Donut: Cryptocurrency investments made more accessible

Savings has traditionally been carried out through mutual funds, savings accounts, investments, etc. But when you look at it from a technological point of view, then cryptocurrency or bitcoin comes to the bigger picture. For a seamless and straightforward investment in cryptocurrency, Donut is the app to try out. 

A simple investment app that allows its users to invest spare money/dedicated investment into cryptocurrency or bitcoin.  While speaking to Neel Popat, CEO and Co-founder of Donut, Venture Mirror had the opportunity of learning more about the workings of the company and the product.  

What is the startup/product about? Give us a brief description of it.

Donut is an investment app that makes it easy for anyone to invest their spare change in Bitcoin and grow their savings. The entire process is so simple that anyone can get started, regardless of wealth or knowledge. Setting up a portfolio takes less than five minutes. A user-friendly interface and easy-to-understand terminology make crypto investing with Donut as simple as sending a payment on Venmo.

Donut currently offers two products line: spare change investing into Bitcoin and a high-yield savings product that makes your money work harder by earning a higher interest rate (up to 10x the average savings account rate) on your dollar. We create compelling financial experiences that anyone with a smartphone can leverage, using language that anyone can understand.

How many co-founders are there? Please introduce them and their backgrounds.

There are two co-founders. I co-founded Donut with Jordan Abderrachid, who is also the CTO, who I met as part of a program with Entrepreneur First. Jordan was previously a software engineer at Europe’s first mobile bank, N26, and he’s seriously passionate about digital finance and investing. A mutual belief in the decentralized future brought us together, and we started laying the groundwork for Donut in 2018.

How did you come up with the idea? What motivated you to do this?

While working in finance, my friends would often come to me for investment advice. “Where should I invest my money?” “How much should I be putting away?” “How do I invest?” This started to happen more and more often when Bitcoin and newer digital assets began to rise in prominence in the late 2010s. 

Donut was born out of a simple frustration that many young people have poor saving and investment habits – because they lack either the confidence, knowledge, or motivation to get started.

We believe in a decentralized future. As cryptocurrency and decentralized finance evolve, everyday people will want a trusted home to purchase, store, and transact their digital assets. We want to empower everyone to become an investor in that future because, in 10 years, people may very well have the majority of their wealth stored in digital assets. 

Who is your target market? Why do you think your product will appeal to them?

Our target market are millennial investors, many of whom simply don’t believe in investing like the very people who built a broken financial system in the first place. There’s a lot of suspicion around whether investing is even worth it when financial crises happen like clockwork once a generation.

Donut offers a different path. The mechanics are more straightforward and more comfortable to commit to, and the assets themselves are entirely different from the ETFs, stocks, and 401ks that they’ve heard about their whole lives. When you invest in crypto, you invest in a financial system that’s fundamentally different from the status quo. This status quo seems to favor big corporations and institutions more than the everyday investor.

Who are your competitors? How are you different from them?

Consumers have plenty of options when it comes to investment apps. However, there are no crypto investment apps that are truly easy to use and make investing in crypto accessible to everyone. Just as Venmo took on Paypal by making peer-to-peer payments appealing and relevant to an everyday user, Donut is taking on cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase with user-friendly design and simple mechanics. 

What are the future plans with the product/startup? Any new features you are planning on?

We’re looking to expand the app to Android.

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