Miguel Armaza’s Post

I stopped by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to interview Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO & Co-founder of Alpaca, an API-first brokerage infrastructure company that has raised over $170 million to serve 200+ financial institutions across 40 countries, with 5 million brokerage accounts on their platform. Their mission is to help global investors get access to stocks, ETFs, options, and fixed income in the US and beyond. They are backed by Derayah Financial, 850 Management, National Investments Company (NIC), Unbound, Spark Capital, Social Leverage, Positive Sum, Tribe Capital, Y Combinator, Portage and more. Our conversation took place in the NYSE's podcast studio, a great backdrop to talk about infrastructure that's connecting global investors to US markets. Yoshi had flown in from Kyoto the night before, and despite the jetlag, his energy was high and his passion was palpable. Special thanks to our friends at NYSE for hosting us! In this Fintech Leaders pod, we discuss: - Balancing data-driven decisions with entrepreneurial instinct - Why Alpaca's self-clearing model slashes dependencies, cuts costs, and accelerates innovation - Why API-first companies need a sandwich approach: bottom-up developer community and top-down enterprise sales - How Japan's economic history shaped a generation of domestic entrepreneurs while global founders like Yoshi remain the exception… and lots more! Link to episode ▶️ https://bit.ly/4jU5WH0