Taban Yolo has an accounting degree and a career background in finance. He invests.
It was his efforts to help his girlfriend to start investing in stocks that got him looking at the tools available for people who are new to the practice. On top of that, both he and his girlfriend were trying to spend less time on screens.
Those conversations led to Shilling, an app that takes a page from other fintech tools like Acorns or Portland-based Bumped, which help users direct small amounts of money or loyalty rewards toward investing.
With Shilling, people can tie investing to screen time.
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Yolo said he knows the company will be pigeonholed as a fintech, but he hopes it will eventually be more of a lifestyle brand.
“It’s a product we are building to help people passively invest while they use their phone,” he said.
The company is working its way through regulatory hurdles to get proper registrations and licenses from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, FINRA. The team started building the product three months ago. The app is built on top of the Alpaca Securities trading platform.
Right now Shilling is a side project but Yolo sees it becoming full time.
“What’s the best way to test the hypothesis? Build it and see if people want it,” he said. “That is what we are doing.”
The technology or product: Shilling is an investment app that converts your time spent on screens into passive investing. Users connect a debit card to a Shilling account. Users select from a portfolio of exchange traded funds that are distinguished by different risk tolerance. People can determine a set amount of screen time and when they reach it a preselected amount of money is moved into the Shilling account. For example, someone can set 12 hours as an interval and $5 as an amount. When that interval is reached, $5 is moved into the investment account.
How it makes money: Shilling has a monthly fee of 99 cents.
Size of the market: The startup sees the estimated 100 million retail traders in the U.S. as its total addressable market. Shilling opened a wait list for early users at the end of November and has 1,300 people signed up and an active and growing Facebook group.
Competition: Other passive investment or savings platforms such as Acorns, Bumped, Grifin and Stash
Competitive advantage: The startup is using screen time and helping people manage it as its differentiator from others.
Business or technology it could disrupt: The startup intends to be the “go-to” screen time monitoring app.
Advisers: Leon Simson, of counsel and TiE Oregon charter member
Capital raised: none so far
Capital sought: $1 million pre-seed round.
Closer Look
Company: Shilling
Headquarters: Portland
Founded: 2021
Team: co-founders Taban Yolo, CEO; Doye Emelue, CTO; Paul Thompson, CAO
Web: Shillingapp.com
The Business Journal doesn’t endorse companies featured in The Pitch, nor is this an invitation to invest.
