Fennel launched this year following buying Fennel.com from Telepathy
Firm helps investors find good ESG investments.
Once upon a time, performance and value metrics were the main considerations for stock investors, but as awareness of ecological and social issues has come to the forefront of politics and current events, some investors are adding fresh considerations to the firms they choose to align with.
A firm’s carbon footprint, its commitment to sustainability, or its human rights protections are now likely to sway some investors. The data to make these informed decisions is out there, but it can be hard to track down and relate it to a specific portfolio of stocks.
Enter Fennel. Fennel is the brainchild of founder Daniel Naim, who started working on the project in 2021 and moved on from his physics Ph.D. to build the firm.
Fennel makes environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data accessible to help users understand a firm’s commitment to each of these three topics. The information is analyzed and scored out of 100 by financial market data provider Refinitiv. Fennel then uses those scores to help its users make informed decisions regarding the firms they back.
While Naim began working on Fennel in 2021, it wasn’t until July 2022 that the firm launched to the public, offering early access to its platform to select individuals.
Prior to launching, data suggests Fennel had been associated with the Fennel-Financials.com and FennelMarkets.com domain names but moved to the exact-match Fennel.com.
As stated by Whois history, the firm secured Fennel.com from Nat Cohen’s Telepathy, Inc. in November 2021 following the domain moved from Dynadot to a Whois privacy-protected GoDaddy account. DomainInvesting.com’s Elliot Silver noted the move on Twitter at the time.
Cohen’s Telepathy Inc., which holds a portfolio filled with thousands of premium domain names, counting Focus.com, Ride.com, and NS.com, itself purchased Fennel.com from GoDaddy’s NameFind portfolio in 2018.
Alongside ESG data, Neim revealed in a LinkedIn post that Fennel would bring “power to the retail investor through shareholder voting,” something that another young firm, Troop, is also doing. Incidentally, Troop operates on Troop.com, an buyout story I heard when I interviewed its co-founder Felix Tabary in April 2022.
