Goldman Sachs has their eyes set finally on Millennials. They have this ‘Coming of Age‘ set of trends that they recently published.
They do not like to share information publicly without a reason that benefits them. To be honest, there is nothing actionable for public market investing from the infographics. The Washington Post actually has this millennial myth debunking piece.
Nike (long), UnderArmour (long), Disney, Netflix (long), Apple (long) and Google (long) have been and will continue to be the public market winners of this millennial financial phenomenon because they capture what I call the 8-80 demographic. Eight year olds and eighty year olds can’t live without their products.
Obviously Uber, AirBnb and Snapchat are private companies that have captured the ‘millennial’ attention bandwagon, but you can’t own them quite yet.
Uber and Airbnb could easily be public companies because their quarter to quarter growth is not dependent on just millennials. Snapchat will have to adjust their product and/or do acquisitions to get themselves in a position to be a public company. They will do this in 2015 for sure.
If anything, the millennial research is Goldman’s first attempt at ‘Buzzfeed’ type content. This is their evil/smart way to build brand amongst millennials. They are late to the game, but they have no real competition.
Goldman is not an 8-80 brand, but they could be. Goldman Sachs has an $82 billion market capitalization. They are underachieving. They know the numbers. Uber is already half their market cap. It is not enough for Goldman Sachs to just invest in these companies using the money of their private wealth clients.
In a few swift moves, they could buy Robinhood (investor), AngelList (investor), Kickstarter, Wealthfront, Betterment, Kensho (investor as is Goldman Sachs), Buzzfeed and even Twitter (long).
They would quickly be the largest company in the world and pretty damn cool. They would own the financial pipeline.
They won’t.
Which is why the financial sector is up for grabs and why you will be seeing way more infographic pieces from Goldman Sachs…soon BAML and Morgan Stanley.
That “interactive infographic-y” format feels like this is what Goldman thinks will connect with Millenials, but completely seems to miss the point. It looks fancy but is barely readable even on an iPhone 6+. I wonder how much they paid some design firm to put this together.
Great post! One correction: millennials who can’t directly invest in Uber, Snapchat, Angellist and Robinhood now participate by purchasing derivative contracts at Sand Hill Exchange — we operate the only futures market on private company valuation accessible to small cap nvestors.
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Gerrit Hall: Co-Founder, Sand Hill Exchange
info@sandhill.exchange
there will be a lot of money made on millenials, but even more on how they raise their kids. This is why ed tech outside of the traditional educational bureaucracy is a good space to investigate.
Got to love Gen Y. We are the future :)