So I’m here with Jeff Sekinger, the founder of Nurp, and as you guys know, since you’ve been watching the channel, I’ve been pretty involved with the Nurp team. In fact, I had customer relations come out and help me set up the $50,000 account that you guys have been documenting with me.
And I figured, what better episode to make than sitting with the person who actually developed this whole company from the ground up and just ask him a bunch of questions that you guys and myself had tons of skepticism about because when it comes to trading, everybody thinks stuff is too good to be true. So I know when I started out, I was bombarding him with questions, and I was like, you know what, let me just turn on some cameras and get it once and for all recorded for you guys to watch back at home.
So, hello Jeff, let’s do it.
I know your story; the people probably watching this may not know. So if you just want to introduce yourself quickly to them, and then I do have a bunch of questions I want to ask you.
Jeff Sekinger’s Early Career in Finance and Wealth Management
Growing up, I watched my parents evolve from their jobs and work on building businesses themselves. And I saw like the things that were, you know, you got from entrepreneurship and the things that you kind of got removed from entrepreneurship, such as, you know, when the economy and stuff was bad, like specifically around 2008, I realized that our family wasn’t as secure as we were, and that felt like I had a lot more stress in the household.
And I kind of related having money to less stress and more security and not having money to more stress and less security. So from an early age, I always wanted to get after the money. So I was always doing things. I went through college, and after I graduated with my finance degree, started working for the largest asset manager in corporate finance, specifically in wealth management because I thought I was going to be a private client advisor for different banks around the US.
And then I did that for about 18 months and realized what I just did that was not going to meet my goals. I wanted to make way more money; I wanted to see an impact on people, and I wanted to have more freedom, like the clothes I’m wearing, where I’m living, who I’m hanging around with, what car I’m driving, all that stuff. Left there in 2018.
From Corporate Finance to Entrepreneurship and Hedge Fund Development
I started my first company. I always had entrepreneurial ventures, but my first successful company that did over eight figures, I started that in August of 2018. And then started my first hedge fund in April of 2019. And then those companies both evolved and grew, and I still run both of them actually today. It was Orca Capital, which is a long-short digital asset hedge fund, and then we actually have a management company with a family of funds beneath it.
Launching Orca Capital and 0Percent: Foundations of Data Driven Investing
And then, also 0Percent.com, which is a funding company for early-stage entrepreneurs. And then, we had a product that we actually launched under one of our current brands, which was a trading product. People saw what I was doing with that, my hedge fund, and they saw different trades I was entering and assets I was looking at. And I was talking about those things online, and we got so many questions about trading and investing that I’m like, you know what, let’s just launch a product.
So I launched a $197 product where you can pretty much just see what I’m investing and trading and why and understand the process and data and analytics. And that quickly grew to 400,000 a month in recurring income. And I’m like, okay, well, there might be something here. And then we started to roll out different types of trading and investing programs.
How Discipline and Automation Led to Nurp’s Algorithmic Trading Success
And then we realized that the biggest issue was the discipline of trading behind people in general. It’s difficult, number one, to be disciplined, but number two, especially with trading, like if you’re entering a trade and you’re going to sleep, you can’t really manage and control that trade. We rolled out with an algorithmic trading program, and that just instantly had such great product market fit, and it just took off so quickly that we’re like, let’s just build an entire team around this.
So we built an entire brand, which is now Nurp.com, and that brand now has 55 people working for it and has close to 2,000 clients now.
Wow.
So yeah, I know it was just a bunch of things coming together all at one time and just a great product market fit and obviously the product’s been pretty stellar for a lot of people.
How Algorithmic Trading Software Evolved Under Nurp
So I actually did not know that you originally rolled something out previously before making Nurp.
Oh yeah. And what was that product?
I called it like, so this is in 2021, and people saw me like ripping six-figure leverage trades and buying these low cap altcoins and they would go up 10x, and people were like “dude, what are you, how do you know all this stuff? What are you doing? Show me how to do it.”
I’m like, you know what, we’ll just launch something inexpensive for people to learn. So it was called Crypto Close Friends, which is literally like a close friends thing on Instagram. And it just got way too big for close friends. So yeah, it was difficult to do the support and all that stuff.
So just through that, that’s what insinuated, I could actually develop a product around this and turn this into something that could be what it is today. Because here’s the thing with our fund; they have to be accredited investors to invest in our fund. Not everyone is accredited, and I want to give people the opportunity to potentially get to that accreditation status. And I know that the thing that I know best is trading and investing. So why not try to help some people with becoming a more profitable trader to build up capital to reach the accreditation status.
Building Nurp: The Algorithmic Trading Platform for Modern Traders
Did you have a particular way to build this out?
I know at a young age you said you correlated lots of money with lower stress and less money with high stress. What was the moment of, I should actually do this, and what was that driving why?
To do it for Nurp or just entrepreneur?
No, for Nurp because you went from funding which you still have to Nurp. I know you had a love of finance, but what was the reason to go all in on it?
I mean, just realizing that first of all, trading and investing products are extremely attractive because you can make money from anywhere in the world. There’s pretty much no cost of goods, and it’s an extremely hot topic because people always show the lifestyle and…
