Benzinga, a leading financial media and data company, and Stakeholder Labs, a startup helping public companies activate retail investors and drive market awareness, have partnered to launch Marketopolis, a new video podcast series that gives everyday investors direct access to how CEOs think about modern markets, retail investors, and digital communication. The series represents a significant shift in how public companies engage with individual investors, bridging the traditional gap between C-suite leadership and retail market participants.
Jody Rones, Chief Revenue Officer of Benzinga, emphasized the growing demand for unfiltered insight among retail investors. By partnering with Stakeholder Labs, we're creating content for the people behind public companies to speak directly to the individual investor, Rones stated. The collaboration addresses the convergence of company storytelling and financial markets engagement, with Marketopolis designed to provide transparency about long-term value creation, retail investor influence, and the role of social platforms in shaping public company narratives.
Matt Joanou, CEO and Co-Founder of Stakeholder Labs and host of Marketopolis, described the series as more than typical executive interviews. This isn't your typical one-on-one interview, Joanou said. It's a conversation that reveals how senior leadership thinks about their shareholders, capital markets, and growth. Each episode gives retail investors a seat at the institutional table. The series goes beyond quarterly results to explore CEOs' personal relationships with money and investing, including how they track their own stock performance, while uncovering the philosophies that shape their leadership approaches.
The first four episodes, presented in partnership with SoFi and available on YouTube and other platforms, feature Grindr CEO George Arison, Lovesac CEO Shawn Nelson, The Arena Group CEO Paul Edmondson, and Bark CEO Matt Meeker. Episodes premiere weekly across multiple platforms including X, LinkedIn, Benzinga.com and major podcast platforms, ensuring broad accessibility for investors seeking these insights.
Marketopolis fills an unmet need in financial media by providing retail investors with direct access to decision-makers while offering executives, communications professionals, and investor relations teams fresh ideas on next-generation approaches to financial communications. The series also serves aspiring leaders early in their careers by offering realistic perspectives on what it takes to run a public company or take a business public.
Benzinga's extensive distribution network will extend the show's reach to millions of investors worldwide, combining trusted financial coverage with authentic leadership insights. Partnering with Stakeholder Labs to launch Marketopolis is a natural extension of our mission to make markets more accessible and engaging, Rones added. Retail investors today care not just about quarterly performance but also the story, strategy, and values behind the companies they support. Marketopolis brings that world to life, blending storytelling with substance and offering our audience a rare opportunity to hear directly from leaders about the human and strategic side of running a company.
