We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Deon Hargrove a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Deon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

During the pandemic, like a lot of people, I started investing. And almost immediately, I ran into a problem: everything felt either too risky, too confusing, or too untrustworthy. You had YouTube “gurus” promising quick wins, forums full of noise, and platforms that let you trade real money before you understood what you were doing, and I remember thinking “Why is there no place to actually learn this safely?”
Watching videos and reading books can only take you so far. It is like working on cars. Yes, you can read all the books and watch all the videos about it, but until you get that hands on experience your confidence and skills won’t truly grow. So the idea for SmartInvestors was born: A place where you can learn, practice, and connect—without the pressure of losing real money.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I always had passion for business and technology, as kid I dreamed of becoming a real-life Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne minus the trauma they went through. That is why I pursued a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and A master’s in computer engineering. While trying to figure out the direction I wanted to take my business I remembered what my college mentor told me to do “Focus on something you are passionate about, find a pain point in it, and create the solution.”. At the time investing was and still is one of my biggest passions, I noticed a lot of the pain points I was having were common among investors of all levels and acted as barrier of entry. With that being clear I decided to leverage my technical expertise to create my first product, SmartInvestors. SmartInvestors is an investing simulator created to provide a safe environment for all investors to learn investing, practice their skills, and test strategies. This was achieved through three key ares:
1. Traditional learning:
a. Users can browse through educational catalog to learn as much as they can on investing.
2. Simulation
a. Users can get hands on experience through our simulator. Use virtual money to buy virtual assets and understand in a risk free environment what they are doing, why one strategy failed, and why one worked.
3. Community
a. Through community aspect, users can help each other grow. Ask and answer questions, form groups, share strategies, and contribute to the app by uploading content that can enhance others’ experience.
The thing I am most proud of is how much SmartInvestors has helped people get to investing and grow. Already I am hearing people talk about how it removed the fear of them losing money from lack of knowledge or trusting the wrong people and it allowed them to fail and learn risk-free. That is what it is all about, I want people to use my app and fail at minimum 100 times. I want them to fail so much that they stop failing, but more importantly I want them to understand why they failed, so they don’t repeat it. The reason being is that you learn more from failure than you do success. Success can sometimes be a beautiful lie, omitting important details. While failure is the ugly truth. it tell you everything whether you want to hear it or not.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Honestly, my story of resilience isn’t one big defining moment—it’s been a series of constant challenges. Building SmartInvestors has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. There have been times when things simply didn’t work: features breaking, backend issues, and long nights spent debugging problems that should’ve been simple. On top of that, I’ve had to figure out how to earn trust and attract users in an industry filled with skepticism, where many people have already been burned, and that’s something people don’t talk about enough. In the investing space, you’re not just solving technical problems, you’re also overcoming distrust, noise, and hesitation. There were moments where I genuinely questioned whether it was worth continuing. But every time I stepped back, I realized the problem I’m solving is real. People need a safe place to learn investing. They’re tired of guessing, losing money, and not understanding why. So instead of quitting, I adjusted. I simplified where needed, focused on what mattered, and kept building—one improvement at a time. If there’s one thing this journey has taught me, it’s that resilience isn’t about having everything figured out—it’s about continuing forward when you don’t, and right now, I’m still in that process—still learning, still building, and still pushing through.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

That It’s ok not to have all the answers. I had it in my head that I should be fully involved in every aspect of my business doing everything, and while it is possible, it’s not optimal. There were things along the way that I simply did not have the expertise in, and to meet deadlines I had to outsource. That was tough, because I felt I should know at least 50% of what I am outsourcing. I was trying to justify it as cost saving, but that mindset was costing me more. It was costing me time, and unlike money you can’t get back time. The perfect example is social media. I used it daily as viewer, so I thought advertising my business on it would be simple. All I had to do was make posts and connect with influencers in my niche, simple right? NO!! Social media and marketing in general are whole another ball game, and I was not equipped for them. I had to swallow my pride outsource that part of the business, and it turned out to be the best decision I could have made.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://smartinvestorsapp.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smartinvestors01/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@smartinvestors0?lang=en