Long story short, the short video market has taken across the world in the pandemic and it continues to grow. Short-form videos are ideal for social media because users are typically scrolling quickly and their time is limited. These videos have higher retention rates, making them more likely to capture the viewer’s attention for longer. Reportedly, the preferred way of young users to ingest information is from short videos.
Going with the trend, a recent survey conducted claims that 87% of its members, the vast majority of which are Gen Z, lack access to information, which stopped them from making an investment. It is estimated that 56% of 18-34-year-olds who make investments get ideas from social media channels – TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. To let more users make investors and access related information, Zeed was founded in London.
Pre-seed investment
Recently, Zeed secured £205K in pre-seed funding led by SFC Capital, one of the most active seed-stage investors in the UK, which also invested in Quin AI, FourJaw, and Route Konnect recently. It intends to make investing more accessible to Gen-Z by pairing the in-house finance content with trade execution. The London fintech startup will use the investment to build its product and grow further.
Responding to TFN in an exclusive interview, Salman Hussain, Co-Founder and CEO of Zeed said, “We are planning to use the investments to build the product and grow the team.”
Regarding the growth of its team in the time of a potential tech downturn, he said, “Yes, we are planning to hire! We believe it’s an exciting time to be building in the Gen-Z fintech space, and are looking for exceptional people to help us grow.”
Talking about Zeed’s growth trajectory in 2022, he stated, “Fingers crossed, hockey-stick growth! We are continually working to grow the number of content creators on our platform, the overall number of videos produced, and the number of users that are consuming Zeed content.”
In addition, Adam Bev, Investment Manager at SFC Capital, commented: “New generations think differently and have different habits when it comes to learning and accessing information. Being able to tailor products to new Gen Z users, and doing it as brilliantly as Zeed, is extremely important to be future proof.”
Founded by financial experts!
Realising that the primary barrier to investing for young people is information, Zeed was founded in 2021 in London, to solve this by delivering short 60-second educational videos produced by professionals in the finance industry paired with trade execution. The aim is to create a new digital investment experience where information comes first and the ability to trade is seamless.
The platform’s co-founders, Salman Hussain and Rohan Regmi, have worked within financial services themselves in commodities trading and private equity. During their time at university they built Finance-Focused, a 5,000+ member community for early careers in the financial services industry.
Salman Hussain is a Computer Science Masters’ Graduate from Imperial College. He previously worked as a Commodities Trader at a hedge fund. Rohan Regmi is an Economics graduate from UCL. He previously worked as a Private Equity Analyst and then worked in growth for a startup. “We came up with the idea of Zeed after our experiences of running Finance Focused (finfoc.com) during university. We found that young people needed an easier and more digestible way to consume financial information,” says Hussain.
TikTok meets investing
Replying to why they chose the TikTok model to instil investment among target users, Hussain notes, “Engagement on TikTok is the highest, with an average of 26 hours spent per user per month. Short-form video is the medium that most resonates with Gen-Z.”
The fintech startup is the first-ever investment platform that uses short-form video to empower Gen-Z investors in Europe. It aims to level the playing field with verified in-house video content to break down financial concepts for retail investors to build their confidence when making investment decisions.
Being a video-investing app, Zeed combines daily content from verified creators with direct access to stocks. It makes investing as easy as a piece of cake. What’s more, its TikTok-style investment platform has a community of finance content creators who are verified and every single word that they voice out in the video is fact-checked. Zeed works with the mission to democratise financial markets, giving everybody a fair chance at accessing the most powerful tools of wealth generation.
Zeed mobile app coming soon
Zeed’s mobile app will be launched later this month and enable users to watch the educational video content on investment trends and general financial knowledge. Soon, the platform will allow users to invest directly in UK and US equities in a TikTok-style feed. With this app, users can access their favourite assets easily. All that it lets users is to sit back and invest with proper guidance from the app.
