Startup of the week:
Who they are: Stockpile
What they do: Make investing in publicly traded companies easier and more affordable, by letting you buy stock in fractions of shares, with a credit card, right from the Stockpile app.
Why it’s cool: Meeting with a suit-wearing broker to buy and trade stock in your favorite company is so old-school. Millennials prefer using an app, according to online brokerage Stockpile. The Palo Alto-based startup offers just that — an app to make buying and selling stock more convenient and less intimidating, essentially democratizing the process.
Stockpile users can buy stock in fractions of a share worth as little as $1 if they don’t want to fork over the purchase price of one whole share. The company says it takes just two minutes to buy stock — using your credit card — on either the app or Stockpile’s online platform.
And the startup offers first-of-its-kind gift cards, making it easy to give loved ones stock in Apple, Facebook and more as birthday presents. You can pick up the gift cards at major retail chains like Target and Safeway.
The company was born out of co-founder Avi Lele’s frustration over not being able to find an easy and affordable way to give stock to his nieces and nephews as a gift over the holidays, according to the company.
To learn more visit stockpile.com.
Where they stand: Stockpile announced a new round of funding Thursday. The company has raised $30 million in its series B round led by Eight Roads Ventures.
What will they think of next?
Does your dog seriously need to chill out?
Have you ever wanted to give him a marijuana edible to calm him down?
Now you can. Well, sort of.
Treatibles makes a line of hemp oil-infused medicine for pets, available in a dropper bottle or a gel-filled capsule. The company has a line of blueberry, pumpkin and turkey flavored treats coming soon.
The products are “virtually free” of THC — the chemical that gets you high, according to the company. And they’re legal to ship to all 50 states.
Owner testimonials on the Treatibles website claim the products have helped Obi the cat with his aching joints, calmed Lucy the dog’s anxiety and soothed Sadie the dog’s pain.
Starting this month, Treatibles products will be sold at all 64 Pet Food Express locations in California.
To learn more visit treatibles.com.
Run the numbers:
It’s no secret that housing and rent prices are sky-high in the Bay Area. But it turns out that despite those painful prices, tech salaries still go further here than in most places in the country.
Tech workers in the San Francisco, Oakland and Hayward area have the fourth-highest average salary in the country when adjusted for cost of living, according to a recent study by Indeed Hiring Lab. Those workers make $125,233 per year, or $102,734 when factoring in living expenses. The San Jose, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara area comes in sixth. Tech workers there make $126,937 a year on average, or $102,286 when adjusted.
But the Bay Area was beat out by Charlotte, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia and Austin, Texas.
“The surprise is that San Francisco tech salaries go as far as they do,” the study’s authors wrote. “After all, the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment is more than $3,200 in San Francisco versus around $1,500 in Dallas and $1,200 in Phoenix, according to Zillow.”
