The Motley Fool ups its stake in Irish fintech Rubicoin

Irish fintech Rubicoin has secured a further €3 million in funding from new and existing investors, including well-known investment advice group the Motley Fool.

Rubicoin, which has raised about €8 million since it was founded by Emmet Savage and John Tyrrell in 2013, said it intends to use the investment to further grow its customer base in the United States, where it derives the majority of its revenues.

This marks the fourth time that Motley Fool has backed Rubicoin, with the latest funding round seeing it increase its stake in the company to about 15 per cent.

"The Motley Fool has the strength, the pedigree and the resources to be our biggest competitors but instead they have been our biggest supporters, not just financially but in many other ways," Mr Savage told The Irish Times.

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He added that Rubicoin, whose other backers include Enterprise Ireland, has ringfenced a portion of its latest funding round for retail investors keen to invest in the company.

Demystify

Rubicoin has developed two mobile apps that help demystify the stock exchange. Learn is a free app that provides straightforward information on investing for beginners while Invest, a subscription-based service, offers advice on what shares to buy and when.

The company's flagship apps consistently rates as one of the most popular investment apps in multiple countries in the Apple and Google Play stores.

For its subscription service the company handpicks a small number of the listed businesses in the US based on a methodology that has continued to outperform the S&P500 by about 25 per cent.

“No one has successfully done what we do. Our customers are beating the market month in, month out,” said Mr Savage.

“Many of our customers become evangelists for us once they realise how easy investing can be so we have thousands of people out selling Rubicoin for us,” added Mr Tyrrell.

Rubicoin, which employs 18 people in Dublin, has customers in more than 140 countries but it is primarily focused on growing the company in the US, where it intends to open an office next year.

The company, which recently took part in the second edition of the Irish Stock Exchange’s IPOready programme, said it intends to seek a public listing at some point over the next seven years. However, Mr Savage stressed that an initial public offering (IPO), while on the cards, is not the company’s ultimate goal.

“We intend to seek a joint listing in the US and Ireland but it won’t be this year or the next and it certainly isn’t our north star. Our real north star is to create a billion sucessful investors globally,” he said.