Name
Title: CEO
Company: YourStake.org
Web address: YourStake.org
Patrick Reed is CEO and co-founder of YourStake.org, which helps advisors present the social and environmental impact of investment portfolios to clients via personalized impact reports.
How did you personally become involved in fintech?
My path to fintech came, believe it or not, through grassroots environmental activism.
At university, I led the student environmental group. The big issue was university endowments being invested in fossil fuel companies that disproportionately drive climate change. For us to make the case of how and why to effect change, our group, which included my cofounder, became experts in the nuances of responsible investing.
After a few years, multiple sit-ins, and some arrests, huge institutions have divested their endowments from fossil fuels, such as the University of California system, the Church of England, and the Republic of Ireland.
When my co-founder and I realized that the next frontier of progress was to help individuals improve their investments en masse, we had a moment where we looked at each other and said, “well, I guess we’ll teach ourselves how to code, too.”
What does your firm do/offer within the fintech sector?
Our impact reporting tools at YourStake.org show you the personalized social and environmental impact of your investments. This tool helps for advisors because it focuses on intuitive communication, and provides helper notes to explain any aspect, so you never have to miss a beat in a client conversations. For example, we show people “how many cars you’ve taken off the road” instead of abstract numbers like “39 metric tons CO2.” Oh, and the visual layout was designed by some top-notch professional designers.
Our vision is to empower investors to create impact where possible, by helping people distinguish the real from the “greenwashing,” and then do something about that.
What are the biggest problems facing the fintech industry in the future?
The fact that trading fees have dropped to zero means that many business models will change, and many more opportunities will open for personalization of investments.
Historically, in the ESG and impact space, if an investor wanted to align their investments with their values, they would have to hope there’s a fund that perfectly matches all their values, or accept being dissatisfied with some parts. Now, with direct custom indexing alongside detailed ESG data, such as the data that powers our impact reports, investors can easily rebalance their own portfolios dynamically – ultimate personalization.