Parisian Benjamin Chemla is CEO and co-founder of Shared timesEurope’s first “social trading” app, which has already amassed over 250,000 users since its UK launch. Shares recently secured a further $40 million in its second round of funding, bringing the total investment to $90 million in just 14 months, led by Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Valar Ventures.
Serial entrepreneur Chemla had previously founded the on-demand delivery platform Stuart in 2015, raising €22 million before launching it, before it was acquired by La Poste. Today, the company operates in over 100 cities with over 900 employees.
I could only last two hours with my first boss. It was clear to me from day one that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I wanted to be a lawyer from a very early age. At 18 I went to the Sorbonne, the following year I won a debating competition and the following year I became president of the debating association. I like acting, convincing people and speaking in front of people. The problem is that as a commercial lawyer you hardly have any contact with your clients until you become a partner.
The first day I walked into the office where I was supposed to start was after seven years of law school. At this corporate law firm, the HR department was waiting for me and I remember how impersonal it was and how annoying it was to have to wait at the entrance. I left the company at lunchtime and told the HR department that I would not be coming back.
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I had all these startup ideas, but being an entrepreneur wasn’t a big deal in 2012. I was 23 and when I told my friends and family about it, they thought I was fired on day one. I lived the startup life for 18 months. We had an office in the basement of the business school I was studying at and paid 100 euros a month until we closed our first round of funding.
We raised €400,000 and I remember calling investors to convince them for €5,000 and sell them my story and vision. One guy said he wouldn’t invest and I called him back the following week. I wouldn’t let him go until he agreed. I told him I had thought about our conversation and made some changes – and then he invested. That was a big success for me; I learned that it’s not the amount of money that matters, it’s getting people excited about your vision.
Part of the journey of a CEO and founder is to network with your investors and employees and after that it never stops. I have been selling my ideas from the beginning and I am also cautious about the deals you make.
With the mindset I developed as a lawyer, I always look very carefully at the terms and conditions and get contracts right. It is no coincidence that I entered the fintech industry; it is a highly regulated environment and when you mix regulation and technology, you can create high barriers to entry.
Since then, I’ve raised 15 rounds in the four companies I’ve founded. Before Shares, I moved to the US in 2017 to start a company called Fithouse with no contacts or visa, which would take over several WeWork spaces by March 2020.
Then the pandemic came and I had to fight it for eight months. In 2020, we lost all our income overnight. I had 100 employees and had to announce that the business would never reopen. That was a tough moment, even for my friends who were investors. I told them, “I’m 31, this is not my last company. I’m not sure when it will happen, but I’m going to give you shares in my next company.”
I’m putting all of these passions, learnings, and mistakes into launching Shares, which is perfect in terms of timing, team, product, and investors.
We know that Gen Z is very interested in finance. Why? Because they grew up with social media. And what I see with Shares is that people like to connect with their friends and make decisions based on social cues. By that, I don’t mean that they’re right about everything they do, but together is always better.
So far we have officially launched in the UK before expanding to 27 countries by the end of the year. Out of 250,000 downloads, 45% of our users are female, which has been a massive discovery. The average age on our platform is 22 and young women are curious about finance, want a piece of the pie and need to find the right place to do it.
The idea was to create a safe environment and strict community guidelines have been implemented. Every profile on Shares must be validated and fake profiles are impossible. Portfolios are monitored when someone promotes a decision and the concept protects users from false information and messages.
We have communities around discussions and interests. Our first one was based around female CEOs and founders, where we got a lot of traction. It’s about how you present yourself to the world, and those are just the seeds before the magic happens. Having Venus and Serena Williams as shareholders and faces of the company says a lot about what we want to achieve.
Like any startup, in the first few years it’s like a wild animal. You know where it starts but not where it ends. It evolves over time and I would say equities as a product will never end. We’re constantly adding assets. We started with US equities but are already working on NFTs, cryptos and European equities.
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Sometimes you have to hire the right people and learn from them. You can learn from your boss or your direct reports. I’m a good referee and make quick decisions, but I’m always learning and hearing from people who are ten times smarter than me. At Shares, we have people who came from companies like Revolut, Monzo and Bumble, and they all bring serious expertise.
There are two types of founders: the first are those who are passionate about a topic or industry. The second are those who see things and want to develop new solutions to solve problems, no matter what the industry. I am one of the latter and have been working in logistics, fitness and now fintech for the past 10 years. I now see stocks as the future of finance.
My investor friends from Fithouse didn’t believe me, but six months later I gave them shares of Shares. Entrepreneurship is a long journey and it’s all about people. You can lose and failure is always possible. But always make quick decisions and don’t demand too much of something that won’t work and invest in people. That was my most important realization.
Benjamin Chemla spoke at the Web Summit 2022 in Lisbon
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