With Bambu’s acquisition of Tradesocio and their 65 employees, the company has effectively doubled in size. This week, Ned is joined by the CEO and Product Architect of Tradesocio, Wael Salem, to discuss the merger and the doors that it will open going forward.
Before diving into discussions around the merger, Wael first shares with us what Tradesocio has created. Tradesocio was founded by a team of brokerage professionals who were looking to provide a mirror trading solution. Wael joined the team as a product analyst and got to work on the company’s first few projects on mirror trading. He climbed the ranks and eventually became responsible for the technology development timeline of products. In this role, he met with the board members and decided on a 7-year technology plan, with the first 4 years focusing on brokerage and investment technology operations. From there, the team dug deep and built a range of amazing products using complicated technology. These products handled brokerage operations and enabled investment tech operations in real time with real time reporting.
Coming to the topic of the acquisition, Ned and Wael share that they both have been through their own fair share of mergers in their previous companies. Often, it is not a very pleasant experience for one of the companies. However, what gets these two excited is that the two companies are extremely complementary to each other. In fact, Wael comments that if he was a major investor in both Bambu and Tradesocio, the perfect fit would be to merge these 2 companies and their products. Why is this so? The companies are able to create a stronger product together due to the different field of expertise. Tradesocio has the edge in investment technology and Bambu has the edge in Robo-advisory and digitalisation. Putting these two strengths together makes a lot of sense and will increase the range of products that the company can provide.
As Ned and Wael move on to discuss the industry and its development, Wael feels that they’re only just scratched the surface of wealthtech development. This is evident by newcomers that enter the industry every day, bringing with them a new innovation that targets a specific sector. In this landscape of development and change, Wael’s goal when it comes to wealthtech and investing is to offer a purely digital or hybrid application able to offer holistic wealth management in real time. The application will provide a complete holistic view of one’s finances and is able to advise and understand the client. This increases operational efficiency and customer retention of the institutional side. From the client perspective, they will be able to interact with AI bots that are proactive and able to understand their needs and worries. This application will make available to the masses the services that are currently only available to VIP clients of banks. Presently, there is a huge cost when it comes to personalised service that only VIP members can afford. The goal is to provide these premier services to all clients no matter what their wealth level is.
There is a ton of information online about investment, but Wael believes that most people do not read about it no matter what their income or education level is. Nobody wants to learn something new, and they want things to be managed for them. Wael further notes that banking is the least digitised industry in his opinion we need to pick up the pace. Everyone deserves good financial advice, and digitising the industry is a huge part of enabling that. Through the acquisition of Tradesocio, Bambu is better equipped to take on this challenge and fuel the digital revolution.
