Chegg – started out as a marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of cheap second-hand textbooks, but now makes most of its money offering online education services whereby students can access; tutoring, and educational materials for much cheaper than it costs to access a private tutor (subscription is $15/month). Recently crushed because of rising wages in the labour market, making university less appealing as the income difference between higher education jobs and not, shrinks.
Raiz – an Australian company that helps you invest through your loose change. They make investing nice and easy with a simple choice of four investing strategies from conservative to aggressive, all for only $2.50/month. Fintech companies like Raiz have been getting a lot of attention in the US, but yet Raiz hasn’t felt this love. At current levels of $1 a share, it’s not ridiculously expensive nor cheap, but with a target audience of 10million Aussies aged 18-44 years old, combined with the increased attention and importance of investing in today’s day and age, and currently only sitting on 225,000 users, they have a lot of opportunity for growth from here.
Lemonade – they use AI to provide home, pet and life insurance. Their AI machine produces a quote within a few minutes, and pays out claims within minutes too. They’re targeting the young people who otherwise hate insurance and the headache that comes with it by honing in on insurance for people renting, who will then grow into home owners and life insurance as they age. The convenience and ease of the AI not only attracts tech-native young people, but also gets more accurate with every person that they insure, leading to progressively more accurate quotes over-time that will beat the big existing insurers at their own game. The stock was appealing at around $50, but has now flown to ludicrous levels of over $150 a share, so it’s definitely not a buy for now but keep your eyes peeled.
Akerna – this small company is powering the booming marijuana industry with much-needed software – inventory, raw materials, orders, accounting, compliance, data. All these essential components of a business need a software infrastructure to organise and track them, with each industry having their own unique set of software solutions. Usually it’s the big software providers – SAP, Oracle – who provide this, but the uniqueness of the marijuana industry has led to Akerna’s success. These big players have actually corroborated with Akerna, indicating that they’ve handed the reigns to Akerna to be the software provider for this industry. Small company in it’s early days, and much cheaper than the standard software company valuation of a 15+ sales multiple.