- Iconik is a new trading app that allows retail investors to pool together their influence in activist campaigns.
- The commission free trading service is seeking to tackle the fact that 88% of investors don't vote their shares.
- Investors can start an activist campaign and pool together shares to increase their influence.
Iconik is a new commission-free trading app that allows investors to pool together their voting shares to exert more influence on companies, just like large activist investors and hedge funds.
The app, which launched Wednesday, is trying to tackle the fact that 88% of investors don't vote their shares on issues like executive compensation, membership on boards of directors, and company strategy and direction.
That's because it can be both complicated to do so, and because a single investor that owns just a few shares in a multi-billion or trillion dollar company has little impact on the voting results.
But Iconik makes the process of investors voting their shares easier, and helps retail investors leverage their holdings in shareholder campaigns. The service also allows individual investors to create their own activist campaigns that others can attach their shares to.
Iconik CEO Alex Thaler was inspired to create the service after the meme stock rally earlier this year in companies like GameStop and AMC Entertainment.
"Most investors don't put much value in their voting rights, or even know they exist," he told DealBook on Wednesday.
But the meme stock rally showed that social media makes collective action among retail investors much easier today than it was in the past.
The app is launching with two shareholder campaigns already lined up: one that demands Facebook shut down hate speech on its platform, and another that seeks to force JPMorgan Chase to stop lending to fossil-fuel companies.
"Shareholder democracy is fundamentally broken. To ensure that our voices are heard, we must act collectively," Iconik's call to action reads.