New game in town
Small news on a fresh internet startup in the financial markets in Amsterdam. New startups are being launched every other day in attics everywhere, but this one may be just a little different. BUX is not only a Hungarian blue chip index but also a new firm. Website is Bux.io – a domain name from the Indian Ocean.
The men behind Bux are veterans in the industry. Nick Bortot earned his stripes at Binck, where he left as board member last year. Egbert Pronk was trading manager at Curvalue and Van der Moolen. Another co founder, Robbert Bos, has been working in the games industry and there’s Evert Littooy for the marketing. Still a job opening for a Technical Lead. Their LinkedIn profiles are fancy for sure.
Their plan seems to be to create games based on the real financial markets, with real money to be won or lost. Because, after all “life is a game“. Well, I don’t buy that philosophy – but there certainly is money to be made in gaming. Estimated Candy Crush revenue is a modest $633.000 per day, so why not some Candy Bux Saga.
Sceptic
However, without knowing any details, I remain sceptic. Trading the real markets with stocks, options or cfd‘s is exciting enough for most people – will take a lot of effort to make them switch to some sort of trading game.
Scam URL
Last and least, their domain address hasn’t been the smartest choice. While the .io extension may be perfectly cool when .com is sold out – no reason to buy a notorious scam address from a wealthy prince in Nigeria. A mistrade. A website isn’t an office, it’s a unique brand. Lots of explanation to do.
How is former Van der Moolen wizard Frank ‘the GSFS bird’ Vogel doing nowadays?
He was building a house in Aerdenhout for/with his father. Is GSFS still going?
Probably they received a very special price offer for the URL..
Frank ‘the GSFS bird’ and especially his wife Myriam are busy launching one failing business venture after another. There was the franchise chain of Portugese chicken restaurants (I’m not kidding) that never got off the ground. A logical progression from dividend stripping for sure. Then there are the beauty salons, the world needs more of those. And Myriam likes to do the interior design for all of their own businesses so that she can build a portfolio of happy clients on the website of her interior design business. Unfortunately for her, she has no other clients but herself. Well, you get the idea.
Thank goodness the GSFS Foundation is still going strong (rebranded into the Myriam Frank Foundation). The world is a better place.
Ah, then this must be her home:
http://www.allinliving.nl/en/referenties/exclusive-dune-villa-aerdenhout-the-netherlands/
and this must be her:
http://www.allinliving.nl/en/uw-team/myriam-vogel-2/
Give her some credit for trying. Speaking of trying, Buxman is good in coming out looking fancy in their new website, but it takes just more than fancy titles and website to have a successful ongoing business; btw 10 bucks says they didn’t google ‘bux.io’ before buying it, poor bastards, is their business model based on http://www.buxinc.com/
Off topic, TBricks advertising the fact that Nino have switched to them too now. Any rumours from the ISV space? TBricks seem to be gaining momentum these days…
Looks quite interesting and rather unique. I always thought Egbert was a nice chap so I hope him and his co-founders do well with their new venture. Good luck!