Talk:Stash (company)

COI edit requests

Hi! Stash has hired me to request some updates to this article. I understand there have been issues in the past with establishing neutrality in this article; I'm hoping to maintain neutrality while fleshing out the current text of the article commensurate with what is documented as notable in external sources.

• Add logo to infobox: logo = StashLogoPurple.svg
• Add to end of lead: Stash's mobile app provides micro-investing services encouraging users to invest small amounts of money incrementally.
• Add back in deleted History section, updated for neutrality and better references (some ref names already in use in article lead):

==History==
Brandon Krieg, David Ronick and Ed Robinson founded Stash in February 2015. Stash was launched as an iOS app in October 2015, and was made available on Android in March 2016. In March 2018, Stash claimed it had nearly 2 million customers and 5 million educational users, with about 40,000 new clients joining every week. That July, The Wall Street Journal named Stash one of its top 25 Tech Companies to Watch in 2018.
===Funding===
In August 2016, Stash raised $9.25 million in Series A funding, followed by $25 million four months later in Series B. Series C in July 2017 raised $40 million, and Series D in February 2018 raised $37.5 million.

• Rename deleted "Product" section to "Service", update sources and neutrality:

==Service==
Stash operates both a web platform and mobile apps for iOS and Android. Users can invest as little as $5 increments in fractional shares of stocks and over 40 exchange-traded funds (ETFs), organized by theme and industry. Stash also offers financial education, “Stash Coach” guidance, and automatic investing.
Stash does not charge commissions on investment purchases and sales or on account money transfers. Standard investment users are charged $1 per month for accounts with balances less than $5,000, while Retire users are charged $2 per month for accounts with balances less than $5,000. For both standard and Retire users, charges are 0.25% of assets per year for accounts with balances of $5,000 or more.
Users can invest in personal brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, Roth IRAs, traditional IRAs, and custodial accounts that allow adults to invest on behalf of minors. The company has also partnered with Green Dot Bank to offer banking services and financial guidance.

• Add categories: Privately held companies based in New York City, Technology companies of the United States

References

Due to my COI, I won't be editing the article directly. I appreciate any help or feedback. Thank you! Mary Gaulke (talk) 15:24, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry, MaryGaulke, but we don't add advertising copy written by paid agents to our project because to do so might violate the United States laws against native or deceptive advertising. Wikipedia does not tolerate promotion of any kind, and clearly promotion is what you are here for. If there is some significant error or omission of verifiable fact in the article please feel free to mention it here, with a note of the sources that verify it. Thank you, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:00, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: Thanks for your feedback! I want to be sure I understand what you're saying. Clearly there is room for COI representation on Wikipedia—that's why we have the edit request system in the first place. And I strove in my suggestions to provide third-party sources for everything and maintain neutrality in my writing. My suggestions have been incorporated into articles in the past—what makes this case different? In particular, I can't see how updating the logo and categories could be perceived as biased. And "History" and "Service" are both standard subject matters for articles like this. Could you please clarify? Thanks again! Mary Gaulke (talk) 08:18, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

MaryGaulke, I assume you've read the pages I linked to above (native advertising, deceptive advertising, promotion), and that those are clear to you? I assume that it's also clear that if you are being paid to change this article to please the company it's about, then you are not here to improve the encyclopaedia but to (try to) improve the image of the company – in short, to promote it. We do indeed have a mechanism for edit requests, and that can be used by paid editors, though it isn't why we have it; I wonder if you've actually read the relevant information pages – Wikipedia:Edit requests and Wikipedia:Simple conflict of interest edit request? May I draw your attention to two suggestions: "consensus should be obtained before requesting changes that are likely to be controversial" in the first of those pages, and "The best edit requests are... concise and to the point" in the second? I've added the two categories and the logo as you asked. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: Thanks for your response. I can assure you that I've read all the pages to which you linked and referred to them often during my 4.5 years as a COI Wikipedia editor. I can also assure you that I have a policy of only requesting changes on behalf of clients when I believe those changes will genuinely benefit Wikipedia and demonstrate encyclopedic value. My goal is not simply to please my clients; I tell them "no" often to preserve the integrity of my work here on Wikipedia. I don't believe any of my suggestions could be considered controversial apart from my disclosed COI, and I believe my requests were concise: I provided all the necessary information and formatting and clearly communicated what I was requesting. Regardless, I will revise the remaining requests and share again in an attempt to gather some form of consensus. Thank you. Mary Gaulke (talk) 18:42, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: Would you please clarify which parts of my request are controversial so I can make sure to highlight them when attempting to gain consensus? Thank you! Mary Gaulke (talk) 22:32, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

MaryGaulke, I'm not sure what can usefully be added to what I wrote in my post earlier in this thread, timestamped 21:00, 24 November 2018 (UTC) and starting "I'm sorry, MaryGaulke, but ...". I just can't see any reason why any volunteer editor might want to add pre-written advertising copy to Wikipedia, and I certainly can't see any policy that says we should do so if asked to. I can, however, see several good reasons for not doing so, some of which I have attempted to convey to you above. For another one, you might take a look at subsection 7, Simple listings, here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:35, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

revised COI edit requests

Hi! As noted above, I'm here representing Stash, hoping to flesh out this article stub while meeting encylopedic standards for notability and neutrality. As a result of the conversation above, I've simplified my requests for this article:

• Add to end of lead: Stash's mobile app provides micro-investing services, which permit users to invest small amounts of money incrementally.
• Add back in deleted History section, updated for neutrality and better references (one ref name already in use in article lead). I've shortened this to make it as uncontroversial as possible:

==History==
Brandon Krieg, David Ronick and Ed Robinson founded Stash in February 2015. Stash was launched as an iOS app in October 2015, and was made available on Android in March 2016. In March 2018, Stash claimed it had nearly 2 million customers and 5 million educational users, with about 40,000 new clients joining every week.

• Rename deleted "Product" section to "Service", update sources and neutrality:

==Service==
Stash operates both a web platform and mobile apps for iOS and Android. Users can invest as little as $5 increments in fractional shares of stocks and more than 40 exchange-traded funds (ETFs), organized by theme and industry. Stash also offers financial education, “Stash Coach” guidance, and automatic investing. Users can invest in personal brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, Roth IRAs, traditional IRAs, and custodial accounts that allow adults to invest on behalf of minors.

Stash does not charge commissions on investment purchases and sales or on account money transfers. Standard investment users are charged $1 per month for accounts with balances less than $5,000, while Retire users are charged $2 per month for accounts with balances less than $5,000. For both standard and Retire users, charges are 0.25% of assets per year for accounts with balances of $5,000 or more.

References

I'll be tremendously grateful for any help or feedback that can help us reach a consensus about how to improve this article stub. Thank you! Mary Gaulke (talk) 19:53, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

3O Response: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and summarizes notable subjects. I feel that the requested edits go into too much detail, and taking those matters out what's left is already present in the stub article. Specifically, mentioning which platforms the product runs on and the release dates for each, the rate of growth (according to a primary source), the fees for product use and a directory of services. We can't show the prices for every product mentioned on the encyclopedia; that would create an enormous workload to keep these updated. You might want to look at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, specifically the part about [product] directories.
For some areas where the article could be expanded, you could include some third-party professional reviews but for neutral point of view you would have to include negative reviews along with positive ones. (So along with the CNBC story maybe this 1-1/2 star review; some fees might be included here in the context of the review.) There seem to be sources on how Stash is targeting its usebase – again, not all positive. Potentially, you could write about investment in the company itself [1]. Stash commissioned a survey last month which has been cited[2] and there might be something to be included there. In other words, look at the general notability of the company, not just promoting its products. – Reidgreg (talk) 21:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: Thank you for the thoughtful, detailed response. I've been trying to benchmark against the depth of coverage in comparable articles, e.g. Mint.com, Qapital, TransferWise, You Need a Budget and Robinhood (company). Qapital has GA status and notes both platform availability and, briefly, the approximate dates of those releases. You Need a Budget and Robinhood (company) also include that info. Mint.com includes user numbers sourced to a primary source, but it's the only one of the five that does that, so perhaps that isn't a useful comparison. Incorporating the CB Insights source you linked, we can update that figure based on what appeared in SEC filings:

==History==
Brandon Krieg, David Ronick and Ed Robinson founded Stash in February 2015. Stash was launched as an iOS app in October 2015, and was made available on Android in March 2016. As of August 2017, Stash had nearly 1 million customers, with about 1,200 new clients joining every day.

I included pricing details only to provide transparency around how the company generates revenue, but happy to avoid specific numbers to avoid the issue of needing future updates. An abbreviated version of that section might read as follows:

==Service==
Stash operates both a web platform and mobile apps for iOS and Android. Users can invest as little as $5 increments in fractional shares of stocks and more than 40 exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Stash does not charge commissions on investment purchases and sales or on account money transfers. Instead, users are charged monthly or annual fees based on their account balances and the types of accounts they use.

Of course, of the comparable articles, only TransferWise discusses fees, so that last sentence may not warrant inclusion.

Again, using Qapital as a sort of yardstick, maybe a "Reception" section is the best way to synthesize reviews of the service:

==Reception==
In a February 2018 review, CNBC praised the app's automation and ease of use. In December 2018, The College Investor stated, "we honestly don’t recommend Stash because of the high fees" and awarded the service a score of 30/100.

References

Let me know what you think. Again, I appreciate your time and care. Mary Gaulke (talk) 01:07, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to address what the COI editor has stated as "non-controversial", the following claim:

Brandon Krieg, David Ronick and Ed Robinson founded Stash in February 2015. Stash was launched as an iOS app in October 2015, and was made available on Android in March 2016. As of August 2017, Stash had nearly 1 million customers, with about 1,200 new clients joining every day.

1. Brandon Krieg, David Ronick and Ed Robinson founded Stash in February 2015.: This is non-disputed, factual information. The information is encyclopedic because it contains elements which are not open to debate. The date which something is made available on is fixed, and cannot be changed — nor does it deal with a metric which is changed over time, i.e., it is non-controversial.
2. Stash was launched as an iOS app in October 2015, and was made available on Android in March 2016.: Again, non disputed information that cannot be changed over the course of time.
3. As of August 2017, Stash had nearly 1 million customers, with about 1,200 new clients joining every day.: Here is the crux of the issue. This figure is controversial for several reasons. What metric is being applied here? Is this figure coming directly from the gatekeeper itself? Not to malign the company, but one must admit that if the figure is not coming from the gatekeeper, nor from an independent source, one has to ask what possible motivations the company would have to misrepresent these figures. These figures being imprecise and originating from a questionable source (the company itself, through an interview) converts directly into a question of controversiality (e.g., what day in August was that number reached? Is it reliably and concretely evident that 1200 users joined every day? Or is that an average? An average based on what, August alone?) The COI editor's belief that these figures would represent anything other than controversial is not understandable.

Regards,  Spintendo  01:05, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Notes

Understood. Thank you for the thoughtful analysis, Spintendo. Mary Gaulke (talk) 15:31, 21 February 2019 (UTC)