Hi there,
This is Hoda, founder of Stock Card!
I have a story to tell and an important update to announce.
If you are up for a story, please continue reading. If you only want to read the announcement, scroll down to the "What does this mean for you?" section.
The story goes back to seven years ago …
The year was 2017, and Robinhood was taking off, making investment transactions fun and easy. As an investor who believes in the importance of diligent investment research, I realized it was crucial to make investment research and decisions easy and fun, too. And Stock Card was born…
The seven years since the founding of Stock Card have been among the highlights of my professional career, even though they've also been sprinkled with expected and unexpected challenges. Serving you and helping users like you make better investment decisions has undoubtedly been among the highlights. Some of you have been with us since the start, and others have joined us somewhere along the journey. Thank you for being a Stock Cardian all along!
But things have changed in the last year or so...
Many of you have noticed signs of such changes in recent months. We have been moving away from our visualization cards and searching for and experimenting with new ideas and features, specifically using AI.
Why?
Well... The technology has evolved drastically since we first launched Stock Card. What we used to achieve by investing thousands of dollars in data and development costs is now available at no cost to everyone through generative AI applications. You can gather and summarize a large volume of real-time information with simple questions on Chat GPT or other AI platforms. Arguably, the AI revolution is overhyped across many domains, but its power in gathering and synthesizing data is not. It is very clear that traditional data and visualization software cannot compete with AI-enabled research tools in terms of the volume of data they can access and process.
Noticing the AI potential and comparing it with the cost and investment required to continue building Stock Card, we have trained and shared Stock Card's free, AI-enabled investment research custom GPT with many of you since July of this year. Some of you have already used it. It's called Charlie, offers several benefits such as faster data gathering and more comprehensive reports, and is free to use. This is still an experiment, and it is not perfect, but it has already shown the early signs of success, and I can see its massive potential in the long term.
Therefore, as a true believer in efficient capital allocation, I no longer believe investing in building Stock Card further using the old data models and software development processes is the right decision. It's time to say goodbye to Stock Card!
End of the story, and now, on to what does this mean for you ...
What does this mean for you?
All VIP subscriptions have been automatically canceled as of the time of this email.
Starting on the 1st of December 2024, Stock Card will be shut down completely.
Your Stock Card account will be inaccessible after 11/31/2024.
What do you need to do now?
If you have a portfolio on Stock Card that you wish to maintain, please make sure to download it using the download button available on Your Portfolio feature.
For those of you who are interested in testing AI, our free custom GPT experiment, Charlie, is accessible on Open AI's platform. Give Charlie a try by visiting Charlie's page on OpenAI's website. You need to create an Open AI account. It is not connected to your old Stock Card account.
If you don't like Charlie, many other investment research tools are available online. I personally like YCharts (paid) and Yahoo! Finance (free and paid). Most importantly, go to the source of the information, the company's annual and quarterly reports.
What if you invested in Stock Card through Republic?
First, thank you for supporting and believing in our mission and company. I'm genuinely sorry the idea you have invested in didn't result in a better outcome. I have given it all and fought for our success for as long as possible.
Stock Card as a corporation will continue to exist on a much smaller scale and as a different product. We have a small AI-enabled social media agency for financial creators that will continue to serve its customers, and there may be opportunities to scale that line of business in the future. If our AI custom GPT, Charlie, gains significant traction, we may turn it into a new product. If such expansions come to fruition, I will notify you through the Republic crowdfunding platform.
What happens to my Roll With Our CEO portfolio?
I’ll continue to manage my family’s investment and plan to share my ideas via my Substack. Although I have not made any new investment decisions in 2024, except automatic investing in the S&P 500 and a global (ex-US) index fund, I plan to keep an eye on, invest in and share my ideas about new opportunities as I form new convictions.
Final note
It is difficult to share that we are shutting down the product many of you have used and loved. However, we are doing so with pride and deep gratitude to all of you who have used Stock Card for over seven years.
I leave you with one quote that guided me through the ups and downs of building Stock Card: Fear is a poor reason to limit your options! I had no fear of starting Stock Card, and I gave it all, and so did my team and everyone who partnered with us over the last seven years. Collectively, we didn't let fear of failure limit our decisions. I hope you follow the same motto in your life choices and never let fear limit your options.
Thank you for being a Stock Cardian!
Hoda - Founder of Stock Card
Nov 2024
P.S. If you want to speak with me, email me at hoda@stockcard.io.