Most people who start investing do it with real money and very little preparation. Redvest, a US gamified financial education platform, wants beginners to learn first: its app and website teach investing through games, quizzes, courses and competitions, then let users practise in a real-time stock market simulator using virtual money. The company says it has more than one million users across more than 40 countries.
Its founder, Anya Ozmen, is a self-taught programmer who moved to the US from Turkey at 18 and built most of the product herself. In this Behind the Idea, she explains how an AI trading app turned down by the App Store became a learning platform, what growing it as a solo founder was like, and where Redvest goes next. The profit figures she gives for Redvest users are simulator results, made with virtual money rather than real trades.
Tell us more about your company and its offering
Redvest is a gamified financial education platform. Over 1 million Redvest users learn investing and finance with AI-powered games, competitions, courses and quizzes. Redvesters from 40+ countries have completed over 38,000 quizzes and generated over $500 million in order volume in the real-time stock market game. Our mission is to democratise access to financial education and empower Gen Zers to learn effectively by playing games, just like they did when they were kids!
What problem was your company set up to solve?
Around 80 per cent of retail investors lose money in the stock market, but 69 per cent to 83 per cent of Redvest users are profitable on our platform at any given time. Investing is easy, but making money is hard. Anyone can download Robinhood or Fidelity, but the majority lose money investing in the market, leaving them demotivated and one step behind on their financial journey. Redvest sets out to solve this problem by offering a risk-free, hands-on experience with AI-powered and data-driven gamified learning.
Since launch, how has your company evolved?
I built Redvest as an AI robo-adviser at first, as a fun side project when I was 23. It would automatically trade for you once you connected your brokerage account, using methods like value investing, technical trading and sentiment analysis according to your preferences and goals. When I submitted the app to the App Store, Apple actually didn’t accept it, so I ended up adding a stock market simulator to the platform to get it live on the App Store. However, when I put the app out there, I saw that people had a huge need for the learning piece. Users were completely lost about where to begin. They wanted to be able to control their trades, and no one was using the AI trader. All the attention was on the stock market simulator instead.
We pivoted to focusing on what our users needed and wanted the most. A couple of years later, we expanded to the web in addition to mobile and became the Duolingo of investing.
What has been the biggest challenge or most ‘tricky moment’ to overcome?
As a solo founder and self-taught developer, handling the initial growth was genuinely hard. In 2020, I started an AI software and mobile app development company, and through my work there, I taught myself how to program in a bunch of programming languages to help my team deliver client projects faster. I built and designed most of Redvest myself. It wasn’t as easy to build apps back then, and it took a lot longer to iterate. You needed to hand code all lines. There would be a bug, and I would stay up all night trying to fix it by myself without anyone to ask for advice. This taught me how to find and create resources for other people who might not have access to tools, information and large networks.
What are your biggest achievements or ‘proudest moment’ so far?
I’m proudest when we get an email from a customer about their positive experience, especially if it’s coupled with a new feature request! One specific moment of joy carved in my memory is when Redvest made the Top 30 for iOS in the Finance category. I saw Redvest’s logo next to big fintech companies’ logos, and I teared up. Having built most of the app and the website myself, it felt like seeing my kid graduate. I grew up in Turkey until I was 18, and my world was very small. I had never dreamt of anything big like this.
How would you describe the culture of your company?
Redvest’s company culture is focused on positivity and problem-solving. Our mission is to create tools that help and teach people while entertaining them, so the same applies to our team. Our team mostly consists of recent college graduates. My personal mission is to teach them as much as I can, setting them up for success in their career journeys. Most Fridays, we have a game hour as a team, playing games like Codenames, Pictionary and more!
What’s in store for the future?
Currently, we are working on some new and exciting partnerships with brokerages to bring educational tools to their platforms so that consumers coming to invest on those platforms can set themselves up for success.
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