At the 2026 NIRI Conference, I attended a session called “Navigating the Rise of Retail Investors” and took notes throughout. The session was moderated by Grant Bartucci from Autonomous Research, with panelists Elizabeth Krutoholow (VP of IR, Tempus AI), Matt Joanou (CEO, Stakeholder Labs), and Zak Mehan (Managing Director, FTI Consulting).
The panel covered a lot of ground: who retail investors are, how to reach them, what tactics are working, and how to make the business case internally. Here are the ideas and insights that stood out.
Grant Bartucci opened the session with a set of stats that framed the conversation:
Zak Mehan added another stat worth sitting with: the top 10% of retail investors hold 93% of all retail-held stock. That concentration has implications for how you prioritize outreach.
Matt Joanou set the tone early. He pushed the audience to stop thinking of retail investors as one group. They are a spectrum: day traders on Robinhood, long-term holders on Schwab, and everything in between. The platform, the timeline, the position type, all of it varies.
The takeaway is worth underlining: think in cohorts. Understand who is in your stock, how they got there, and how they consume information. A Robinhood user who trades daily is a fundamentally different audience from a Schwab investor who has held your stock for three years. Knowing the difference matters for how you communicate, what content you produce, and where you show up.
“Segment your retail investors into cohorts. Understand their platforms, their timelines, and their position types. Then tailor your approach.” — Matt Joanou, Stakeholder Labs
Elizabeth Krutoholow (IRO) was one of the most practical voices on the panel. At Tempus AI, a tech company with a higher-than-usual retail investor base, she has been in the thick of figuring this out.
A few things that stood out from her approach:
Retail investors have the same psychology as institutional investors. They want transparency and credibility. Do not talk down to them or treat them as a lesser audience.
Test your content with LLM tools before publishing. Her team runs shareholder letters through internal AI agents to see how they read and whether key messages come through. They optimize content for LLM readability. She also uses ChatGPT and Gemini to monitor how Tempus AI is being perceived, asking questions the way a retail investor would.
Shift from press releases to shareholder letters. They have been producing more shareholder letter-style content (three to five pages), which is more digestible than a traditional earnings press release.
Repurpose content into bite-sized formats. Her team works with the communications team to turn longer content into shorter videos and social posts. She is also a believer in podcasts, with snippets pulled for retail-facing distribution.
“Consider investor communications as a team sport. Lean on your colleagues in comms and marketing. They often have more resources, budget, and channels than IR.” — Elizabeth Krutoholow, Tempus AI
She was also candid about internal dynamics. Asking a CEO or board for retail investor marketing budget is a complex conversation. But you can start without budget by collaborating with teams that are already creating content and finding the IR / retail investor angle in what they do.
Tempus AI also has an AI chatbot on its IR website, similar to the ZIGUP example we covered in a previous newsletter. It makes it easy for anyone, retail investor or otherwise, to visit the site and ask questions about the company.
Matt Joanou was full of actionable ideas. Here are the ones that stood out.
Start with measurement. Before you build strategy, understand who your retail investors are, how many there are, and how much of your stock they hold. Search your own ticker on AI tools and social platforms. Be in the shoes of the investor.
Not every tactic is for everyone. Matt was clear: not every CEO is comfortable on camera, not every company needs to be on X. The key is to pick two or three tactics that fit your company and your leadership, put one or two people on it, learn from it, and scale.
Borrow resources from marketing. He has seen his clients loan marketing team members to IR for a quarter or two. These people already know social, already know how to message the company. For a few months, they focus on retail investors instead of consumers. In many cases, boards and CEOs are the ones pushing for this.
Block’s IR Twitter account. Block runs a dedicated IR account on X, separate from its corporate handle. It has become the single source of truth for Block’s investor narrative on that platform.
Bring retail investors and influencers into the room. Lemonade (insurance) invited top retail investors to investor day. Robinhood has invited YouTube finfluencers to its investor meetings and done live streams where they talk directly to retail investors. Opendoor has done similar YouTube live streams. If 30 to 50% of your stock is retail, these are shareholders who deserve to be in the room, and these formats create direct channels that do not exist in traditional IR.
Retail investor Q&A tools. Say Technologies (acquired by Robinhood) lets retail investors submit and upvote questions before earnings calls. We covered this tool in a previous article. It is a structured way to give retail investors a voice, and some companies respond in writing as well.
Talk to the young people in your company. Ask them how they invest, what apps they use, how they research stocks. It is free, fast, and gives you a direct window into retail investor behavior.
Shareholder letters. Matt stressed making them work for both retail and institutional audiences. Focus on things beyond numbers: products, people, strategy. Let regular investors get to know the company, not just the financials.
Zak Mehan brought the business case perspective. His point: companies usually get serious about retail investor engagement when a proxy fight hits. And at that point, the cost is enormous.
He brought up the 2017 proxy fight between P&G and Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management. P&G spent an estimated $35 million defending itself, with some estimates as high as $100 million. Trian spent roughly $25 million. It was the most expensive proxy fight in history, driven largely by the fact that retail investors owned about 40% of P&G’s stock. Reaching millions of individual shareholders required massive outreach across social media, email, direct mail, and robocalls.
Zak’s point: some tools to understand and engage your retail base cost seven figures. That sounds expensive until you compare it to tens of millions spent in a proxy fight with no existing retail relationships to lean on.
“Never waste a big crisis. If a proxy fight or challenge comes, use that moment to get leadership to invest in the tools and relationships that should have been built earlier.” — Zak Mehan, FTI Consulting
He also mentioned taking a CRM-like approach to retail investor engagement: tailored messaging per cohort, almost like one-on-one conversations at scale. It is not cheap, but the alternative is worse.
If all of this feels like a lot, the panel’s closing advice was simple: do not try to do everything. Here is what they suggested.
Run the AI test. Ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI Mode about your company. See what comes back. The gap between what they say and what you want investors to hear is your starting point.
Search your ticker on social. X, Reddit, StockTwits, TikTok. Understand the conversation that is already happening about your stock.
Pick two or three tactics. Not ten. Assign one or two people. Learn what works, then scale.
Lean on marketing and comms. Repurpose existing content. Borrow people. Incorporate the IR / retail investor angle into work already happening.
Make the website work. Clean, structured, easy for AI to read. Consider an AI chatbot or a dedicated retail investor section.
Talk to your board. If retail owns 30% or more of your stock, this is a board-level conversation. Frame it as risk management, not marketing spend.
As Matt Joanou put it at the close: “It’s never too late to start.”
At NIRI 2026, we ran a working session on building a one-page investment thesis and using it to structure your full investor presentation. We built one live for an IRO in the room, and she rated it 8 out of 10. If you couldn’t make it, the offer still stands. Book a 30-minute call with me and we’ll build your investor presentation outline live.
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