CommonStock
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
Some sections are still being researched1 / 4
Sections to complete：02
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
CommonStock was a San Francisco social investing platform launched in 2020 by David McDonough (a former Google product strategist and Greenspring Associates investment analyst) and Zach Carman. It built a social network integrated with major brokerages and crypto exchanges where retail investors could link their brokerage accounts, share verified portfolio performance and trade ideas, and get real-time alerts when investors they followed made trades - amplifying the knowledge of the best investors, 'verified by actual track records for signal over noise.' At acquisition it had more than $10 billion in connected assets and attracted investors including Coatue, QED, Floodgate, Upside Ventures, Resolute Ventures, and Abstract Ventures, plus angels such as Bill Ackman, Philippe Laffont, and Ari Emanuel.
02 / FAILURE REASONS
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded and launched
CommonStock launched as the first social investing platform for stocks and cryptocurrencies, closing a nearly $2M seed round from Social Capital, Resolute VC, and Studio VC, with brokerage integrations and group-based investing features.
- Acquired by Yahoo
On August 23, 2023, Yahoo announced the acquisition of Commonstock to add investor insights and community to Yahoo Finance (150M+ monthly users). Terms were undisclosed and the Commonstock team joined the Yahoo Finance organization.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Raised approximately $34.7 million in total.
- 02
In August 2023 it was acquired by Yahoo (Yahoo Finance) on undisclosed terms; the team joined Yahoo Finance, and the platform connected over $10 billion in assets at the time of the acquisition.
- 03
No audited loss figure was publicly disclosed.