Hello friends,

It's me Ramsey. I'll be brief.

We're relaunching Uptrends stock market news monitoring! Our first version wasn’t quite what we wanted it to be. So, we fixed it.

We've listened to the feedback (from many of you!), we've learned from some early missteps, and we're really excited to show you the new version. If we do it right, it'll completely change how investors stay on top of the news cycle. 🔥

First, we'd love your support through this new chapter. Over the next week leading up to our new launch, I'll be sending a sequence of emails about our journey here, the new Uptrends, why it's important, and how you can help.

Uptrends Origins

Now... the story of our humble beginnings:

We officially started Uptrends almost exactly a year ago.

Well, technically the idea came a few years earlier, spurred by a college project about trading stocks based on news sentiment. That project taught us that news has an impact on stock prices, and we figured we could make something to help people track it.

By the end of 2022 we resolved to actually build it. We hacked together version 1 (originally called Babbl). It was a rough proof of concept, a simple site that monitored a few thousand finance news sources and tracked which stocks were mentioned most often. 👇

It was basic, but we shipped it anyways. And within a few months we had our first 1,000 signups! Clearly there were other people out there who wanted to track trending stocks like we did. For us, that was enough validation to justify a bigger version.

After a major overhaul and 4-5 months of development, v2.0 was launched in July (under the new name Uptrends). It was complete with all the bells and whistles we could think up. It tracked trending stocks, sectors, and topics. It measured the sentiment about stocks in news. And it ranked important sentences about each stock.

We figured it would be the greatest invention since sliced bread 🍞

And at first, the vital signs felt assuring. We got to 5,000 signups by August, and 10,000 by the end of September. More and more people kept visiting our site! But eventually we began to realize something was missing.

Soon enough the initial shiny-ness began to dim and signs of a poorly built product arose... bugs surfaced, new user growth faded, and none of our paid users were sticking around much longer than the 7-day trial period. They were all leaving, and worse yet, we couldn't figure out why. 😅

We realized whatever we'd built wasn't quite it. And more importantly, we knew that we needed to continue pursuing it.

That brings us to part III of the story, about recognizing our shortcomings (and fixing them!).

What We Got Wrong Last Time

Now, what did we get wrong with Uptrends last time? In short: we didn't listen to our users.

Our first version was simple, it tracked which stocks were trending in online chatter. It was a compelling idea, but it lacked substance -- there wasn't enough there to really be valuable.

On our second version we over-built. It was a beefy interface that tracked more metrics, things like the overall sentiment of market news, and mentions of stocks, topics, and sectors over time. It felt closer, but again we'd missed the mark.

We missed for a few reasons:

• It wasn't actionable -- it did a good job of telling you what was trending, but a poor job of telling you why
• It wasn't personalized -- it presented a broad view of the overall market, but made it impossible to focus in on the trends affecting your stocks
• There was too much friction -- you had to log onto the site daily to really see what was trending; no better than logging onto any traditional news site.

In hindsight, we'd engineered solutions to problems people didn't actually have. 🤦‍♂️

So, we did what any struggling startup realizes they should've done sooner: we went and listened to our users (what a concept!)

We sent emails, scheduled usability test interviews, created a survey for canceled subscribers, and implemented session tracking to see what parts of the site people actually used.

One by one the data points began to come in, and a clearer pattern emerged: people didn't need Uptrends to tell them the news, they needed it to tell them when it mattered and why.

Our users wanted a better way to manage investments without doom-scrolling through news. Our job was to surface tradeable news insights better than anyone else could.

This was inspiring, it felt like the core value proposition we'd been circling around all along. With this revelation in mind, we set out to build version 3.

And Now... The New Uptrends

Building Uptrends over the past year has certainly had its ups and downs. We've listened to your feedback, we've heard your support, and that's what makes today special. Because today we finally get to share the new & improved Uptrends with you!! 💜

First and foremost, the new Uptrends isn't about simply tracking trends in stock market news. Its about helping you focus on what matters most. So that you can be the best investor version of yourself.

To do that, we've prioritized 3 things with Uptrends v3: making news easy, making news personal, and making news actionable.

And in the spirit of the number 3, I want to show you 3 major upgrades we've added to make Uptrends more powerful than ever:

Here's a quick video 👇

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#1 Trending Stocks Leaderboard 📈 This makes news easy. Uptrends tracks which stocks are being talked about most online, so you spend less time drowning in headlines. Easily toggle between live leaderboards of stocks with surging news, or stocks with highly positive/negative sentiment. You can view the ranks over different time-windows, and even customize the leaderboard to focus on stocks in your watchlist or interests. No doom-scrolling required.

#2 Email news alerts 🚨 This makes news personal. You pick the stocks you want to monitor – Uptrends sends you personalized email alerts when it matters (and only when it matters!). Change in price? Positive sentiment spike? Bankruptcy rumors? FDA approval? Customize the news you want to be notified about, and Uptrends does the rest.

#3 Personalized AI Summaries ✨ This makes news actionable. No longer will you need to piece together the over-arching opinion about a major stock event. Our powerful AI parses hundreds of articles about any alert or topic, weighs positive and negative outlooks, and synthesizes actionable summaries to help you decide what's next. Want the overall consensus on GameStop's upcoming earnings? Or the ramifications of Boeing's Max 9 issues? We've got you covered.

All in all, the goal here is to make trading the news easier than ever.

And I'm so excited we get to roll this out to all of you! We'll be incrementally adding more over the coming weeks, so stay in touch and let us know what you think.

Now before we part, I have one favor to ask of you: if you've followed along this far, help us out by sharing our story with your friends and network. 🤗

The easiest way to do that is by liking/commenting or sharing part I, part II, or part III of this story on my LinkedIn.

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Cheers,

Ramsey & Sam from Uptrends

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