Brooke Roberts

And at that time,

there was just so much chat in the media about smashed avocado and like millennials not being able to afford housing and kind of all that negative rhetoric that really felt like there was not much opportunity to get ahead or like really develop your wealth or feel like you could even have a concept such as wealth development.

And I had a career in finance and banking and then growth tech.

So like,

working at Xero and had really cool experiences there but when I was studying finance and when I was working in banking I just learned so many things that you know I learned the concepts behind some jargon out there and and learned all this stuff I was like oh more people need to know this like that you can negotiate term deposit rates and mortgage rates like I don't think many people know that you know and why there's like this like there's a lot of disinformation out there or a lot of

information that's not readily available or like and it just didn't seem that fair and so there's actually six of us that founded Sharesies and the original idea came from one of the other co-founders Sonia who was like had $50 and she's like I just wish I could invest $50 every week in a in a fun way and feel like I could get ahead rather than just feel like all I've got is to spend it on dinner or it's just you know like it's just not going to do much for me and um

And she got talking to Leighton, who's another co-founder, who actually started an investment club with 13 of his friends when he was 17 years old, putting $50 away each week.

And they just put $50 away each week.

And at that time, there wasn't investment platforms like there are today.

So it was going to a bank account and then they were able to save up some money to buy a cow and then a herd of cows because they're in regional areas of New Zealand.

And then, you know, and it's exploded into commercial property and a sustainable chicken farm in the Philippines and all these things, all from starting with $50 each week.

And there's a group like Keeping Each Other Committed.

We were like, whoa, wouldn't it be cool if that was more available to more people?

We didn't have to just be Leighton's mate to be able to have that opportunity.

And that kind of sparked something for us.

And then we had the other co-founders have developers and design experience.

And

We all came together going, okay, we know that there's an opportunity here and we have the skills we need to get a business off the ground in this world.

We knew we could do something.

But we didn't go straight into just creating Sharesies.