Kapitall raises $7.3M for online investments

Online investing platform picks up a Series A round from Bendigo Partners, Strauss Zelnick, others

Stereo Scope, the parent company of Kapitall, an online investing platform, announced Friday that it has closed $7.3 million in Series A financing from Bendigo Partners (a New York-based firm focused on global technology-based financial services), media investor Strauss Zelnick, and Stamford, Conn.-based ES & Partner Ventures, which is affiliated with FalconView Capital Partners.

As part of the deal, Kapitall also converted more than $5.5 million of previously issued promissory notes. Bendigo partner Jarrett Lilien and ES & Partner Ventures’ Roy A. Ellis have joined Kapitall’s board.

Kapitall is offering “a whole new way to play the market” with a game-like drag and drop interface, stock analysis tools and an online community for comparing portfolios.

First-time Kapitall users, after registering with their email or Facebook account, can choose to either create a Practice Portfolio or Mirror Portfolio, or import their TD Ameritrade Portfolio.

Here’s a snapshot of my Practice Portfolio on the Kapitall playground, as the site calls it:

Once you’re done playing around with the Practice Portfolio, you’ll probably want to try out one of the more rewarding options on Kapitall. The Mirror Portfolio lets users track the performance of their existing investments and holdings by replicating them onto Kapitall’s platform. Users who want to monitor their actual TD Ameritrade Portfolio can simply import it into Kapitall.

As you might be able to tell from the screenshot above, Kapitall offers many tools for studying investments. There are charts, comparison tools, search widgets, number crunchers, an ongoing stock ticker and even a community to connect with online.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in New York, Kapitall was created by a team of designers, producers and developers from Apple, Bloomberg, Morgan Stanley, Pearson and Electronic Arts. Since launching in closed beta in late 2009, the application has grown its user base “exponentially” (though they won’t give exact numbers) and expanded its staff in New York and Seattle with executives from ShareBuilder and E*Trade.

“We are convinced the market is ready for a new investment platform that allows all types of investors to actively participate in the financial markets” said Roy A. Ellis, the CEO of FalconView Capital Partners. “Kapitall’s social media capabilities, as well as their analytical and investment management tools, position the company strongly in the retail investment market.”

A whole bunch of startups have been cropping up lately in the online investment space like Hedgeable (one of the Vator Splash NY finalists) and Betterment (which raised a $3 million Series A two weeks ago). Apparently there’s more to online investing than we all thought.