With Peggy Mangot, former Google Executive and Co-Founder and CEO of SparkGift.com
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Peggy is a veteran in the consumer financial services industry. Previously, Peggy led strategic partnership management at Google focusing on Google Wallet. Peggy has held senior roles with Visa, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Allianz, and Accenture. She began her career as a financial markets & payment system risk analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
She co-founded a company called SparkGift after repeatedly noticing a common problem among friends and family – the desire to give a meaningful gift that can truly add financial value, without wasting money on meaningless toys and gift cards. So SparkGift empowers people to give gifts – specifically fractional stocks and index funds – that can truly impact their loved ones’ lives. Rather than just creating a moment of delight, SparkGift believes a gift can be a more meaningful, longer lasting experience. And even a small investment gift of $20 can go a long way towards empowering someone’s financial future.
SparkGift is aimed at people who value savings and investment over consumption and spending – especially to kids who have pretty much everything. So Peggy and her team decided to make it easy and fun to gift investment assets – without the hassle of opening up brokerage accounts, etc. Her company supports 6,000 stocks and funds, lists the most popular stocks and index funds, offers a Gift Registry, and creates digital gift certificates. The process is technology-enabled and significantly easier to setup. And because SparkGift supports fractional shares, gifts could start as low as $20. On top, SparkGift charges a flat $2.95 fee and 3% of the gifted amount that is paid by the gift-giver. After that, the gift receiver has to pay nothing to maintain the account. Moreover, accounts are setup for automatic dividend reinvestment so the account can grow over time. So here’s something else to consider the next time you need to give someone a gift – specially to kids and young adults who could benefit from a nice stock growth account.
