Yoni Assia, co-founder and CEO of eToro, entered the finance industry early. After receiving stock as a bar mitzvah gift, he became a successful trader while still in high school. Those profits largely disappeared as the dot-com bubble burst just as he was beginning his military service. That would turn out to be the first of a number of dramatic highs and lows Assia has seen in his career.
In 2007, trading platforms were “super complex. You always looked at multiple screens and lots of numbers,” Assia said. Manual processes were still part of opening a brokerage account, and it took several days. But eToro was founded on a different model, one where the user downloaded the software, funded the account with a credit card and started trading.The global economic crisis hit the following year, but the new company prospered in spite of it.
The portfolios of eToro’s 32 million registered users are visible on the platform, allowing customers to see what other traders hold and what their investment strategies are.