San Diego startup puts a stock market twist on gifting
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Gifting investing. Photo: Courtesy of Beestow
A new local company wants to make it easy to give someone stock market experience.
The big picture: Instead of giving a gift card to Starbucks or Amazon, Beestow lets you give stock that the recipient can let grow and then cash out or reinvest.
Driving the news: The company launched in July and has done hundreds of gifts since, co-founder Emil Juboori told Axois.
How it works: You pick from 40 well-known companies and choose the amount of stock you want to give.
- If the stock grows, your stake grows with it.
- At any time, you can cash out by reinvesting with a brokerage or transferring your money to a bank.
Case in point: If someone receives $100 worth of Tesla, and a month later it's up 20%, they can cash out at $120.
"It's like a coat check, you drop off your coat and they give you a claim," co-founder Anthony Correia told Axios. "The claim that we're giving people is whatever time that they receive the gift, that starts tracking the actual performance of the company."
Caveat: You don't own the stock. Beestow holds stock on its own books and keeps track of its price.
Flashback: Juboori and Correia are from San Diego and worked as software engineers and entrepreneurs for years.
- They got the idea for Beestow when Juboori wanted to give a birthday present to Correia's 1-year-old son.
- "I didn't want to give him money in Amazon that he won't use," Juboori said. "I thought, why can't I just give him $100 worth of SpaceX or Apple, companies that I think will do well in the future?"
The big picture: Their larger goal is to help more people invest in stocks and not be intimidated.
- Beestow is like training wheels for investing, Juboori said.
- "It helps introduce people at an earlier age because the recipient isn't putting any of their capital at risk, but they're still getting the exposure of what it's like to have an investment fluctuate in value," he said. "We think it's a really good learning experience."