YES! finally a innovative DUTCH web2.0 initiative!
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Welcome Zecco,
There are a lot of complaints that there are too little initiatives from the Netherlands. It’s true, the Dutch (wannabee) web2 initiatives are mostly clones of popular American services. It took us a long time, but, hold your horses, as of now WE (in Holland it is: We Won and They Lost) have our innovative web2.0 startup, Zecco!
Zecco is the Web2.0 solution to online brokerages as e-trade, tradestation, and Alex (Dutch), but its potential can even harm big corporations heavily depending on their broker fees (see also my note on this topic in the post about ABN AMRO) like ABN AMRO, ING, Morgan Stanley, etc. Zecco offers a zero dollar trading fee for its customers. It offers a lot more and you can read about it on Net dot
But what they also try to do is to tap into the collective wisdom of its users on what they think the stock index will do. Of course that kind of information is available within the big banks, but there is no way trading on it. Zecco is creating a community and that community is able to learn from its users to become more intelligent. This aspect is widely discussed in The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecky. What they will have in the end is a very specific (and easy to monetize) database. I can imagen the first ‘gold account’ already!
One thing is for sure, they have a great team of founders and investors. With Marcel Boekhoorn (famed for the Bakker Bart and Telfort deal), Morton Lund and Soren Kenner (former Skype investors with a shitload of experience in the industry) and the young and eager founders Jeroen Veth (formerly known as mr. Vice President Merrill Lynch) and Dino van Es (he made his money with the Dutch option brokerage IWB) on board they have experience in the financial world as well as the internet business. Let’s hope they have good developers too!
If I were the CEO of a big bank I’d keep an eye on Zecco and buy them of the market as soon as they find their criticall mass.
I’ll try to get an interview one day or the other with one of the founders, because there are a lot of questions on the table and its a very interesting sector to track.
Good luck guys!
