Software development for financial planning
Sharesight: share portfolio tracker for investors
At Abletech we have the skills and experience to design and develop custom software for any purpose.
Sharesight is one of the 100 most innovative WealthTech companies in the world. It’s a multi award-winning online investment portfolio tracker used by over 250,000 DIY investors and finance professionals in 100+ countries.
The challenge
The founders of Sharesight knew what they wanted. Father and son team, Tony and Scott Ryburn, had grown frustrated tracking their investments with spreadsheets.
There seemed to be a real gap between the very basic reporting tools that online brokers were offering, and desktop share portfolio software that seemed really antiquated, expensive and overly complex
— Scott Ryburn, Sharesight Co-Founder & CTO
With no alternatives available they wanted to build an online portfolio tracker. But they had no programming experience.
A lot of the more sophisticated products that we found were focused on compliance and they lacked decent performance reporting
— Scott Ryburn, Sharesight Co-Founder & CTO
The choice
To convert their great idea into a reality Tony and Scott needed experienced software development skills. They chose to bring in Nigel Ramsay and Marcus Baguley as founding shareholders.
We began our journey by bringing on board two highly experienced software developers as founding shareholders, which gave us the technical backing to bring our ideas to reality
— Tony Ryburn, Sharesight Co-Founder & Executive Director
Scott with Tony Ryburn outside the NZX
Scott and Tony Ryburn had visualised the end-to-end user experience for Sharesight’s users.
They started with a great idea, and they had mapped out a well designed user experience. This formed the basis of what was needed to engage and delight users
— Marcus Baguley, Abletech Co-Founder & Technical Director
The next steps were to build the product and test it on the market. As Sharesight was destined to grow, it was crucial that a timely and scalable platform was created that aligned with the emerging cloud technology and SaaS concerns.
Other factors that contributed to Sharesight’s success were holding on to the vision through thick and thin, learning from the market and continuously adapting to it, and selecting the right investors along the way
— Marcus Baguley, Abletech Co-Founder & Technical Director
Marcus Baguley and Nigel Ramsay (centre) with Scott & Tony Ryburn 2007
We know how to design and implement complex technical systems
— Nigel Ramsay, Abletech Co-Founder & AddressFinder CTO
The result
With Sharesight, you can ditch the spreadsheet. It’s a one-stop investment tracker to keep an eye on share prices, trades, dividends, performance and tax.
We developed a unique and innovative product, including sophisticated corporate action processing — the first of its kind for a product that was accessible to self-directed investors
— Tony Ryburn, Sharesight Co-Founder & Executive Director
Today Sharesight is its own success story. The platform leverages 20 years of historical data and syncs with both local and international brokers to track trades, dividends and corporate actions automatically. Sharesight will run performance and tax reports in one click, and connect to Xero via an award-winning add-on integration. Plus, you can share secure access with people such as your accountant, trustees and partner. Read more about Sharesight’s growth to 250,000 users.
Nigel and Marcus understood the needs and complexities
— Scott Ryburn, Sharesight Co-Founder & CTO
Scott (second from left) and team — Xero partner award winners
The Abletech difference
Ten years on custom software development is still Abletech’s bread and butter.
We take a beautiful user centric UX and deliver the magic in between that solves anything from a single business problem to enabling an entire business with a software platform. It has been absolutely fantastic to see Sharesight’s growth in NZ and internationally and I hope we can be involved with more New Zealand startups
— Marcus Baguley Abletech Co-Founder & Technical Director
At Abletech we’re excited to talk about creative and innovative software ideas. If you can dream it, we want to talk about it. Who knows where it could go!
