gift of a treasury bond. “Our tag line is – gifts that grow with you”, Galloway cleverly mentions.
“These aren’t complex structures”, he assures. They’re not hedges, derivatives, etc. It’s straightforward – a couple could select their desirable stocks or mutual funds and could send those selections out as a registry.
InfiniGift is trying to move the social needle as well. More than 50% of American adults today have nothing invested – not even a retirement account. In most cases, they believe they’re not smart enough or think that they don’t have enough money to invest.
“I’m trying to break the misnomer that you have to be incredibly wealthy to invest.” The average size of a wedding gift is $111, so if a few guests – out of the average wedding size of 139 attendees – utilize the InfiniGift registry, the newly married couple could have a few thousand dollars invested right off the bat.
Yes – custodial accounts exist, but even knowing about custodial accounts puts you head and shoulders above the average person.
Galloway is driven to solve this problem as InfiniGift is the gateway for first-time investors. This is taking the intimidation out of investing as it’s packaged as a gift. “The massive vision is that InfiniGift becomes as associated with gift giving as Toys-R-Us.”
The strategy is to initially focus on weddings and baby showers. His aim is to not replace tangible registries – Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Bloomingdales, etc. – but is instead setting up a cash registry alternative that fits alongside the tangible one.
Galloway also is enabling this to be recurring. The InfiniGift registry will reopen for every anniversary of the event – wedding, baby shower, etc. – or on the birthday of the recipient.
On the technical side of things, the investment is transacted and held by a third-party. InfiniGift brings in new users and facilitates the transaction via its gift giving platform.
With any financial services company, significant legal and regulatory compliance is required, so Galloway’s spent time up until now working on InfiniGift’s RIA (registered investment adviser) registration.
His plan is to have the remaining legal hurdles settled later this month to then, in July, release the first iteration of the product – InfiniGift’s minimum viable product – in a soft-launch to early testers.
Locally, InfiniGift was part of City Startup Labs’ 2016 class, where Galloway won the program’s culminating, pitch event. City Startup Labs, which is a sixteen-week boot camp for black male millennials to learn how to launch and operate new businesses, was very helpful for him. He is all-In on InfiniGift and understands that he’s rolling the dice not only financially but also on his career path. So, winning the City Startup Labs’ pitch event really validated his idea and mission.
In Galloway’s mind, Charlotte is a great area for entrepreneurs and is ripe for innovators to start new businesses. “There are [innovative] people here in Charlotte, there are resources here in Charlotte – there’s everything you need in order to start a business and I’m trying to take full advantage of that.”
For wantrepreneurs, he mentions that there is never a perfect time to start a business. “In entrepreneurship, you are creating everything – you are creating the perfect time.” Just do it!
Galloway appreciates the approachableness of the Charlotte community and is an advocate for local entrepreneurship.
Lastly, you can sign up to be a part of InfiniGift’s soft-launch, here – https://www.InfiniGift.com.
