Stakeholder Labs wants to know who owns you

In 2023, a hotel company offered its shareholders something they could sleep in. Selina Hospitality’s Members Club connected stock ownership to room discounts, loyalty points, and other perks. The archived page read like a travel promotion, until you reached the eligibility rules: a minimum number of shares, held for at least 90 days.

There was a button beside the invitation: “Connect Brokerage.” Behind it sat Roundtable, software from Stakeholder Labs. The button joined two identities that companies have often managed separately: the person who buys the product and the person who owns a piece of the business.

That small connection is the starting point for a larger story. Stakeholder Labs has gone from helping companies recognize shareholders to helping executives talk to them on podcasts. Its proposition now spans data, software, advice, and the daily work of keeping a conversation going. The through-line is surprisingly human: ownership does not automatically produce acquaintance.

A loyalty card meets a stock certificate

Matt Joanou arrived at the problem by way of customer rewards. At Cal Poly, he joined the team behind Punchd, a digital loyalty startup subsequently acquired by Google. Later, at Reddit, he worked on partnerships and watched investor communities become consequential. In a 2023 interview, he singled out AMC’s shareholder popcorn program as an inspiration. A familiar loyalty mechanism had wandered into the stock market.

Stakeholder Labs launched in 2022; public profiles identify Joanou and Andres Focil as co-founders. The early idea was to give other companies the technology to connect ownership with participation. A shareholder could receive something relevant to the business they had backed, while the company could learn more about that person’s relationship with its products.

By February 2023, the company had announced a $4.2 million seed round led by Seven Seven Six, with Greycroft, Elefund, Caffeinated Capital, and other investors participating. That number describes capital raised to build the business. It is not the price of a Roundtable installation, or evidence that a rewards campaign pays for itself.

The spreadsheet came first

The unglamorous part emerged at an industry gathering. After the 2023 NIRI annual conference, Stakeholder Labs described conversations with investor-relations officers who were still working out what to do with their retail owners. Some had a NOBO list: a list of non-objecting beneficial owners, containing names and physical addresses. Having that file did not give them a usable digital campaign.

The company described an onboarding process that compared those records with the issuer’s existing customer database. Where records matched, a reachable group could emerge. Teams could study customer behavior, design outreach, and invite shareholders to verify their holdings digitally.

This is the first documented point of friction in the story: the handoff from a list to a relationship. A dashboard presumes someone has already assembled useful data and decided what to do with it. These conversations suggested that some customers needed help earlier. The work included interpretation and execution before it could include automation.

Three moons, one verification button

Selina made the mechanism visible. Its August 2023 program used Roundtable to connect shareholders with its existing Luna loyalty program. Benefits depended on the size and duration of holdings. The archived tiers had names that belonged on a cocktail menu: Blue Moon, Pink Moon, Black Eclipse.

For a company with a consumer product, the appeal is easy to follow. Ownership becomes another way to segment customers. A relevant benefit gives a shareholder a reason to identify themselves; the resulting connection gives the company a way to communicate again. Stakeholder Labs reported encouraging early participation, while explicitly saying a conclusive case study would take time.

The distinction matters. Enrollment demonstrates that people will enroll. To establish greater loyalty, a company would need to observe what those people subsequently do. A sensible experiment would track verification, participation, repeat activity, and the cost of the benefit separately. Otherwise, a successful promotion can be mistaken for a lasting change in behavior.

Then the software company picked up a microphone

A verified identity solves one problem. An explanation worth listening to solves another. In March 2024, Morning Brew and Stakeholder Labs announced After Earnings, initially hosted by Austin Hankwitz and Katie Perry. Early interviews included executives from Celsius, BARK, and Sprout Social.

In the launch announcement, Joanou described encountering company leaders who wanted to engage retail shareholders but did not know where to begin. The show offered a ready-made format and a distribution partner. That is a useful explanation for the expansion into media: even a company with the right software still needs something to say, someone to say it, and somewhere people will hear it.

“put a face to the ticker”

Matt Joanou, describing After Earnings on NYSE TV, August 2024

The line gets at what the format supplies. An executive can explain a business in connected sentences, beyond the compressed language of a presentation slide. The investor can hear how that person reasons. A podcast appearance also becomes a piece of content that can travel through several channels.

Affirm supplied the practical example

In September 2024, Affirm announced a shareholder fireside chat with its then COO and CFO, Michael Linford, moderated by Perry for After Earnings. Shareholders could submit questions. Affirm named both Say Technologies and Stakeholder Labs in the process, and planned distribution through podcast platforms, YouTube, and its investor-relations website.

That example puts the pieces in order: invite questions, connect them to shareholders, bring them into an executive conversation, and distribute the result. It also shows that investor tools can coexist. A company does not necessarily replace every part of its communications system to add a new format.

In March 2025, Stakeholder Labs announced another show partnership, this time with Stocktwits. The format drew on investor discussions across social platforms and direct questions from verified shareholders. Affirm CFO Rob O’Hare appeared in the premiere. The feed itself had become part of interview preparation: a way to learn what people wanted explained before putting an executive in front of a microphone.

The product now includes doing the work

Today, Stakeholder Labs presents itself as a retail-investor advisory, software, and data partner that embeds with public-company communications, IR, and marketing teams. The emphasis is ongoing execution, quarter after quarter. Read alongside the early conference notes, that positioning suggests a business shaped around customers who need both tools and help operating them.

Its market overlaps with established IR platforms such as Q4, which offers websites, CRM, earnings tools, and shareholder intelligence. Say overlaps in verified shareholder questions. Stakeholder Labs’ distinctive combination brings customer-loyalty thinking together with shareholder verification and executive media. The breadth is the point: identify the audience, understand its concerns, and help the company respond.

The model fits a company willing to maintain that relationship. It becomes harder to justify if investors have little reason to identify themselves, the benefits are irrelevant, or the team cannot sustain useful communication. Verification also describes the people who participate; it should not be treated as a complete portrait of everyone who owns the stock.

The copyable lesson is modest. Start with a reachable group and a specific question. Give people a reason to respond. Use what they tell you to improve the next interaction, and measure the work against its actual purpose. The hotel perk and the CFO podcast serve different needs, but both begin with the same act: acknowledging that someone on the other side is an owner.