Delphia, the American startup of the day, claims that it can beat the stock exchange. Its smart algorithms. Study terabytes of data and as a result they can forecast precisely how much a share of Google will cost in one year and whether it makes sense to buy or sell it now. The startup shares this knowledge, essentially Philosopher’s Stone of the 21st century, with users absolutely free of charge. The client only needs to download the app, it has everything for a perfect portfolio.
It’s perfectly unbelievable that the system can deliver on its promise. Delphia doesn’t even draw its success graphs and how its choices get interpreted by S&P indexes – it looks like it apparently loses and has nothing to boast about even with correctly picked time intervals with all the necessary ellipses and fineprints. Nevertheless, the company got valued at USD 300M in its June’s round – the investors know something good about it, there’s something inside, and we cannot tell from the outside.
What we can see from the outside is an inspiring example of the startup approach. Delphia’s whole pitch for end clients is built on a magical algorithm, and the algorithm description is on the user’s data. In other words, we look at how you trade with other brokers, from there we build models describing the way the market functions, and then the AI gives all the correct tips. Some may get convinced. Someone else may find their way to the hidden section ‘how we use user data?’ and read ‘so far we don’t. We only collect consent but don’t upload the data itself yet.’
And the valuation of USD 300M. Way to go.
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.
