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Howard Lindzon is a Canadian
Author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...
,
financial analyst A financial analyst is a professional, undertaking financial analysis for external or internal clients as a core feature of the job. The role may specifically be titled securities analyst, research analyst, equity analyst, investment analyst, ...
,
technical analyst In finance, technical analysis is an analysis methodology for analysing and forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis use many of the same ...
and
super angel Super angel (or "super-angel") was a term used in the early 2010s to describe venture capital investors who had once been angel investors and subsequently raised small venture capital funds. Super angels share some characteristics of both angel inv ...
investor. Lindzon manages a
hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as sho ...
, serves as managing partner of the
holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...
Social Leverage, limited partner at Knight's Bridge Capital Partners, and is the co-founder of
StockTwits StockTwits is a social media platform designed for sharing ideas between investors, traders, and entrepreneurs. The company was co-founded by Howard Lindzon and Soren Macbeth in 2009. The company received the first Shorty Award in the 2008 fina ...
. Lindzon was named one of ''The Best Tweets for Your Money'' in 2013 by Barron's.


Background

Lindzon went to High School at Forest Hill Collegiate Institute where he graduated in 1986. He then went on to receive a Bachelor of Commerce from the
University of Western Ontario The University of Western Ontario (UWO), also known as Western University or Western, is a Public university, public research university in London, Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by resident ...
before moving to the United States to attend
Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
for a Master of Business Administration. Lindzon later received a Masters in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in 1991. While Lindzon was in high school, his parents divorced and his mother trusted him to manage their money. The first stock he purchased was
Clearly Canadian Clearly Canadian is a brand of premium flavored and unflavored sparkling and springwater, that is produced by The Clearly Food & Beverage Company Ltd., of Canada. The brand was founded in 1987 in British Columbia, Canada. Outside of Canada, it ...
and the loss from that trade impacted his philosophy of defensive money management and his own characterization of risk. Lindzon met his future wife, Ellen, through a blind date in Phoenix, Arizona and they were married on May 7, 1994. They currently reside in Phoenix, Arizona with their two children, Max and Rachel. Lindzon's first investment was in 1994 with a company named Pro-Innovative Concepts following graduate school. Phoenix resident Mark Scatterday created ''The Gripp'' that sold enough products to become a QVC hall of fame for the product. In June 1998, Lindzon began managing his
hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as sho ...
. His brokerage firm endured some financial hardships in 2002 due to his partner's "thievery and fraud". Lindzon was principal at Knight's Bridge Capital Partners but now serves as a limited partner. He utilizes funds for his work as an
angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...
.


Wallstrip

Wallstrip was a daily business satire news video podcast launch in October 16, 2006. Founder and sole creator of the podcast, Lindzon described his vision for the show in the first teaser of two teasers that were released two days beforehand. The initial concept was to highlight publicly traded companies whose stock was trading at or near an all-time high. In May 2007, the program was acquired by CBS's interactive unit at an estimated value of US$5 million. Just two months short of the two-year anniversary show, the offerings of episodes stopped abruptly with no prior announcements after the final episode on December 12, 2008. As the podcast was not generating the anticipated revenue, despite the popularity of the show, it appeared that CBS would no longer provide on-going funding. In all, around 500 episodes were produced during the 26-month period. Lindzon published his first book ''The Wallstrip (TM) Edge: Using Trends to Make Money – Find Them, Ride Them, and Get Off'' in 2009 discussing market trends, company research, and risk management.


2008 SEC short selling ban

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) initiated a temporary ban on short selling on 799 financial stocks from September 19, 2008 until October 2, 2008 in an effort to slow the bear market. Lindzon was an opponent to the short lived SEC short selling ban in 2008 calling it "a disservice to investors and market participants." "I think the market was well on its way to a crash and I think it would have ended a lot faster if they hadn’t intervened this way," Lindzon said. "For people who were really doing good work on Wall Street to get punished like this, it's a shame that their models went right out the window." " An assessment of the effect of the temporary ban on short-selling in the United States and other countries in the wake of the financial crisis showed that it had only "little impact" on the movements of stocks, with stock prices moving in the same way as they would have moved anyhow, but the ban reduced volume and liquidity.


StockTwits

Lindzon was an early user of Twitter but once passed on the opportunity to invest in the company. Lindzon still ended up with shares of Twitter due to his investment in BetaWorks when Twitter acquired Summize for its search engine. The idea for the company came from a 2008 blog post where Lindzon suggested that Twitter would be great for stocks and markets. StockTwits began in 2009 with Lindzon and Soren Macbeth by utilizing Twitter's
application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...
(API) to integrate StockTwits as its own "highly graphical platform of market news, sentiment and stock-picking tools." StockTwits received the first annual Shorty Award in the 2008 finance category. Time magazine listed StockTwits as one of their 2010 "50 Best Websites". StockTwits was named one of the "top 10 most innovative companies in finance" in 2012 by
FastCompany ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan We ...
. StockTwits utilized what some have called "cashtags" to identify a stock ticker symbol, similar to the Twitter
hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...
, as a way of indexing people's thoughts and ideas about a company and the stock. Twitter incorporated the "cashtags" into their platform in 2012 effectively "hijacking" the StockTwits idea. In response to this announcement, Lindzon blogged that "It's interesting that Twitter has hijacked our creation of $TICKER i.e. $AAPL". He went on to note that "You can hijack a plane but it does not mean you know how to fly it."" Lindzon sold all of his Twitter stock in 2012 as a result of this controversy. As of 2011, the number of monthly visitors to StockTwits had tripled over traffic from the previous year to over 100,000 users. Lindzon encourages new traders to spend time on StockTwits learning the language. He says that "You don’t learn Spanish in one day, and you’re not going to learn how to invest in stocks in one day. Treat it like a language." Lindzon coauthored the book ''The StockTwits Edge: 40 Actionable Trade Set-Ups from Real Market Pros'' with Philip Pearlman and Ivaylo Ivanhoff to assist new users with getting the most out of the service. Lindzon was named one of ''The Best Tweets for Your Money'' in 2013. Later that same year, Lindzon invested $50,000 from his hedge fund to follow traders as a part of a "social investing and social leverage" collaboration with Ditto Trade and his own StockTwits network. As of June 2013, StockTwits has raised $8.6 million in venture capital but has not yet made a profit. Fifty percent of the company's revenue comes from financial data sold to clients including Bloomberg L.P. and Google. Lindzon believes a "cultural change" is needed for the large financial institutions to embrace this technology and that change may take as long as five years.


Mentoring

Lindzon is highly accessible and provides formal and informal mentoring to entrepreneurs. DreamIt Ventures is a startup accelerator program that includes Lindzon as a mentor. He also mentors start-ups as part of the Techstars program.
Networking Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...
is a priority for Lindzon. Networks include both real collaborators but could mean access to his Twitter network as he did for
James Altucher James Altucher (born January 22, 1968) is an American hedge-fund manager, author, podcaster and entrepreneur who has founded or cofounded over 20 companies. He has published 20 books and is a contributor to publications including ''The Financial ...
in the launch of his 140Love
online dating Online dating, also known as Internet dating, Virtual dating, or Mobile app dating, is a relatively recent method used by people with a goal of searching for and interacting with potential romantic or sexual partners, via the internet. An onlin ...
business. The 2010 LeWeb international technology conference hosted Lindzon as the keynote speaker. Lindzon spoke on ''why there's never been a better time to build a business'' at The Next Web Conference 2011.


Angel investor

Lindzon is an
angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...
and the managing partner for
holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...
Social Leverage. Social Leverage invests in web businesses that are early in their development. eBay bought rent.com in 2005 for $415 million. Lindzon had been an early investor in rent.com.
LifeLock LifeLock Inc. is an American identity theft protection company based in Tempe, Arizona. LifeLock's system monitors for identity theft, the use of personal information, and credit score changes. LifeLock was acquired by computer security compan ...
, an identity theft protection company offering services intended to detect fraudulent applications for various credit and non-credit related services, received funding from Lindzon in 2007. Ticketfly was started in 2008 with funding from Lindzon in concert with High Peaks Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners and another angel investor Roger Ehrenberg. Lindzon sold his interest in limos.com, and
Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...
purchased golfnow.com in 2008. Lindzon has invested in
Betaworks Betaworks is an American startup studio and seed stage venture capital company based in New York City that invests in network-focused, consumer-facing media businesses. Its hybrid investor/builder model has led to both investments in fast-growi ...
and with them like he did in supporting TweetDeck.
Disqus Disqus () is an American blog comment hosting service for web sites and online communities that use a networked platform. The company's platform includes various features, such as social integration, social networking, user profiles, spam and ...
is an online discussion and commenting service for websites and online communities that uses a networked platform that received funding from Lindzon in 2008. UserVoice received funding from Lindzon in 2009 to continue development of their
customer engagement Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer (either B2C or B2B) and an organization (company or brand) through various online or offline channels. According to Hollebeek, Srivastava and Chen's (2019, p. 166) S-D lo ...
tools. Their customer feedback aggregation tools were moved into the mainstream with this additional financing. Holding a previous investment in
bit.ly Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for use in social networking, SMS, and ...
, Lindzon decided to increase his investment to assist with the company's growth in 2010. InternMatch provides internship services for students, employers and educators. The site offers free internship searching, an intern blog, and a library of internship and job-search resources designed for both students and employers. InternMatch's mission is to "Help students find and explore great internships with a focus on leading technology companies and non-profits." Lindzon provided funding support for growth of the company in 2011. UsingMiles is a Techstars graduate startup that aims to make it easier for travelers to aggregate their loyalty program rewards in one place. When Klout was looking for investors in 2011, Lindzon was one of the people interested. BillGuard watches and alerts users when credit card
hidden fees False advertising is defined as the act of publishing, transmitting, or otherwise publicly circulating an advertisement containing a false claim, or statement, made intentionally (or recklessly) to promote the sale of property, goods, or servic ...
, scams or billing errors are present in their accounts. This project, still only a
beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...
version, was supported by Lindzon in 2009. GoInstant was acquired by Salesforce.com in July 2012 for US$70 million. In 2012, Lindzon provided part of the $2M in funding to DailyWorth as well as serving as an advisor. Lindzon's interest in making data available lead to his support of Plexus Engine, doing business as Little Bird. Little Bird has been automating the process of finding and verifying research sources, making "lists, then aggregate the blog URLs, Twitter handles, and content published" by researchers. Plexus Engine was selected to participate in the
Portland Incubator Experiment The Portland Incubator Experiment, often abbreviated as PIE or PIE PDX or stylized as Pie, is a business incubator based in Portland, Oregon that provides mentorship and resources to select startup companies. Co-founded by Renny Gleeson and Rick ...
in 2012. Lindzon has been involved in funding many other start-ups including but not limited to: Foodzie, Life360, Simply Measured, Clarity, Lucky Sort, Seamless Receipts, Scopely, Colingo, Unbounce, LaunchRock, SendHub, Retrofit, Betable, Dekko, YieldBot, Embedly, New Hive, Buddy Media, Videolicious, Laffster, YCharts, Fanium, BlogTalkRadio, StationCreator, Skyscraper, TubeMogul, MyTrade, MaxMyInterest, Zentact. In 2013, Lindzon presented at AMP Capital’s Amplify Festival for angel investors in Australia.


References


External links



Lindzon's Message Archive at Stocktwits
howardlindzon.com
– Lindzon's website
Knight's Bridge Capital PartnersSocial Leverage
site lists all Lindzon's investments
Howard Lindzon
on Facebook
@howardlindzon
on Twitter {{DEFAULTSORT:Lindzon, Howard American business writers American financial analysts American stock traders W. P. Carey School of Business alumni Living people Writers from Toronto Technical analysts Thunderbird School of Global Management alumni University of Western Ontario alumni Year of birth missing (living people)