I completely agree that our product could be used the wrong way, and we want to make sure we guide our customers to the investments that will have the best risk profile for them. In particular, we are currently seeking to become a registered investment adviser, so we can make suggestions based on our customers' individual situation (e.g. so we can recommend that people without significant savings invest in lower risk securities like US Treasuries and Bonds).
It's shocking to see the similarity to how you talk about this product compared to the founders of Robinhood. They've been very successful at tricking people into gambling away their money in the name of "investing." This is essentially the same thing at a smaller scale. This is a bad product for most people, who will silently lose money over time by moving money in and out of the stock market. Perhaps you're initial, wealthier customer base will be able to make use of such a service, but if you end up achieving any amount of scale, you will invariably end up wrecking someone financially. I hope you enjoy the moment when someone can't make rent because the stock market had an off week.
I completely agree that we don't want to end up being the next Robinhood. One interesting technical aspect there is that our customers don't manually trade securities, instead they provide us with a strategy that we then execute when we need to automatically buy/sell their investment. I think this will implicitly guide our users toward choosing a long term investment strategy (like mutual funds) instead of doing day trading.
I'd be very careful with that. If you suggest something to a customer that causes them to loose money you can be sued and potentially held liable. Becoming an RIA would likely force your product to become hyper conservative in it's approach which perhaps is good if you're billing yourself as a bank account alternative, but also perhaps not your intention.
