TRAILBLAZER
A mathematical mind Originally born in Bulgaria , Europeannative Vlad Tenev moved to Washington DC at the age of five with his parents , who were both employed by the World Bank .
Given his parentage occupation , it ' s hardly surprising that the young Vlad had a talent for numbers . He attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County , Virginia , and proved to be an excellent student , excelling in both maths and computer science . Indeed , prior to his foray into investment platform exchanges , Tenev also earned a BSc in Mathematics from Stanford , and even launched two fintech startups .
Once he ’ d graduated with honours from Stanford , he , along with his friend and college roommate Baiju Prafulkumar Bhatt , decided to try their hand at building a finance company .
Their first project , called Celeris , created high-frequency trading ( HFT ) software . But despite their enthusiasm , they dropped the project and decided to build a second , called Chronos Research .
Chronos sold lowlatency software to large investment banks and trading firms
– and was showing signs of success until 2012 , when they abruptly closed this business , too , and Tenev switched his attention to an unfulfilled area of the market where demand was increasing – namely , the consumer domain .
Essentially , he and Baiju decided that the younger population , although interested in entering the stock market , didn ’ t have a platform to cater to their needs .
Tenev creates an app The first step in addressing the marketplace gap was to design a portal that would be easy for young people to relate to , as well as use .
Tenev , who also had some technical experience , decided to design an app that would make the basis of their brokerage platform . The company ' s name comes from its co-founders ’ mission to " provide everyone with access to the financial markets , not just the wealthy ".
The idea was that their brokerage would offer commission-free investing and trading opportunities in ETFs , stocks , and cryptocurrency , thus making it an attractive prospect for small-time traders . He and Baiju published their app on
18 January 2023