Harvard Dropout Raises $17M to Let You Copy Politicians' Trades

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Dub, a social trading app founded by 23-year-old Harvard dropout Steven Wang, has raised $17 million in seed funding and boasts over 800,000 downloads. The platform’s main mechanic enables users to copy entire portfolios from traders, hedge funds, and politicians' trading strategies - charging a $10 per month subscription fee stemming from a desire to “focus on revenue from day one”. 

Whilst this certainly shows discipline in a market that is not known for such a trait, their subscription model seems short sighted for a venture-backed company raising so much capital. The consumer investing space is highly competitive, with the market leaders such as Robinhood, eToro and Revolut offering free products, instead monetising off transaction fees or secondary products. 

This approach is certainly at risk of limiting their total addressable market, with only a handful of consumer subscription businesses ever having reached venture scale due to inherent weaknesses in the business model. 

Additionally Dub isn’t the first app to come up with the idea of copying trades, it’s already a crowded space with incumbents like eToro and startup rivals like Autopilot who have gained traction through organic content on short-form video platforms.

Autopilot's recent marketing campaign, centered around politician trading patterns, included sponsoring a UFC event with the slogan "Trade Like a Politician" and hiring a a Nancy Pelosi impersonator to attend the event.

However, Dub’s most interesting mechanic is the ability for traders to earn a management fee of anyone following their trades, a novel take on the creator economy. This creates a powerful growth mechanism where successful traders are incentivized to attract new users, effectively providing Dub with a free customer acquisition channel. 

This approach differs from conventional creator economy startups, which have struggled to build venture-scale businesses. Most users are reluctant to pay for multiple independent journalists on Substack or streamers on Patreon, especially given the abundance of free content on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

Whilst unlikely to return investors a strong return with their current business model they’ve undoubtedly achieved a strong level of product-market fit and have a potentially unique customer acquisition channel. It’ll definitely be interesting to see where things go from here.