SparkGift
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
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Sections to complete：02 · 05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
SparkGift was a San Francisco fintech startup, founded in 2015 by Peggy Mangot, Bob Haigler, and Tia Gao and backed by Y Combinator's Winter 2015 batch, that made it easy to give investments as gifts. Instead of toys or retail gift cards, users could buy fractional shares of well-known stocks or index funds - say a $20 stake in Disney - for kids and family members, including through an Investment Gift Registry where recipients listed the companies they wanted. The founders aimed to make giving someone an investment in their future as easy as handing over a retail gift card, and to create new savers and investors at scale.
02 / FAILURE REASONS
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03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded, Y Combinator Winter 2015
SparkGift was founded in 2015 by Peggy Mangot, Bob Haigler, and Tia Gao, joined Y Combinator's Winter 2015 batch, and raised $120,000 in a seed round to build its stock-gifting platform.
- Acquired by Stockpile
In June 2016, Stockpile, a Palo Alto provider of stock gift cards, acquired SparkGift for an undisclosed amount; SparkGift accounts were scheduled to merge into Stockpile that September, with all transactions moving to the Stockpile website.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
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Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
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