Speaker 1:
Welcome to ETF Central, recorded here at the New York Stock Exchange, the home of ETFs. We're diving deep with the people shaping the space, the technologies driving innovation, and the stories behind the tickers. Whether you're an investor, issuer, or industry insider, welcome home.
Bilal Little:
Welcome to ETF Central, which is more than just a platform. It's designed to be the pulse of the ETF industry. My name is Bilal Little and I'm going to be your host. I want to say thank you, Max, for joining us today. Max is the founder and CEO of Blossom Social, a social networking platform for investing. Excited that you were able to make it. You guys just flew down, so this is going to be a fun, quick hit session, but tell us a little bit about Blossom Social and sort of how you kind of created the idea.
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah, perfect. Thanks, Bilal. And you're right, we just got off the airplane and came right here, so it's great to chat with you. And yeah, my name's Max. I started Blossom about three and a half, four years ago right when the whole WallStreetBets Reddit craze was going on in 2021. And in one sentence, Blossom is a social network for retail investors. So what makes it really unique is we actually connect to users brokerage accounts. So we connect to Schwab, Robinhood, E*TRADE, Vanguard, all of the sort of major brokerages and allow a much richer discussion experience because everyone's profile is backed up by what they're actually holding. So if you're looking on say, Reddit or Discord or another forum, you can't actually see if people are putting their money where their mouth is versus on Blossom. You can click, "See my Profile," you can see Tim or other influencers profiles and see exactly a pie chart of what they're holding. So it drives much better and richer discussions.
Bilal Little:
Given your background, what kind of created the inertia behind starting this? What did you see that was missing in the marketplace?
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah. I mean, all the social platforms where people were already having discussions, none of them were really built for investing. So that was sort of the big gap in the market. And then I think the really interesting timing that came about in 2021 was broker linking technology really advanced so that it was very easy to integrate with brokerages. Before that, it would have been very difficult. You would had to really go one by one individually to these different institutions, but now there's basically APIs that you can connect to that link to all of the different institutions. So it kind of was the perfect timing for a platform like this. There's platforms out there that have existed that are essentially for investing like StockTwits or some of these others, but they weren't able to really capitalize on this technology. So we sort of see ourselves as the new wave platform that's built from the ground up for investing conversations.
Bilal Little:
Yeah. What's interesting, right, the back engine behind the way things work, a lot of people don't necessarily care. You just want to trust that it works.
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah.
Bilal Little:
So I feel like with social media, it's a big trust factor. How are you engaging, because I think you guys do something a little different as far as engaging with influencers and people who have audiences. Could you expand on that a little bit just to give, I think the audience some context of how you guys are growing and you've growing pretty quickly as well, right?
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah. A hundred percent. We just crossed a quarter million users. We're on track for half a million by the end of the year. We actually just started ranking. In the US App store, we were number 176 in finance, I think, yesterday. We started in Canada though. So we've been top 50 in the Canadian app store. Apple actually ranked us as one of the top 25 apps for 2025. And so yeah, the momentum is definitely there. But one of the really interesting strategies that we've taken to grow is working with finance influencers. So we work with a ton of the largest creators. I think we have over a hundred now creators on the platforms. Some people might recognize like Eric Namix, Joey Yang, Bilal, or BD investing. And so one of the things we've been very cognizant of though is being almost careful with the influencers that we work with because the audience that we bring into the platform ultimately is what's going to create the community.
And in the influencer space, there's a lot of people who are just super "get rich quick" pushing really risky stocks. We're really focused on more long-term investing. And I know one of the questions you had, and maybe jumping to it, is around our mission. And our mission is really to help people make better financial decisions by building a community for them to share ideas. And so that sort of mission around helping people make better financial decisions really is tied to our growth because we want to be growing in a way where we're growing the community thoughtfully for people who also share that value and share those mission and aren't just looking to make a quick 10X-
Bilal Little:
Yeah, for sure.
Maxwell Nicholson:
... Which obviously is extremely risky if you're trying to do that.
Bilal Little:
So stay with that for a second because I think that you bring up a really good point. The biggest issue with most people in investing is financial education. Maybe talk a little bit about how you guys are doing something different or engaging with these influencers to actually properly educate people more so about the risk dynamics, I think, that are part of investing that often gets overlooked because to your point, people are just chasing returns. They're only looking at upside. And then when you have volatility that creeps into the marketplace, they don't have a fundamental understanding of how things might move.
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah.
Bilal Little:
So what are you guys doing around that?
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah. I mean, one of the things we noticed a ton of the people joining the Blossom platform were just pure beginners. So we built actually Duolingo style education into the app. So the core functionality of the app, which I guess I haven't really talked about, but it's essentially a social forum similar to a Reddit or a Twitter where people can post, again, backed up by what people are actually holding, which is sort of the distinct part. But then people also use the app as a portfolio tracker, dividend tracker, and then the other sort of core pillar. We sort of see the three core pillars as social portfolio and dividend tracking, and then education.
So we've built almost Duolingo style TikTok esque courses for people to learn the basics because we're very focused on building an experience that doesn't feel like super finance bro, super closed off our whole exactly goal. I mean, if you join Wallstreet Bets and you're a full beginner, there's all these terms that you don't know what's going on. And so we're like, "Okay, how can we integrate people with the basics and so they kind of learn the basics, the basic terminology before they're just thrust into the social community?" And so that really augments the social experience and allows people to have a base understanding, which is then obviously allows them to join the conversations in a much sort of more informed manner.
Bilal Little:
So what I found to be interesting when I was looking at the platform is you actually have a lot of information tied to exchange traded funds.
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah.
Bilal Little:
So talk a little bit about that and how that's actually resonating with the audience and how you see the engagement growing around that.
Maxwell Nicholson:
Well, it's such a misconception about retail investors that they only want to buy Tesla and buy the risky positions. Number one topic that people follow, you can follow topics of interest. The number one followed topic is ETFs on the platform, next up is dividends. So we've definitely attracted a unique audience that's much more long-term focused. And yeah, I mean, it's happened somewhat organically to your point around the influencers that we choose to work with, but it's allowed us to be in a position where we get to work with a ton of ETF providers. So we're working with State Street, VanEck, we've done campaigns with Amplify ETFs. I think we're kicking one off with them.
And then pretty much everyone in Canada like BMO, Fidelity because they're seeing this massive shift in the market, which I'm sure you're hearing from conversations that you're having where before everyone's been focused on advisors and more and more people are buying ETFs directly. So ETFs are having to sort of shift their strategy to be like, "Okay, how can we reach this audience directly?" And we're sort of in the perfect position to help them do that. So that's been a cool aspect of the platform.
Bilal Little:
So I actually see you guys as a linkage point between both retail and the advisor community.
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah.
Bilal Little:
Is that kind of the way you're thinking about some of the distribution strategy as well?
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah, I think so. I mean, definitely helping people have those informed conversations is really, really important. I think we see on Blossom, some people actually do engage in retail platforms and then also have an advisor. We have one of our users, one of our early investors, actually this guy named Ramit, he has a $7 million portfolio that he trades himself, and then he also has the ones that the advisors. And so the two are very interconnected in a lot of ways. And we've heard as well from the ETF providers that we work with is sometimes even people will be on platforms like Blossom to learn and educate themselves, and then they might bring some of those strategies to the conversations with the advisors.
So you're not necessarily just targeting retail directly purely for retail buying, some of those, it's then going to have those conversations with their advisors of like, "Hey, I heard about this single stock ETF. What are your thoughts on that? So the ecosystem is very interconnected, but I think the one trend that we are seeing is investors want to educate themselves. Some of them don't want to use a financial advisors at all, but even the ones that do, they don't want to just sit back and not know anything. They want to learn and be intelligent about it so they can have those intelligent conversations with their advisors.
Bilal Little:
It's funny you bring that up. So I think yesterday the first XRP ETF launched, and what's really interesting is if you go to these social media forums like a Reddit or an X, you see the community around product or I would say crypto like that is really, really high. So as the ETF wrapper continues to evolve, you have different industries or investment pockets that you can participate in, which is actually going to force the advisor, to your point, to have these conversations because the end client is actually going in, they're doing a lot of their own research and they're saying, "Hey, why aren't you buying this for me?"
Maxwell Nicholson:
Exactly.
Bilal Little:
And then they're competing on your platform almost, or sharing with their friends saying, "Look, I have access to this."
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah.
Bilal Little:
How do you see that continuously evolving for the ETF issuer as well?
Maxwell Nicholson:
I think exactly what you said is what we're seeing as the trend, right? It's not enough anymore to just target advisors. And it's interesting because obviously we're from Canada, we see, in this instance, you guys are ahead of us in a lot of ways, but in the ETF space, it does seem like the ETF providers are sort of ahead of the curve a little bit. One of the clients we work with, about two years ago, retail was like 4% of their AUM. Now it just crossed us 70%.
And we see another one, Global X Canada, this one's public, there flows from the direct channel just past the advisor channel for Global X Canada. And so exactly like you're saying, there is this big shift happening and both for targeting directly as well as for the conversations that are happening for advisors, it's if you don't sort of shift your strategy, we all hear about AI all the time. "If you don't shift and add AI, you're falling behind." Well, for ETFs, I think this is sort of the trend that's like the AI for ETFs is targeting retail directly is sort of the big trend that's going on. And so yeah.
Bilal Little:
I think you actually have to have a strategy to do that. So are you seeing, or are you having more conversations with ETF issuers to say, "We need to get more thoughtful and meaningful about what our distribution looks like when it comes to retail." Are you building out prescriptive, go-to-market solutions, or how are you consulting them on that process?
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah, it's funny you say that. The word consulting. So I used to work in consulting at McKinsey, and I joke that with a lot of our clients, we sort of are an advertising platform, so ETF providers advertise on Blossom.
Bilal Little:
Okay.
Maxwell Nicholson:
But to your point, we kind of do play the role of a consultant as well because this is sort of a very new trend that we're seeing. So with the clients that we work with, it's sort of like a multifaceted strategy. And I built a deck actually around this, around how to target retail and the rise of retail. So targeting people on Blossom is sort of one of the ways that they do it. And we have all these different ad units on the platform, but we've seen more starting to work directly with influencers, so having influencers make videos about the ETFs, obviously paid ads on different platforms. I know Reddit obviously listed on the NYSE, is making a big push around targeting people in the Reddit. Finance forums, obviously Meta and Google Ads.
And so the same way you think about your advisor strategy as a multichannel push, you want to be thinking about retail in a similar way, but of course, retail is on different platforms than advisors, so obviously there's great platforms like Advisor Perspectives and etf.com and all of those that are more advisor focused. Well, if you're wanting to target retail, you need to know where those retail conversations are taking place, and oftentimes it's not the same platforms.
Bilal Little:
Yeah, no, that's a great point. As we wrap, what are a couple of things that you want to leave the audience with as it relates to who Blossom is? What's your mission, who you're serving, and how they should think about you?
Maxwell Nicholson:
A hundred percent. Well, if the audiences, if there's any ETF providers listening, which I think is a good amount of the listeners, definitely don't hesitate to reach out. We sort of see ourselves as the next wave of the company that's helping ETF providers target retail investors. And so in the same way I know we're chatting with the Vetify guys later and they've done a huge wave of that being sort of the leading solution for targeting advisors. We see ourselves as sort of that, but for retail investors. And so that's our main focus. Obviously we're a social platform, but where we make pretty much all of our money is helping solve that problem of helping ETF providers get their funds in front of retail investors, driving, buying activity. And the beautiful part is since we have 2 billion in linked assets, we can actually show direct impact on AUM. And so it's pretty cool innovation that we're, I think, bringing to the space both on the user side, but as well as the ETF side. And so happy to keep the conversation going. My inbox and phone is always open.
Bilal Little:
That's amazing. Thank you so much, Max.
Maxwell Nicholson:
Yeah. Cheers, Paul. Thank you.
Speaker 1:
That's a wrap for today's conversation, but the ETF discussion doesn't stop here. For more insights, deep dives and voices shaping the market, stay connected on etfcentral.com. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll see you next time. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information. We do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.