AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My point of difference is that I’m providing a service to young investors and taking a cut.
The Invested Enterprises platform was designed to have a gaming feel to it. Users create avatars, which they move through the different levels like they’re playing a video game. Information is presented along the way and users have to solve problems and complete tasks and challenges to earn coins. Data is shown with interactive 3D graphics. Players learn the concepts as they complete the tasks, and each challenge they complete ranks them higher. There are incentives and cash prizes as they build their portfolios. They can choose to connect with other users and interact as they complete levels.
And I take thirteen percent of every penny they make. We now have twenty-seven million of them. Millennials and GenZers are competing against their friends. Word of mouth has taken us to crazy heights, not just among serious investors but also college students and teenagers. All those gamers sitting in their bedrooms across America and around the world are hearing about our platform. It’s fun to use. It’s social. They learn how to invest in the stock market and they make money. Sometimes lots of it. We keep it as low-risk as possible, making sure beginners are investing only in the safest bets. Many of our users have turned gaming the platform into their full-time jobs and they’re raking in enough cash to easily justify that.
We’re making a profit of seven million dollars a day.
I’ve been dreaming big for years but that number has exceeded even my wildest expectations.
New York was definitely the right place to base Invested Enterprises. We have a young, insanely talented group of coders, designers and finance hotshots from all over the world. We offer the kind of enticements that attract the best of the best. All the cool kids want to work for us.
Some of our perks include pool tables, a rooftop patio with an Olympic-sized pool and swim-up bar area, hot tubs, nap pods and a free cafeteria run by several celebrity chefs. One work week of every month is purely “creative.” On these weeks employees can work from wherever they want—from bed, from Paris, from a bar in Key West, it’s up to them. They’re given a travel allowance, and we encourage them to explore and meet people who might be interested in IE. The goal: they recruit users and they present one new idea each month that we can integrate into the game.
This incentive is the best we’ve come up with. It gets us incredible talent. And it works.
We also own an apartment building and we offer many of our employees a complimentary apartment as part of their package.
We offer shares for employees who hit profit goals.
All of the above means we get hundreds of applications every day. I’ve hired a full-time recruitment associate whose job is to scour the applications for the stand-outs.
The sun glints off the Empire State Building and I glance up from my desktop, looking out over the city through the floor-to-ceiling walls of windows of my office. My prime view is intentional. The Empire State Building was my father’s favorite New York landmark. The ultimate symbol of power and prestige. I figured if the reminder was front and center every time I looked up, it would remind me how hard I needed to work to make sure this company isn’t just successful—since he never thought it would be—but one of the most profitable in the city.
New York was my dad’s favorite place on Earth and it’s where I’ve spent most of my life. A part of me wanted to move as far away from him as possible as I was setting up my business. But staying in Manhattan was the right move. The fact that my brothers stuck around too and wanted a part of what I was building gave me the confidence I needed, that I was making the right decision, even when my father insisted it was a terrible idea that would leave me broke and destitute.
As much as I hate to admit it, my father’s insistence that IE was a complete waste of time motivated me like nothing else could have. He might not have built his own company from the ground up, but he ran it successfully for decades, growing the profits exponentially each year he was at the helm.
He was the one who taught me everything about business and investments, who schooled me in stocks and shares over science and Shakespeare. If Benjamin Maddox thought my idea was dead in the water, there was a very good chance he was right.
But in reality, my father was a dinosaur. What did he know about apps or gaming platforms? The idea of a tech startup was about as alien to him as showing anyone but my oldest brother Alexander any affection. He didn’t know the market I was aiming for. He didn’t understand the concept. But he still shot me down and told me I’d lose everything if I went ahead with it.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so young and hot-headed, I could have explained it better. Of course I regret that the last conversation I had with my father was a full-blown argument where we both said things we shouldn’t have said.
Sometimes I wish I could rewind time. Just to re-do that final day.
Anyway, it hardly matters now. Looking out over the iconic skyline reminds me that most of my decisions have been good ones. My father didn’t understand why I wanted to game-ify the stock market. But if he was alive today, I know he’d be impressed by what we’ve done and how far we’ve come.
My office door opens and my brother Noah walks in, not bothering to knock. “We have a problem,” he says, throwing his wide-shouldered frame into the leather chair on the other side of my desk. We’re the same height but he has the build of a football player. If he worked out more, he could be seriously jacked, but Noah is too laid back to be competitive about things like that.
He’s my CFO and the most perceptive person I know, with a built-in radar for detecting problems before they get out of hand.
Which is why his pronouncement gives me an ominous feeling. I stand up from my desk. “What’s the problem?”
“A fucking serious one.”
Business is all about problem-solving—endlessly—so I learned a long time ago not to overreact until there’s something to overreact about. But my brother’s concern gets my attention. “What kind of serious?”
“One of our employees has been suspected of insider trading.”
“What?” My voice comes out in a low growl. I can’t have heard that right.
“The SEC just called me. They noticed an anomaly in one of our reports.”
“What kind of anomaly?”
“The kind of anomaly that means they suspect there might have been a leak.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
