To better understand KingsCrowd and KingsCrowd products, it can be helpful to understand the fintech space, specifically big players. Bloomberg and Morningstar are two of the most familiar and established companies in the financial services space. To better understand where KingsCrowd fits into this industry, it is important to break down these larger services.
Investopedia summarizes Bloomberg as “a major global provider of 24-hour financial news and information, including real-time and historic price data, financials data, trading news, and analyst coverage, as well as general news and sports.” Bloomberg is a media conglomerate that, in addition to its primary financial services, offers televised financial news coverage, renewable energy tracking services, an agency broker service, research products for government clients, an investment firm, and OpenFIGI, a ticker symbol mapping device. The latter services are unique to Bloomberg.
Morningstar, on the other hand, serves as a more research-oriented investment firm that aggregates and analyzes general market data, as well as data surrounding funds and stocks. Offers include, according to Investopedia, “insights on investment offerings, managed investment products, publicly listed companies, and real-time market data. Its website includes free information on individual funds and stocks.” In addition, “Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiary, with more than $200 billion in assets under management.”
The Entrepreneur Fund explains, “Both companies have similar client profiles, which encompasses most of the types of institutions found in the financial world, such as individual investors, financial advisors, researchers, traders and asset managers, and retirement plan providers and sponsors. Although few exceptions may apply based on the different services being offered, for all intents and purposes, the client profiles are the same.”
Perhaps what most differentiates the two is Morningstar’s rating service. Below is a sample rating from Apple’s stock, which is currently rating 2 out of 5 stars.
The service focuses on stocks and mutual funds and differentiates Morningstar from Bloomberg, which has no such product. Both, however, do provide long-form reports and recommendations regarding investments, as well as major news updates like the Apple headline below…
In addition, MorningStar provides basic analytics, which is separate from the rating.
Sound familiar?
If you are an active user of the KingsCrowd platform these services may ring a bell. In fact, we model much of our product line after popular services, especially those users may already be familiar with. The difference is in the asset class. At KingsCrowd, we aim to be the “Morningstar of the private markets.” We want to be the trusted aggregator and recommendation platform across the private equity ecosystem.
In fact, when building our rating system, we took into account systems like that of Morningstar. At KingsCrowd, however, we have honed our rating system to be specific to early-stage startups vs. the public stocks and large funds covered by a company like Morningstar. Our goal is to bring you analytics, research, and ratings in a familiar format for a previously undocumented asset class.
As such, our ratings, analytics, and research reporting are tailored specifically to the crowdfunding space. We include metrics like “raised to date” in addition to the standard metrics familiar to a Morningstar user. This is where we differ from the public market. KingsCrowd analytics includes metrics unique to the space. Our analysts spend time aggregating and analyzing large amounts of data on each company raising, as well as its ecosystem to bring you the best dashboard for private market analytics. In doing so, we hope to optimize user experience by creating a system that is both familiar and intuitive.
