retail-investing
(15)
Sharegain Put the $3 Trillion Lending Desk in a Box
The London fintech turned a clubby, manual corner of capital markets into software that brokers and banks can switch on for ordinary investors. The trick was not a shinier trading screen - it was rebuilding the plumbing, pricing it only when assets actually lend, and then teaching clients how to get customers to opt in.
Behind the Markets Sells Retail Investors the Stocks Wall Street Skips - But the Real Product Is Conviction
Dylan Jovine built a Florida research shop around a sharp observation: big funds ignore thousands of smaller companies. The opportunity is real, the subscriptions can cost thousands, and the uncomfortable part is knowing when conviction has become marketing.
Option Alpha Put Options Trading on Autopilot - Then Made the Software Free
A scrappy options blog swallowed a coder-first automation startup and emerged with a stranger, smarter pitch: the bot is not here to predict the market. It is here to stop you from improvising in it.
The $10 Door Into Wall Street's Private Room
Fundrise started by letting neighbors buy a piece of a Washington property. It now manages billions across real estate, credit and venture - an ambitious attempt to give ordinary investors institutional-style access without pretending private assets are as simple as stocks.
Trading Academy Is Selling the Hardest Trade: A Repeatable Process
The nearly 30-year-old education company has moved from rented trading desks to hybrid classrooms, practice tools and broker-connected software. Its real product is not a hot tip - it is a system for deciding when not to trade.
Abyan Capital
Abyan Capital is a Riyadh-based, app-first robo-advisory and savings platform that lets everyday Saudis open an investment account in about three minutes and put money into Sharia-compliant portfolios of sukuk, real estate, and local and international equities. Founded in 2021 and regulated by Saudi Arabia's Capital Market Authority, it was the Kingdom's first robo-advisor and has grown to more than 100,000 funded portfolios and over SAR 1.4 billion in deposits, backed by an $18M Series A led by STV.
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.
Astor
Astor is an SEC-registered AI investment advisor built for retail investors. It connects to a user's existing brokerage accounts, reviews their holdings across performance, risk and diversification, monitors markets around the clock, and delivers tailored research and recommendations through a chat and voice interface. Founded in 2025 by ex-Nubank and ex-Stripe/Robinhood engineers, the company went through Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch and raised a $5M seed led by Monashees.
FrontPage
FrontPage is a Bengaluru-based social platform where India's retail traders and investors gather to discuss stocks, share trade ideas, and learn from one another. Backed by Y Combinator (S21) and a roster of fintech founder-angels, the app pairs stock-specific discussion forums with market tools - Nifty heatmaps, FII/DII data, NSE option chains, and a TradeLab paper-trading sandbox - and is now building an AI-assisted stock trading platform for India.
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.
Luable - MejorCDT (YC S21)
Luable is a Colombian fintech running MejorCDT, a marketplace that lets everyday savers compare and open fixed-term deposits (CDTs) from many banks online, commission-free. For banks, it is a cheaper, faster funding channel than opening branches or hiring salespeople. Founded in 2021 and backed by Y Combinator (S21), it has processed over USD $30M in deposits and is expanding from Colombia into Mexico and the Caribbean.
Simply Wall St
Simply Wall St is a Sydney-based fintech that turns complex financial data into simple, colorful visuals so everyday people can research and analyze stocks with confidence. Best known for its 'Snowflake' infographic that grades companies across valuation, growth, financial health, past performance and dividends, the platform covers 120,000+ stocks across 90 global markets and is used by more than 7 million investors worldwide. Founded in 2014 by Al Bentley, it operates a freemium subscription model and has grown from a visual research tool into an integrated portfolio and community investing platform.
Tickeron
Tickeron is an AI-driven financial marketplace that packages quantitative research into automated trading tools for retail and professional investors. Founded by PhD mathematicians, it builds pattern-recognition engines, trend-prediction models, and a growing fleet of AI trading robots powered by its proprietary Financial Learning Models (FLMs). The pitch: compress thousands of hours of investment research into minutes, and let non-experts trade on statistical probabilities instead of gut feel.
AfterHour
AfterHour is a San Francisco social trading app that lets retail investors link their real brokerage accounts and post their actual positions - in full dollar amounts - to a public feed under a pseudonym. The twist is verification: you can talk your book, but the app proves you're holding what you claim. Founded by Kevin Xu, the WallStreetBets folk hero known as 'Sir Jack A Lot' who turned roughly $35,000 into millions during the meme-stock era, AfterHour combines verified portfolios, live stock chat rooms, and real-time trade signals into one community. It raised a $4.5M seed round led by Founders Fund and General Catalyst in June 2024.
dub
dub is America's first regulated copy-trading platform, letting everyday investors mirror the portfolios of top traders, hedge-fund managers, and even politicians with a single tap. Founded by 23-year-old Harvard dropout Steven Wang and headquartered in New York, the SEC-registered, FINRA-member, SIPC-insured app has surpassed 1 million downloads and raised $47M total, including a $30M Series A in May 2025 co-led by Notable Capital and Neo.