Before focusing on college students, Weeresinghe, 54, had a history of catering to much bigger fish.
In 1996, Weeresinghe, a native of Sri Lanka, founded a company there called MillenniumIT, which specializes in software for securities trading.
Batman-like Cartoon
In 2009, he sold Millennium to London Stock Exchange Group Plc for $30 million. Weeresinghe then worked at the exchange for five years before starting Ustocktrade, which is based in Newton, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb.
Ustocktrade appeals to a youthful sense of fun. The company portrays the superuser as a Batman-like cartoon figure.
The brokerage said it has signed up students at 236 colleges. To spread the word, Ustocktrade enlists unpaid undergraduates as “campus ambassadors.” They include Boston University sophomore Urja Lakhani. She doles out stickers emblazoned with the dark pool’s blue and orange logo, leaving them for fellow students to discover, and hosts campus events.
As a customer, Lakhani used $1,000 from her savings to try her hand at investing.
She chose two small companies: GTT Communications Inc., a telecommunications company, which is down about 6 percent this year, and Motorcar Parts of America Inc., a manufacturer of car starters and alternators, up 8 percent.
“Stock trading is something that’s so intimidating for college students,” Lakhani said. “Before Ustocktrade, I thought that stock trading was only done by professionals.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.