One of the most powerful tools an investor has is time; all investment advisors recommend starting young to increase future earnings. The team over at Bumper understands this well. The Bumper investing and education platform aims to teach teenagers about investing and help them get started with investments of their own. Luke Moberly, co-founder at Bumper, set out to solve one of the problems he faced as a teenager. Moberly explained, “When I was 17, I wanted to get into the stock market, but I didn’t know anything about investing in stocks and didn’t have enough money to be eligible to use many of the existing firms.”
The idea for Bumper came to Moberly while participating in the NMotion Accelerator Studio, where “Individuals and teams from across the globe spend 16 weeks building a startup from scratch while earning a $100K investment.” With the help of the advisors, Moberly considered numerous ideas until settling on a financial education and investment app for teens. Other Bumper team members include Harris Martindale,product developer; Bumper advisor Scarab Sacarbordi, who Moberly met through NMotion; and Raymond Cam who started as an investor and now helps with operations.
What sets Bumper apart from other investing platforms is the group of features the platform provides. The software is more than just a way to trade it is a tool to help Teens start to grasp investing while making it interesting and safe.
1. Education
Bumper provides a unique experience compared to its competition. Companies such as Fidelity have a teen-focused investment service, but it operates on a clunky interface, and the educational videos are long lecture-style lessons. Bumper, on the other hand, has created a sleek interface that is incredibly user-friendly. The education on Bumper comes in short, easy-to-digest Bumper Bites that cater better to teenagers’ attention spans. In total there are 20 educational modules, lessons start with the basics of savings and eventual progress to more advanced topics like stock market principles, assets, and liabilities.
2. Safe Investing with Parental Controls
Bumper users can create their investment account with a parent who can oversee the account and approve any buys, sells, or trades that their child wishes to make if they choose to employ the parental controls. Parents and other supporters can give money to the investor to help them build their portfolio. The service also has included a sandbox mode that allows young investors to work with fake funds to build portfolios and practice their investing skills.
3. Investing as a Social Activity
Bumper makes investing fun with its social investing feature. Teens can invite friends to be in their “investment circle,” where they can view each other’s profiles, trade within the circle, and compete in the sandbox mode.
Bumper is providing a one of a kind experience an helping teens. By helping young investors get started Bumper helps teens start to build wealth and investment knowledge that will help them tremendously later in life. Currently, 380 teens are using Bumper and launching the site on November 2nd. Moberly says that soon Bumper will offer a mobile app on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, which he expects to bring in more users. If you know a teen in your life who you want to help get started on their own investment journey go visit the company website at: https://www.joinbumper.com/about .
The team at Bumper is also looking to bring on an app engineer to help them bring the platform to mobile devices. If interested contact the team by emailing: support@joinbumper.zendesk.com