Dub, a platform that allows retail traders to mimic the investments of notable people in business and government, debuted a service Thursday that pays select everyday investors to share their portfolios.
Retail traders accepted into Dub’s so-called top creator program will be paid royalties for users to access their model portfolio. The creator program marks the latest push from Dub to sway mom-and-pop investors to its platform, which encourages users to forgo traditional stock picking and instead duplicate other traders’ portfolios.
“Fundamentally, we are rethinking the distribution of how capital flows to investing talent,” said Steven Wang, Dub’s founder and chief executive. “We are really at the very early innings of another retail investing revolution.”
Since its launch nearly a year ago, Dub has offered users the opportunity to track and copy the investment portfolios of people ranging from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Users, who pay $9.99 a month or $89.99 a year, can essentially make replicas of these portfolios using their own money held in Dub’s broker dealer.
These portfolios are tracked for changes over time, with any trades automatically mirrored to others who copied them. In other words, Wang said traders can go on “auto pilot” once holding a copy of someone’s portfolio and eliminate the human error of missing any trades.
Previously, users could opt to make their portfolios available for copy by others if they met a personal investment minimum of $1,000. Now, the creator program adds a financial incentive for accepted users.
The program’s name can draw comparisons to influencer payment structures from social media platforms such as TikTok. Accepted traders get paid a scaling fee that takes into consideration several social metrics. The rate isn’t based entirely on the number of portfolio copies per creator, but that figure may be a factor.
The amount of royalties received is determined individually between Dub and each creator in the program, Wang said.
Multiple traders were already signed onto the program at the time of launch, according to Dub. Their roster includes Andrew Ver Planck, an alumnus of MacKay Shields and Putnam Investments, and Lawrence Fuller, a SeekingAlpha analyst.
Dub has a $100 minimum deposit, though some portfolios require larger investments to make a copy. The company’s broker dealer is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The ‘next generation’ of investing influencers
Dub’s program comes amid a booming period for both retail trading and the influencer economy.
Data shows that net inflows from average Joe traders to popular stocks and funds remain elevated compared with pre-pandemic levels. That’s despite the boom-and-bust cycle of day trading and meme stocks that captured America’s interest during the Covid pandemic.
At the same time, the pandemic lockdowns catalyzed a surge of interest around people with large followings on online platforms. That’s bolstered the sub-economy tied to digital creators, which Goldman Sachs estimated can swell to a $480 billion revenue opportunity by 2027. Goldman reported in 2023 that around 50 million people work as content creators around the globe.
Dub’s app has been downloaded more than 700,000 times, according to Wang. The company expects to reach 1 million before the end of the first quarter.
Looking ahead, Wang said he hopes to see the best individual traders gain followings and fortunes through the creator program and Dub’s platform. One of the benefits of Dub, he said, is the ability to see verified returns of each portfolio that can be copied before a user chooses to throw their own money behind it.
“I want the next five Warren Buffetts to be surfaced and famous on Dub,” he said. “If we’re really successful with the top creator program, the next generation of the best fund managers, the best traders in the world that people follow will rise from Dub.”