Success leaves clues. Finance Strategists sat down with Evan Koh, founder of StocksCafe. He shared his thoughts on the past, present, and future of the company, as well as the insights he has gained from running the business. Q: Who are you and what’s your background? My name is Evan Koh and I hold a PhD in Computer Science (Bioinformatics). I have more than 15 years of experience in data mining and software engineering across a variety of fields - biology, finance, social gaming, e-commerce, and web data. I am passionate about investing, software development, and data science. Q: Who has been your biggest influence, and why did they have such a significant effect on you? Many different people and books have influenced different aspects of my life. If we are talking about the finance and investing, the book that changed me from someone who earns one dollar but spends two dollars (on credit), to making good financial decisions that led me to financial freedom is “Rich Dad Poor Dad”. Q: Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self? While it is important to enjoy today, it is also equally important to be planning for tomorrow. So, enjoy today responsibly (i.e. without ruining tomorrow). Q: What is StocksCafe? In a nutshell, StocksCafe is a platform built for investors, by investors. It has numerous tools to support your investment journey and the star feature by far is the portfolio tracker, which not only lets you monitor your portfolio performance but also tracks your dividends and risk. The best way to know why thousands of investors love StocksCafe is to try it for yourself by signing up for free. Q: What makes StocksCafe different from its competitors? There are two rather unique things about StocksCafe in my opinion. 1. The ability to track dividends very well. Most portfolio management tools focus on simply P&L but in StocksCafe, we automatically track your past dividends and even your likely future dividends. All you need to do is simply enter your transactions and it will do all the heavy lifting. 2. We listen very carefully to user feedback and suggestions. In fact, StocksCafe’s roadmap is determined by users. We listen and iterate to ensure that we build a product that is centered around users’ needs. Q: What led you to start Stockscafe? When I started investing in Singapore stocks, I could not find any website that allowed me to easily access simple information regarding Singapore stocks and also maintain my portfolio of Singapore stocks including tracking its performance such as P&L and dividends. Therefore, I decided to create StocksCafe to help myself and anyone else who faced the same predicament. Now, it supports 10+ exchanges and even cryptocurrencies. Q: What has the experience of building the business taught you? As a small company/startup, it is very tough and there are so many things that are uncontrollable. What we can do is simply focus and improve on the controllables. Q: Where do you see things headed for you and the company in the next five years? Two main pain points of StocksCafe users are 1) Knowing what to buy and sell and 2) Trading via StocksCafe. So, going forward we intend to create educational courses and tools that will allow users with zero investment experience to learn about investing and also know what to buy and sell based on their goals/objectives. Also, we would want to have the ability for users to trade through us directly so that it will be a seamless experience. If we can achieve both of these goals, StocksCafe will be a one-stop platform for users in their investment journey. Learn more at Stocks.cafe.
Introduction
Who is Evan Koh?
Business
True Tamplin is a published author, public speaker, CEO of UpDigital, and founder of Finance Strategists.
True is a Certified Educator in Personal Finance (CEPF®), author of The Handy Financial Ratios Guide, a member of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, contributes to his financial education site, Finance Strategists, and has spoken to various financial communities such as the CFA Institute, as well as university students like his Alma mater, Biola University, where he received a bachelor of science in business and data analytics.
To learn more about True, visit his personal website or view his author profiles on Amazon, Nasdaq and Forbes.
