There are many new faces on the scene in online finance. As we move away from mere trading platforms and portals to more social media-like applications, we’ve taken a stab to enumerate some of the top thinkers/movers/entrepreneurs in the space to keep tabs on.
I used a variety of slippery factors like vision and influence and combined it with the track record of the individual/firm and then threw it into a blender. The list below is in no particular order.
Top Finance 2.0 Personalities
- Steve Carpenter, CEO/Founder, Cake Financial: Cake has risen to prominence by layering an analytical layer on top of clients’ existing investment accounts to help make sense of what’s going on and make better decisions in the future. Steve has been an outspoken investor advocate promoting the need to understand the investment process and learn from others. Because Cake has processed data over 1,000,000 retail transactions, the firm is in a great place to provide network level statistics into buying and selling as well as help investors learn from one another.
- Aaron Patzer, CEO/Founder, Mint.com: Well, Aaron’s voice has been heard as far as Davos. Helping over 900k users track their expenses and lower their burn rate, Mint has quickly risen to prominence in a field dominated by offline giants like MSN Money and Quicken. With this view into consumers’ pocketbooks, Mint has an interesting perspective in what’s happening at the macro level.
- Perry Blacher, CEO/Founder, Covestor: Covestor is the leading portfolio sharing service where investors subject their trading activity to an audit as a check for authenticity. In the future, I expect Covestor-like communities to be a leading channel for smaller asset managers to market themselves and their strategies to willing investors. Covestor is syndicating some of its participants’ trading logs for publication on TheStreet.com, bringing this model more into the mainstream.
- Felix Salmon, Reporter, Portfolio.com: How is it possible for someone to write so much content that’s always good? Salmon is seemingly ubiquitous these days and from my perch, seems to have found his voice and sway during the financial meltdown. Salmon is a big proponent of the financial blogosphere and has used his mouthpiece to shine a lot of light on some great new econobloggers.
- Darrell Heaps, CEO/Founder, Q4 Web Systems: Q4 has built an enterprise level content management system (CMS) used by publicly traded firms to communicate their financials. Think of it as WordPress for compliance-focused corporations. As an SaaS application, it’s pay as you go and accesible over the Web.
- David Jackson, CEO/Founder, SeekingAlpha: David was very early with financial blog content aggregation. The money quote: “We’ve basically taken a whole investment bank research department and turned it on its head.” SeekingAlpha has given a voice to financial bloggers, both small and large and given its landmark deal with Yahoo Finance, took financial blogging into the mainstream.
- Paul Kedrosky, Speaker/Analyst/Investor, Infectious Greed: Dr. Kedrosky is everywhere you want him to be these days talking about the markets and the systems that power them.
- Dominic Jones, Principal, Clarity! Communications: Dominic has been extolling the virtues of adopting new technologies and social media for corporations and the investor relations professionals who represent them.
- Roger Ehrenberg, Analyst/Investor, Information Arbitrage: Ehrenberg’s backround as a derivatives trader/salesmen/general Wall Street guy enables him to take an inside look into what’s unfolding currently in the financial world. Ehrenberg is also a seed investor and gets an up-close view on new ideas/products coming online in the investing space. He was an investor in the well-documented flameout of Monitor 110, a highly-touted next generation research platform and has helped launch StockTwits.
- Barry Ritholtz, Analyst/Founder, The Big Picture: Ritholtz’s popularity has continued to rise as the investing public’s demand for strong opinion has increased. Barry scours financial data and info on alert for any BS. There is also a premium subscription product Ritholtz’s sells to leverage his research.
- Planet Money, Multiple Contributors, NPR Show/Podcast: As a professional, I find Planet Money’s daily podcasts entertaining and enlightening. Designed to help non pros make sense of financial news, the programs contain great interviews, explain leading indicators, and help everyone better understand the tumultuous financial seas around us.
Think someone else belongs on this list? Let me know in the comments or email me at zack.miller @ gmail.com
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
New Rules of Investing 
