Most people open a brokerage account and then freeze. Every blog and analyst says something different, and the default move is to guess or hand your money to someone else.
Sean Tepper lived that. He started investing around 2010, made some money, lost some money, and hit the pause button in 2015 before it got expensive. Then he went looking for what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were actually doing, and concluded they were not picking stocks on feel. They were starting with math.
So he built the math into a spreadsheet, tested it privately for five years rather than five weeks, and turned it into Tykr: a platform that rates stocks like a traffic light. Green means on sale, gray means watch, red means overpriced. Duolingo style lessons sit underneath it, because the goal is not to hand someone a signal, it is to make them an investor who does not need one.
And he is raising. About $600K in on roughly a $1.3M target, running on WeFunder, funded largely by the same retail investors who already pay for the product. He walks through why he chose angels over VCs, why he intends to keep 100 percent control, and the Kohler and Costco story behind his plan to reach a million subscribers.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro: the red light
00:25 The 90 second pitch: Tykr, 13,000 customers, 50 countries
01:16 Origin story: 20 years in tech and the 2015 pause button
02:17 Phil Town, Buffett and Munger, and the math behind value investing
02:43 Five years of testing before writing a single line of code
03:13 Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha, Simply Wall St and a thin field
03:41 A year to build, live in 2020
04:09 Bring customers into the build early (lessons from GE and Kohler)
04:58 Broker connections and the point of activation
06:10 Why not be a wealth manager or a broker? Choosing the wide moat
07:06 Only five or six reliable analytics platforms exist worldwide
08:16 The biggest surprise after 1,000 customer calls: it was never returns
09:04 Confidence is the product, education is the delivery
09:59 Where ChatGPT, Claude and TikTok gurus actually fit
10:28 Open source calculations and the guy who quit trying to rebuild them
11:19 The one thing AI cannot do: sync your broker (Benzinga, Nov 2025)
12:29 Protecting IP: $10,000 with a patent firm and why he walked away
13:26 Hiring a second firm to audit for the publisher exclusion
14:48 Why WeFunder: the partner who said \"your customers will invest in you\"
15:44 Use of funds and the three SaaS metrics that make every dollar work
16:57 The customer: 18 to 65, 70/30 male to female, 50 percent US
18:38 Sports betting, prediction markets, and why he sees them as a feeder
20:01 Fundraising status: $600K raised, $1.3M target, cash flow positive next
20:59 The Kohler playbook: $15 million of product through Costco in one day
21:40 Affiliates as the growth engine, and the road to 1 million subscribers
22:13 Bootstrapper to fundraiser: how the founder role has to change
22:52 Angels over VCs, keeping 100 percent control, and smart money
24:26 What keeps him up at night, and the six week breaking point
25:22 Hiring an affiliate agency and getting work off his plate
26:14 Where to start: tykr.com, 30 day free trial, $15 a month or $99 a year
CONNECT
Tykr, 30 day free trial: https://tykr.com Invest in Tykr on WeFunder: https://wefunder.com/tykr
Disclaimer: For informational and educational purposes only. This is not investment, legal, or tax advice, and it is not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security. Any Reg CF offering may only be made through the company's official Form C and offering page filed with the SEC on a registered funding portal. Review those materials, including all risk factors, before investing. Early stage investing is illiquid and carries a high risk of total loss. All returns, metrics, projections and valuation figures discussed are the speaker's own numbers or illustrative examples and are not guarantees of future results. Past performance does not indicate future results.
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