Last updated: March 5, 2020
TL;DR:
- In a sentence: Public is an investing social network. It's one part investing app, one part community for sharing ideas and building confidence together. Follow other investors, discover companies to believe in, invest with any amount of money.
- Public provides greater access to the public markets via a transparent community of investors, the ability to own stocks in slices, and no commission fees.
- As of Feb. 2021, Public no longer generates revenue via Payment for Order Flow (PFOF). This is the practice in commission trading in which a brokerage makes money by selling trades to third parties. Public believes PFOF creates a misalignment between the business incentives of the brokerage company and its customers, and so they are no longer generating revenue from it. Trades on Public are routed directly to the exchanges and are not sold to third-parties.
- Public is changing the culture of the stock market and making it a more inclusive and educational place for every investor. The community is 40% women and 45% POC.
- Our community is made up of mostly (72%) long-term investors and many are just starting their investing journey. Because of that, we have guardrails in place to make sure novice investors can build their financial literacy in a safe environment. We do not allow day-trading or complex trading tools like margin accounts, and we add Safety Labels to potentially risky stocks and ETFs.
- Public is a VC-backed company. Our investors include some of the original investors in Venmo, Will Smith (via his Dreamers VC), Tony Hawk, The Chainsmokers, NFL star J.J. Watt, Girlboss founder Sophia Amoruso, and Shari Redstone's Advancit Capital.
- Based in New York, member of FINRA & SIPC.
- Quick reads:
We're on the mission to accelerate all people's prosperity by making the stock market inclusive, educational, and fun.
The original idea behind a company offering a public trade of its shares was supposed to mean that anyone could own a piece of the companies they believe in, but for many people, this just isn’t the case.
Since its formation in the late 18th century, the American stock market has consistently been the biggest driving force for prosperity in human history. Over time, the market’s average returns are about 10% annually — significantly higher than bonds and high-yield savings accounts.
We believe a significant reason why many people do not invest is due to a lack of financial literacy, expensive financial products, and soaring share prices that can require people to invest $1,000 or more to purchase a single share of popular, high-performing stocks. Public was built to address these factors with the aim of unlocking greater access to the stock market for a broader audience of investors.
With greater access, we believe we have a responsibility to create a safe environment for new investors, which is why we build guardrails into our product and do not allow day-trading nor offer complex trading instruments, like margin accounts, on our platform.
With Public, Everyone's an Investor
- Community approach: Connect with friends and other investors. We're building a broad community of investors where subject matter experts can share their perspectives and everyone can build their financial literacy together.
- Transparent investing. Public doesn't sell trades to third-parties and has opted out of generating money via Payment for Order Flow (PFOF). On Public, your trades are routed directly to the exchanges.