fractional-shares
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Robinhood made trading free. The rest got complicated.
A zero-dollar commission opened the door to investing. Keeping customers inside has taken billions in capital, a paid membership, and a growing collection of financial products.
The company behind the buy button
Apex Fintech Solutions began with a clearing firm in trouble. It became the machinery that lets other companies make investing look simple.
Rohit Mulani and the price of getting in
A $30 trading fee helped set Rohit Mulani on the road to Gotrade. His next chapters, at TrustInvest and Alpaca, return to the same question: how do you make investing easier to enter?
Public grew up. So did its investors.
The app that made investing social is building a brokerage that can follow instructions. Its bigger bet: customers will bring their whole portfolio along.
Altruist found the expensive part of advice: getting it done
Independent advisors do not lack things to say. They lack hours to act. Altruist built a custodian around that problem - and now Vanguard has agreed to buy it.
Stockpile put Wall Street on the gift-card rack. Then came the bill.
A stock gift card made ownership feel as ordinary as a birthday present. Stockpile’s journey from supermarket racks to family subscriptions - and its 2026 wind-down - shows what happens after the first investment.
Phuoc Tran Keeps Building for Vietnam's Next Investor
After logistics and a 500,000-agent sales network, Phuoc Tran turned to a harder delivery problem: making markets legible to Vietnam's new investors. Anfin's evolution from fractional stocks to commodity derivatives reveals an operator who treats access as a product discipline, not a slogan.
Anfin
Anfin is a Ho Chi Minh City-based fintech building a mobile multi-asset trading platform for Vietnam's retail investors. By offering fractional shares - letting people buy slices of blue-chip stocks for as little as 10,000 VND (about $0.40) - plus ETFs, commodities, social features and bite-sized education, it lowers the barrier for a young, first-time investing generation. Backed by Y Combinator (W22), Goodwater Capital and Global Founders Capital, Anfin has crossed a million app downloads and roughly 100,000 funded accounts.
Gotrade
Gotrade is a Singapore-based, YC-backed fintech that lets people in 140+ countries buy fractional shares of US stocks and ETFs commission-free, starting from just $1. Often described as a 'Robinhood for Southeast Asia,' it uses nine-decimal-place fractional trading to make high-priced US equities accessible to first-time international investors on a mobile-first app.
Masterworks
Masterworks is a New York fintech that lets everyday investors buy fractional shares in multimillion-dollar blue-chip paintings by artists such as Basquiat, Picasso, Warhol and Banksy. Founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Scott Lynn, the company buys individual artworks, registers each as a public offering with the SEC, and sells shares for as little as $20, then holds the work for several years before selling it and distributing proceeds. It reached unicorn status in 2021 after a $110M Series A and has grown to more than one million members.
Scott Lynn
Scott Lynn is the founder and CEO of Masterworks, the New York fintech that files paintings by Basquiat, Banksy, Picasso and Warhol with the SEC and sells shares of them to retail investors. A serial internet entrepreneur who started his first company at 15 in Kansas City, he was already a top-100 U.S. art collector before he decided the art market itself needed a public offering.
Hapi
Hapi is a Peruvian-founded, YC-backed fintech that lets people across Latin America invest in U.S. stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies from their phones - with zero commissions, no minimums and an account you can open in about five minutes. Built to knock down the high fees and paperwork that historically kept Latin Americans out of the U.S. markets, Hapi has grown from 10,000 users in 2022 to a reported 500,000-plus clients across roughly 20 countries.
M1
M1 is a Chicago-based personal finance platform that bundles investing, borrowing, and spending into a single app it calls 'The Finance Super App.' Built around customizable 'Pies' that let people design a portfolio of stocks and ETFs and automate contributions and rebalancing, M1 aims to give self-directed investors the kind of automated, low-cost money management once reserved for the wealthy. Founded in 2016 by Brian Barnes, the company has raised more than $300 million and surpassed $10 billion in assets under management.
Alpaca
Alpaca is a developer-first brokerage infrastructure company providing APIs and a self-clearing custody platform that lets fintechs, banks and trading apps embed access to US stocks, options, crypto and fixed income for customers in 40+ countries. Often called the AWS of finance, it powers more than 300 financial institutions and millions of brokerage accounts globally.
Yoshi Yokokawa
Yoshi Yokokawa is the co-founder and CEO of Alpaca, the San Mateo-based API-first brokerage infrastructure company that powers over 300 global fintech partners across 45 countries. A former Lehman Brothers analyst and forex trader turned repeat entrepreneur, Yoshi built Alpaca from a YC W19 startup into a $1.15 billion unicorn after raising a $150 million Series D in January 2026. His vision: a 'Global Financial OS' that makes investing borderless, accessible, and developer-native.
Dusko Kelez
Dusko Kelez is the Peruvian founder and CEO of Hapi App (YC W21), a San Francisco-based fintech that lets anyone in Latin America invest in U.S. stocks and crypto with no broker commissions and no minimums. After leading operations at Grin Scooters across seven countries and noticing that Latin Americans had no easy way to access global markets, he co-founded Hapi in 2020 with engineers Piero Sifuentes and Billy Caballero. Today the platform serves over 500,000 users in 20 countries, has raised $4.3M from Y Combinator and leading investors, and is celebrating milestones on the NASDAQ tower in Times Square.