The Ledger
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Hecker: Trade Republic sold 75% of the company in €600K angel round
“And then we raised the 600,000 euros back then and sold 75% of the company.”
Hecker: Broken European pensions will force millions to invest over 20-30 years
“The statutory pension system we have in continental Europe is inherently broken, and that thesis suggests that basically in the next 2030 years, millions of people are going to start investing.”
Hecker: Trade Republic will become Europe's Charles Schwab or UBS
“So if we can just grow with these people, you're going to be the Charles Schwab, the UBS of Europe in 2030 years.”
Hecker: Trade Republic customers keep 40% of their private wealth on platform
“When we survey our customers we see that they have 40% of their private wealth with us. It's a KPI. No challenger bank comes anywhere close, right?”
Hecker: Trade Republic grew users and assets while Robinhood lost users in 2022
“So they are churning monthly active users, they're churning assets, they're churning activity. At the same time, TraderPublic has growing active numbers of customers, has growing assets, and has new savings plans. And by the way, nobody is quitting their savin…”
Hecker: Berlin lacks experienced scale-ready engineers for distributed systems
“If we really want to hire an engineer here in Berlin, who has seen large distributed IT systems for millions of customers, we don't find them here in Berlin. We need to go to the UK. We need to go to Sweden to maybe Russia to hire these people.”
Hecker: Trade Republic evaluates staff quarterly and exits non-performers
“By now I think we own our culture, which is very performance driven. Which if you don't accelerate, if you don't push you out we evaluate you quarterly. So we don't want to be this all everybody's happy a place. We want to be a place where those people who wan…”
Hecker: Trade Republic treats employee probation as an extended interview process
“Given the labor laws in Europe, we treat the probation period as an extensive form of interviews. So you're going to be evaluated all the time. At the end of your probation period, there's a committee. To really, that you can stay.”
Hecker: Founders rarely have a choice when setting early cap tables
“I think it's important to acknowledge that most of the time you don't have a choice.”
Hecker: Startup failure is always the founder's fault, not investors'
“If you fail, it's always your mistake, right? So you, you're not here to blame any other person.”
Hecker: Trade Republic prioritizes total assets and recurring deposits over trading spikes
“So eventually if we go to the board, The first one we talk about is assets, total assets. The second number is a recurring deposits over time, because we believe that's the biggest predictor for sustainable activity, because I'd rather have millions of people …”
Hecker: Influencers and ambassadors are now a top customer acquisition channel
“So this is something we underestimated. You thought those chaps are incredibly expensive and why would you give them so much money? And now it's a bunch of ambassadors who really drive your authenticity and are your biggest connection pieces to the audience, t…”
Hecker: European tech ecosystem has fallen behind the US and China
“I mean, we pride ourselves that Europe has grown a lot, but still relatively speaking has lost a track with America and China.”
Trade Republic bootstrapped until securing a banking license and 10,000 customers
“And so then we bootstrapped the rest between 2000 17 and 19. And once we had our banking license, And the first 10,000 paying customers, the VCs were all very excited all of a sudden and wanted to invest.”
Hecker: A brokerage business can be profitable with 80,000 clients
“As a brokerage business, you can be very profitable, meaning with 80,000, 100,000 clients, you can be a small profitable salary paying company, right?”
Hecker: Trade Republic gets 65% of customers through organic word-of-mouth
“So it's still today we get 65% of customers for free through organic growth and word to mouth.”
Hecker: European bank customers rarely churn, creating unexpectedly high LTV
“So basically, as Johan said, I think we overly underestimated how cheap we can acquire customers and how big the LTV is because another fact, which is a great pro and a contra in the European banking market is it's hard to acquire customers, but once you have …”
Hecker: Trade Republic refuses campaigns designed to boost trading frequency
“And actually we're not looking at it to it at all. So in any product manager It comes to me and suggest that we should an engagement campaign, helping people to invest more, more often, more frequently. We don't do it.”
Hecker: Trade Republic manages €35 billion in customer assets
“Trade public today has thirty five billion euros of assets because of that fact, because all these young people deposit money on a monthly basis.”
Hecker: Trade Republic's average account balance reaches €25,000 after three years
“So again, like the average account size is 9010 thousand euros. And this is the average. Basically, if you look into cohorts, which are with the company for two or three years, the average accounts is 25,000 euros.”
Hecker: Free ETF savings plans retain users through gym-subscription guilt
“So you subscribe to a ETF basket, so to say, and you put in money monthly, and this is something people almost never really quit, right? So you set up 203 hundred euros per month, and you just deposit money with this savings plan. And it's a bit like a fitness…”
Hecker: Trade Republic built 1-2 year relationships before adding VCs to cap table
“And I think any investor which we picked, we've built a relationship for over a year or two years, right?”
Hecker: Traditional European banks are Trade Republic's primary competition
“Our competitors are much more the traditional banks in continental Europe.”
Hecker: Trade Republic board meetings focus on problems, not successes
“Whenever we see something not working, that's the first thing we share with people, right? So we rarely talk about the things which work well. We most often talk about the things which don't work well.”
Hecker: Trade Republic banned the term 'micromanagement' in favor of 'hands-on'
“We killed the word micromanagement in the company, right? It's not allowed anymore. We call it hands-on, right?”
Hecker: German law forbids insurance companies from investing in venture capital
“Take Germany, right, where insurances are forbidden by law to invest in venture and all this stuff.”
Hecker pitched over 200 VCs before raising for Trade Republic
“Between, I think, 2015 and 19, I met over 200 VCs.”