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Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

news.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 139 posts

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#61

I assume you are leaning heavily on some kind of natural language processing to automatically extract this information from SEC filings and earnings reports. That's a great idea. I just hope that you're being very very careful about the generalizability of your models & their performance over time. Obviously 99% of the work in buidling such a system is just getting access to all the data and setting up the ETL pipeli…

Currently, we are seeing that retail investors aren't doing any research at all, especially young people are relying on social media and memes to make investment choices which can be dangerous. EBITDA is important and it's a hard concept to understand for those who aren't familiar with finance - that's why we offer digestible insights to make it accessible. Analyst reports are very long to sift through and most peopl…

> we are seeing that retail investors aren't doing any research at all

> EBITDA is important and it's a hard concept to understand for those who aren't familiar with finance

Is there any proof that the later group has better outcomes ?

Even if you understand all the terms, aren't you ultimately just investing based on gut feeling since all the observable information has already been factored into the purchase price anyways.

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#63
post #16

Shouldn't "Show HN" rules also apply to "Launch HN"? "Off topic: ... sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html This looks like an awesome product, but kind of annoying to see a "Launch" but it's just a waitlist. Why not wait until Monday?

To be fair there are launch HN posts for hard tech companies too where you can't try the product yet!

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth would you name a fintech company after a world-famous restaurant? Bonkers...

They are in... completely different industries?

Sort of. The Alinea folks also started Tock, which is a tech startup.

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#65
post #4

Does this have any relation to the world-famous restaurant, sometimes in the past ranked as the #1 restaurant in the world, of the same name?

Yes, Alinea means a new way of doing something,for us, it's a new way of investing!

You might also take a look at your logo when you're thinking about your brand. It looks very similar to Aether Apparel: https://www.aetherapparel.com

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#66
post #4

Does this have any relation to the world-famous restaurant, sometimes in the past ranked as the #1 restaurant in the world, of the same name?

Hi -- I'm the co-owner of Alinea... the restaurant and group. While they are in different industries, I owned a derivatives trading group for years, run a tech startup (Tock), and am getting a bunch of emails from folks thinking I started this or am affiliated in some way. So... while I dislike conflict, I really don't like be associated with something I have no control over. There will be an incoming email shortly.

Amazing. FWIW to the Alinea (YC W21) folks, I felt your name, branding/colors, and logo felt completely off and strange. Good time to change it up?

Edit: And fonts. Modern edgy logo font and the website complimentary font is a bit... Crayola. Not dogging on you all, I'm sure having this be a focus of your launch isn't fun for all your hard work. It's a really neat idea.

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, we are seeing that retail investors aren't doing any research at all, especially young people are relying on social media and memes to make investment choices which can be dangerous. EBITDA is important and it's a hard concept to understand for those who aren't familiar with finance - that's why we offer digestible insights to make it accessible. Analyst reports are very long to sift through and most peopl…

Is it possible you're training your users to become even more susceptible to other investment scams? At the end of the day, the fact is that securities analysis and investing savvy is a sophisticated skill requiring many years of study before any kind of +ev outcome can be expected. In a way, this is one of the biggest reasons I think the move from private pensions to 401ks and the like has been a gigantic disaster.…

I share these curiosities and agree with the sentiment that something that requires skill to de-risk should not simply have its perception of risk lowered but actually educate. This is likely a contrarian view, but there is a benefit in novices losing non-trivial amounts of money so that they learn risk avoidance and develop a respect for expertise & experience. It's no different from how children learn from mistakes and the risk is proportional to the learning experience.

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#69
I think this is a great idea, the biggest trend in global investing is ESG, with all the largest fund managers moving that direction, in part driven by client demand but also in recognition that they don't want to be laggards to the cultural shift and the inevitable regulatory interventions that are coming down the pipe; everyone expected ESMA to lead the way here but it's telling that the SEC also published a letter of intent. So I see this app as filling a real need as well as anticipating one of the mega trends that appears to be set to play out over the next 5-7 years. I've worked in fintech for 15 years, and built and sold a couple of companies in this space, happy to offer any advice that might be useful but it seems to me you've got a great idea that's well positioned.

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#70
post #4

Does this have any relation to the world-famous restaurant, sometimes in the past ranked as the #1 restaurant in the world, of the same name?

Hi -- I'm the co-owner of Alinea... the restaurant and group. While they are in different industries, I owned a derivatives trading group for years, run a tech startup (Tock), and am getting a bunch of emails from folks thinking I started this or am affiliated in some way. So... while I dislike conflict, I really don't like be associated with something I have no control over. There will be an incoming email shortly.

> There will be an incoming email shortly

To the founders: ignore their email and consult your lawyer.

Trademark infringement generally requires an element of consumer brand confusion.

There is no way USPTO will see a restaurant and a stock trading app as likely to cause consumer confusion, as they are in completely different industries with absolutely no overlap. Sharing the same name doesn’t matter much given that fact.

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