Are annual financial reports a problem worth solving?
Dear IH,
When you try to assess health of a stock / company, annual or 10K report can reveal a lot about it. Though an investor, I never read annual report - always found them long and boring. I am trying to solve this problem at fincubes.com - Do you guys also think it is a problem worth solving for many? Would be happy to know the thoughts.
It's an interesting concept, and seems to have potential.
This reminds me of the simplified literature financial advisers would give their prospective clients.
I know of one site, not off the top of my head, that basically takes all 10Ks, scans and makes it more readable in text. It's free, but lacks in easy reading.
If you can design the infrastructure to automate fetching the data, create your reports and the narrative, I'd say go for it.
You could also take this in a different direction @thomasm1964 has stated, which I really like.
Another idea is building on top of the existing idea of helping people understand better, by allowing the users to set their level of financial jargon understanding and adjust the report jargon accordingly. Then, have your financial reports make hints like mouse hovering over a certain word produces a modal window with more information.
You could even make recommendations to financial advisers based on how the users view their reports, sell business and personal credit reports, and more to make extra money. The possibilities are quite interesting in such a project.
Best of luck.
Great thoughts ! I am still struggling to automate this , but with the inputs received in this forum , that will surely be the direction for near future to minimize human efforts.
Yes. There are many services that do this already. Check out Valueline. When there is competition there is opportunity and this is clearly a problem worth solving. You can find an angle that makes you a non-commodity. Go for it!
source: have Series 65
Thanks, wasn't aware of it.
I'd pay for it.
Cool, feel free to register on the website fincubes.com
I think the idea is great. That's why financial analysts exist, after all. People like crafted, curated contents.
Do you have a vision of AI-assisted reporting? I imagine that at some point, would boost outputs where you can actually do it for all public companies, then you can even do freemium to make them available online, and paid users can view all the details.
I'm not familiar with FinTech so I don't know the competition climate there, but if this corner is not explored yet, I see it as an opportunity.
For MVP you are selling 5 reports for $15, but I wonder if that's the right way to validate how users will pay in the end.
I may be wrong, but to me it seems more like a VC-backed business model that only wins at scale.
Thanks for your thoughts ! I was looking at AI assistance , but I think right now AI is not matured enough to analyze free text to the level I want it to be, but later down the road, I would like to see if I can make it more algorithmic. I don't really want to make it a VC assisted business and I am hoping there would be specific set of companies in which the users would be interested , so allowing me the benefit of economics of scale as I want it to affordable to common investors.
To me, the value you add is quick access to the information that you need to make decision. I imagine that enables customers to read more using the same amount of time and effort, not less. So I thought your per-report pricing could make friction and discourage that desire.
Or you might want to sell it to financial analysts, advisors, bloggers, etc. when they pick up a company for their take. Food for thought.
Thanks again for your time and thoughts ! We dont want to be a graphics provider for custom orders , but to provide content that appeals to the mass. Will look at the angle of bloggers and others for sure.
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Thank you for your thoughts ! That exactly is what we are upto. I dont want to advise people if they should invest or not, but just a picture of what is going on so they take a decision themselves. One more point is we are not providing a real time (as of now) view of the companies , but it is more based on annual and quarterly reports - thanks for the suggestion of small companies, will give it a thought.
If you decide to approach things in this way, I would recommend you look at Bret Victor's work, especially:
http://worrydream.com/#!/ExplorableExplanations
http://worrydream.com/#!/TenBrighterIdeas
and the tangle javascript library:
http://worrydream.com/#!/Tangle
btw, this sounds like a winning idea to my ears.
I love it, very relevant. Thanks for the suggestion