This Company Offers A Product Like Customizable, No-Fee ETFs

Hardeep Walia is the co-founder and CEO of Motif Investing, a concept-driven trading platform. Customers build their own motifs, or thematically-weighted baskets of stocks traded in a single transaction.

Walia recently joined Benzinga’s #PreMarket Prep to explain how his company could potentially disrupt the ETF sector.

Efficiency And Personalization

The idea for Motif came when Walia, a former executive at Microsoft Corporation MSFT, wanted to invest in the mobile Internet sector around 2009.

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"I love to trade, and one of the frustrations I had is that I didn’t have a lot of time," he said.

When he called friends to ask how he should invest in mobile Internet, Walia explained, everyone from hedge fund workers to people who knew nothing about the markets told him to just buy Apple Inc. AAPL.

"That wasn’t a very fulfilling way to invest in mobile Internet," he said. "It didn’t include the cell phone tower companies, the chip companies, the screen companies."

So he built the very first motif with a friend.

Acting With Urgency

Motif lets customers either build their own motifs or buy one the company has already built.

Walia said the company is about to announce 75,000 motifs that have been built by customers.

"The power of what we do is that we can launch a motif literally the next day," Walie explained. "So the day after Hurricane Sandy, we had launched a ‘Rebuilding After Sandy’ motif."

Walia said the service has been described as a "customizable, no-fee ETF."

Walia also talked about the oil market and his experiences at Microsoft.

Check out his full interview here:

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