We are 10 years old!!

As of January 2024, The Fifth Person is officially 10 years old!

What started out as a simple investment blog and a mission to help readers make better investment decisions has become a thriving community of investors who share a passion for value-growth investing and achieving financial independence. We’ve come to know so many of you (some of you since day one!) and we are so grateful for your support, kindness, and trust over the last 10 years.

When we first started this business in 2014, we had no idea what the future would bring. Would this even work? Did anyone want to read about the investment research we wrote? Would this passion project ever take off?

We worked at Starbucks because we couldn’t afford to rent an office. This was until our friends, Adam and Patrick, so generously offered us a room to use at their office. They didn’t ask for anything in return. We stayed there for a year until we finally moved into a co-working space and eventually our very own office.

As we continued to write about investing and financial literacy, we started being invited onto national radio in Singapore to share our views and opinions about the stock market. We also launched our own digital courses for people who wanted to learn how to invest for income and growth. Today, we’re happy to say that we’ve had nearly 10,000 members go through our courses and take action to achieve their financial goals.

In 2018, we won the SGX Orb Award for best independent investment website in Singapore. This was a major milestone for us as we’re deeply honoured to be recognised by Singapore Exchange for our role in empowering investors to make educated decisions with their money. We won the SGX Orb Award for the second time in 2020.

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to SGX for their support and recognition, as winning the SGX Orb Award twice has been an incredible honour for our team, inspiring us to deliver even greater value to the investment community.

In 2019, we donated US$15K to charity to build a school classroom in Kenya, Africa to help underprivileged children and families displaced by civil war and violence. Since our founding, a percentage of the company’s annual profits is set aside for charitable causes. It is our own little way of giving back to society, and we aim to continue donating as long as we can.

In late 2020, we launched our financial podcast on YouTube and Spotify to reach out to more investors in Singapore and around the world. Writing about investing is fun, but chit-chatting with your mates about investing and the latest happenings in the market is even better!

We now have over 41K subscribers on YouTube and growing, and we hope our podcast will continue to entertain and educate even more people, providing investment insights and analysis in the ever-evolving financial landscape.

We’re also active on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, so be sure to follow us on these platforms to stay updated with the latest financial news, investment tips, and engaging content that can help you make more informed investment decisions!

In July 2023, we moved to our brand-new office in downtown Singapore — complete with studio lights, cameras, mics, and podcast table — where we film the weekly episodes of our podcast. It’s nothing fancy. But it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come, from working in Starbucks cafés to a space of our own where we can continue to deliver our best work.

It’s now 2024 and a decade has just flown by. As the company has grown, it’s likewise inspiring to see the progress of our longtime readers and members as they embark on their own investment journeys. We take no credit for their investment wins; we can only do our best in providing financial data, research, and analysis, but they all achieved their results by taking consistent action.

And finally, the greatest growth over the past 10 years has been in our personal lives. We are now all happily married with kids, and our homes are enriched by the joys — and challenges — of parenthood. As fathers ourselves now, the importance of financial literacy and investing play an even greater role in building a brighter financial future for our loved ones.

To all our dear readers/listeners/viewers, supporters, family, friends, team members, interns, and everyone who has helped us along the way — we want to say a very heartfelt and sincere thank you! Your unwavering support and encouragement have been the driving force behind our journey, and we are deeply grateful for the trust and belief in what we do every day at The Fifth Person. Thank you for being a part of our story — and we look forward to another 10 years of growth, learning, and sharing our passion for finance and investing with all of you! ❤️

Sincerely,
Rusmin, Victor, Adam, Kenji 🙏🙏