Igor Sheremet

Why We Chose Him: 

You may have never heard of Qooore, and we barely did as well, so we were cautious to place this in our list next to some of the most seasoned thought leaders and CEOs in the world, but the inherent good nature of having been founded to give people knowledge of the all-too-elusive investment world and the wealth generated from the stock market made it appeal.

“The first of its kind, easy-to-understand, smart-insight investment app” as it founders refer to their creation, was designed by these three 30-something friends who were interested in investing but didn’t know how to sort through all the confusion of the market, and they figured there were probably a whole lot more people like them out there. 

So, late last year, they launched the app that delivers key info on particular stocks and then enables people to tap a heart if they like it in order to place it into a collection of stocks that they will be quizzed on and even challenged about in games.

“If we want people to be educated, we need to speak with them in a way that’s familiar to them,” says co-founder Igor Sheremet. 

The founders enlist the help of licensed traders to develop the content, which is focused on sound investing rather than day trading because, as Igor says, “We don’t want our users to be risky.”

The founders explain, “We wanted to show young people that investment is not only for financially stable boomers, or rich 1%, and that it’s also not boring. We want to change the mindset around trading. We want to change the experience. Our goal is to make investing available, easy, and fun.”

The founders centered their app on building true knowledge of not just the stock market but of sound investing because they realized these younger generations are really not investing at all. Whether that is because they are among the first in decades to have less than their parents to invest, or because they are among the most stressed-out generations in a long time being born in a recession, living through the September 11 attacks plus the Great Recession of 2008, and now coming of age in year of the pandemic. But they are also among the most educated generations ever seen.

So, the idea of an app where they could learn and apply that knowledge to investing and improving their economic situation was inspiring and motivating to the young entrepreneurs, especially if they could make it cool and inviting. Hence, the app is filled with bright colors, geometric shapes, large fonts and graphic lines as well as game processes that can teach. 

“It’s not like other investment apps that use graphs and tables, which can be daunting, excluding and scary for everyone, especially these generations,” explains Igor. “We believe they learn in clearer, more entertaining and gamified ways. Add to that the immediacy and timing aspects they’re used to when something new drops at a place, like Supreme, and we’ve incorporated all the elements they are accustomed to.” 

And as for the name, the company explains: “We started with Quants -- people who integrated quantitative analysis into the investment world -- and after some time we came up with Qooore. It sounds cool, it’s catchy and still has some resemblance (even though very minor) to Quant.”

Still in its infant stages compared to most of the companies we recognize, Qooore is focusing on company growth. Its team is Russian-speaking but it sees itself as a global firm, with some of the staff located in Moscow, Amsterdam and San Francisco.

But the founders are quickly gaining enormous popularity and good will because of their authentic devotion to educating young investors.

In fact, they recently took a very novel and entertaining approach to such education, creating a satirical app called “Robin Who -- Robbing You,” to drive home the point that true “democratization of the stock market was only rooted in knowledge and education.”

“Robinhood, whose motto is ‘democratize finance for all,’ halted purchases for GameStop and other stocks on Thursday. Qooore has a different perspective on the issue. The situation with stock markets at the moment is highly intriguing. Robinhood's actions were highly unethical and led to strong division between the hedge funds and stock players. Their message was that they want to inform their users. Qooore wants to change the scene and instead of informing their users, they want to educate them.”