They Found a Problem Nobody Had Solved, Built It, and Scaled to 4.5M Users in Two Years | Ep. 325 with Martin Jensen and John Ramos CEO and CTO of Prop Firm Match

0:04Daniel Robbins:So I'm excited today to talk through something that I don't really know much about. And I'm an avid trader in the sense of I've been trading different things from stocks to crypto to other things throughout my lifetime. I remember when I was in elementary school and my teacher gave me, here's some fake money, put it into some stocks. and then we had a contest. I, in turn, put that money into the stock. And that's actually how I bought my first car back when I was 16 years old. So I'm always fascinated with new things. And John and Martin, you both are going to walk us through exactly what is PropFirmMatch doing and what we need to know.

0:49Daniel Robbins:So let's first off by that. What is PropFirmMatch? Thank you for that introduction. So Profit Match is a platform that compares prop firms. For those not familiar with prop firms, prop firms is a kind of company that lets traders trade with more capital than they have on their own. So it's a way for profitable traders to leverage their skills and trade with notably more capital than what they have access to on their own. prop firm match compares the best prop firms and have a strict vetting process to ensure that the prop firm is solid that it's has the right backing both in terms of of the team and the funding and do a comprehensive vetting of the firm before we decide if we're going to list it or or not so So traders know that they find only the best prop firms and can compare to find the best one for them on our platform.

2:01Daniel Robbins:And what type of trading is somebody doing where they need a prop firm? I would say most kind of really any kind of trading. You have prop firms that you have forex prop firms, you have futures prop firms, your crypto prop firms, you have stops prop firms. So regardless of what kind of assets you trade, there is prop firms that fits. And what is the importance of having a prop firm? Can you give me some more details around that? Like me, I'm new to this. I want to jump in. Why do I really need a prop firm? And then when I'm looking at it, because obviously you all are doing a lot of analysis. I imagine you have a lot of data.

2:44Daniel Robbins:What makes a good one versus one that's not as good? so to answer the question about why you need a prop firm first of all it's it depends on on you there are traders who have a lot of capital to to trade with and don't necessarily need to leverage their capital a lot but likely 99 % or more of those who do any kind of trading has too little capital to make a living out of it or make a good side salary out of it where problems let you go in with less capital. And if you have the skills, this is like any kind of trading. There is no magic formula you have to be good. It's only a small percentage that succeeds.

3:38But if you are among the best of the best, it's an opportunity to leverage your skills and earn more so there are several things that that decides if a problem is good or bad the most important thing is to pay out reliability you have to to know that if you follow the rules and you receive or you accomplish a payout you are actually getting that payout and and that's that's uh not a given with prop firms that are not verified that are not uh solid so that's where prop for match ensures that we vet the prop firms um comprehensively to to ensure that the traders can be safe on that aspect. Then there are several differences when it comes to pricing, when it comes to the rules that the different packages have in terms of how much profit you need to make and so on.

4:48So without going too much into the details, there is a lot of variations between the firms and also the solidity of the firms that we try best to cover very comprehensively on our platform. To give my take on prop firms and why someone would want to use a prop firm. So I remember when I first started trading, I needed$25 ,000 just to be an intraday trader, to day trade basically, which means just going in and out of trades multiple times a day. you needed a certain threshold and prop firms the barrier to entry the barrier to start trading and potentially make profit was much lower whereas you know you pay a one-time fee maybe a hundred bucks to get access to a specific amount of capital or you pay you know a subscription fee personally I use a subscription model for futures and I pay around$80 a month I think it's 89 and I have access to 50 ,000 if I pass the test, right?

5:55So with prop firms, what you do is you get like a test and if you pass it, you get access to make profit with a certain amount of capital. And the other reason I like prop firms is because trading is a bit of a difficult sport. So it takes time to get good. And rather than risking your own capital, like let's say I were to go into the market with$25 ,000 and I'm not a good trader yet, I could essentially risk that$25 ,000 and, you know, doing things like over-trading or, you know, things that are, that traders are susceptible to, which, you know, revenge trading or going on tilt, trading emotionally, all those things.

6:32But if you, if you pay a one-time fee and, you know, you fail the challenge, you know, okay, I just invested$50 to$100 and I lost that investment. Maybe I need to refocus, rethink how I trade and do better the next time. So I have a bit of skin in the game. I want to do good trading, but if I lose that investment, I know it's not going to be the end of the world. So that's why I like pro firms. You put a little bit of investment, it tests your skills. And if you pass the test, you pass the challenge, you get access to a lot more capital to make profit off that kind of leveraged capital that you get.

7:09Daniel Robbins:Got it. So it's trying to manage the risk is what I'm hearing. What are some things that people need to really look for when they're getting into this. What are the dangers? You were just saying some, John. Without it, you could spend money, and then you lose all your money, and you make emotional trades. Are there any sort of dangers that people need to look out for when they're getting into this type of trading or when they're leveraging prop firms in trading? Yeah, just to follow up on that thread, I would say the risk is finding a prop firm that doesn't pay you if you do well. That's like the worst thing that could happen.

7:48And that's why Prop4Match exists. For traders that put their hard time, their effort, even their money, even though it's not as much money, but they put their money, their time and effort to get good and pass a challenge. If at the end you pass and you make profit and you don't get paid, that's the worst. So that's why Prop4Match exists. So we only list the most reputable firms that will pay traders if they make profit after passing a challenge. challenge. So I'd say that's the biggest risk, but it's a lot, it's a smaller risk than let's say putting up 20 ,000 and not being a good trader and 20, 25 ,000, not being a good trader and then losing it all.

8:28So, you know, prop firms is a very, in the trading world, the trading industry, prop firms are, I'd say they're growing because the business model is attractive, low barrier to entry. And if I'm a good trader, I get access to more capital and I get to,

8:44Daniel Robbins:to profit on that based on what's happening right now in the world what's going on in different industries you obviously are seeing what people are doing and you have some i imagine some good data that you're tracking what types of trading are people looking at right now in this moment so we don't have any in trading data the data and the training isn't happening with us but what we do know we do know which which tickers and instruments people trade and currently gold is the most popular pair in the in the industry gold is heavily traded we have now had a lot of volatility in oil the recent days so traders go after after volatility So whatever moves, you will see increased trading activity in.

9:43And in addition to the pairs that are always well traded, such as the NQ and the Euro and so on, commodities and metals are traded heavily these days.

9:58Daniel Robbins:When you all got started, what was the thing that sparked when you were like, we have to do this? What was it? What happened in your life that steered you toward this? And why did you co-found it together? Yeah. So what happened was that both John and me were full-time traders. At that point, I had been trading for six years.

10:30and we're at the point where I was doing well I was consistently profitable and had been that for quite some time but I struggled scaling up so I made enough money to to make a living but not enough to to scale up my my trading and one of the fascinating things with with trading is that what you do with little capital is exactly the same thing that you need to do with big capital as long as you trade liquid instruments. The only thing that's different is the psychology, which is a big factor, but the actual clicking of buttons and strategy can be just the same, just with much more skin in the game.

11:20And so I got over the concept, I heard about the concept of prop firms and were really intrigued by that on a personal level to scale up my own trading. So I reached out to John, who had the same passion for it. and when we were looking for prop firms they were really difficult to find out which prop firms that were reliable which we were confident would pay out and so on and also to know which firms that suited our style there were no such tools so we decided to build it knowing that there had to be a lot more traders than just the two of us in this situation so we decided to build a platform where we would showcase just the best firms and show objective metrics so traders could could use that to base their decision on so that's that's where it all started uh yeah yeah martin we were part of the same trading community and uh we met there and uh yeah we had the same martin pitched the idea and i was like this this makes a lot of sense and i I was using a prop firm at the time and still am.

12:40A lot of traders in our community were using prop firms. So yeah, it was kind of a no-brainer for me. And I had the technology to build kind of the initial site and a lot of the things we needed. So Martin and I, we got started pretty much right away.

12:55Daniel Robbins:So it sounds like the business thrives on community or it kind of creates a community because you're in a community. I know that the trading community is always very strong. And I like that people collaborate with one another and they want to win together. So when you had this scale and as you're growing this business, sounds like you have to cultivate the community because that's a part of it. Obviously, there's also a lot of trust involved because people need to trust you. I think always in any trading space, trust is huge. Transparency, like all these things are important. How, as you've grown in scale, have you consistently tried to also uphold those things at the same time?

13:38So as you're saying yourself, the trust and transparency is key for us. so when we launched in in 2023 one of the things that made us different from the the sites that were around comparing prop firms was that what we put on the site were only based on objective metrics and that model is something we have uh hold steady since since then we don't do any besides the initial vetting of the firm we don't do any reviews there was no way for the firm to to pay themselves to a good rating or anything like that so we showcase the objective facts what it costs what the the profit targets are and so on and then instead of us doing any kind of reviews we let traders do the reviews so we have a system where our support is verifying every single review manually and the trader has to have been traded with the firm so we verify that they actually have been trading with the firm so it's real experiences so now we have almost 10 000 verified reviews from traders that have been trading with the various firms on our site and that's what makes up the the ratings so we are taking ourselves out of of the um the consideration of uh of what's the best firm and and so on and let traders decide themselves based on on the metrics and the trader experience that we we showcase yeah and uh you mentioned the idea of community and i think that resonates with us in a specific way, like Martin and I coming from a trading community, understanding the hardships of trading, understanding the successes of trading, all that factors in maybe, I don't know, subconsciously or consciously into how we run the business because we run the business with ourselves in mind, which is we're traders.

15:52What do we want to see as traders? What do we want to uphold as traders? How do we want to communicate with traders? So that is something I think we both hold very dear. And it makes coming to work every day exciting for me because trading is a bit of a passion. It's something that I've put a lot of hours into. And running a business that's aligned with traders is something that I like to hang my hat on, something that makes me feel good about what we're doing and providing that transparency in the industry.

16:24Daniel Robbins:When you look at the marketing that you've had to do in order to get to 10 ,000 reviews is a lot. And it's only been a couple of years. What has been one or two marketing strategies that have helped you? When we first started out, we had to find a way to be seen and gain traction. so what we did even before we launched was to launch a a twitter handle where we started marketing before we we went live and we we found we found a way into the the industry where we made a a fun competition between various prop firms but we made it like a championship where problems battled against each other and we compare them in different metrics where one would come out ahead and we had the community vote and it became a big event in the industry just like a world cup where we ended up with the final and that's something we did even before we launched which gained a lot of traction so we had we had a flying start when we did did launch a few few months uh after so i think that's that's important to to be creative and find out how you can can stand out and how you can make a mark especially when you when you are new and need to need to be seen.

18:01After that, we have focused on building the brand, building the business with the things we have discussed in mind, with transparency and trust. And things have come naturally from that as we have grown from starting out with just John and I to now being about 80 people team in two and a half years.

18:29Daniel Robbins:That's incredible. In two and a half years, the great thing about what you're doing is it's very unique. I almost want to say it's like a niche thing because it's not so big that 8 billion people on the planet know about it, but it was a major problem that you solved that no one really had solved before. And I think it's hard. I think it's nowadays hard to find a lot of problems that need to be solved in many industries because so many have been. So most people are kind of like redoing what's already happened, right? Like, oh, this is a problem. It's not a major problem and they're just redoing it.

19:04Daniel Robbins:But you found a major problem in something you were doing, which is very unique. And that's a great story. What has had to change in the two of you? I mean, your co-founders, it's obviously this amazing parts and complexities around having just co-founders in general and then growing to 80 people. So what's had to change in the two of you, whether it's your leadership skills, your mindset, whatever that is, that's had to do this as you've gotten to where you are now? So when we started out, we were two. And as we just touched on, we are now a lot more. And that's a huge difference, obviously. And things have gone really quickly.

19:51so what we when we started out and also with a small team we could be we didn't need a lot of processes things we got an idea and we went quickly to execution whereas now we have more people to relate to we need processes for what we do to be scalable so one of the phase we're in now is to figure out how we can keep that same mindset we want to be able to move quick we want to have the fun of a startup but still introduce more processes and make sure that we have a model that's scalable that's less dependent of John and me so that's an interesting challenge that we are in the middle of as we speak yeah as the company grows there's more people to talk to there's yeah more processes but it's really enjoyable we have a great team really like communicating with everyone on the team but yeah when me and first started it was like you know things moved very quickly and things still move fairly quickly but it is with more people, there's more communication, more people need to know things.

21:20So things tend to move in a more process type way.

21:24Daniel Robbins:Yeah, the agility changes when, like you said, when you have more people you have to think about, could you might have investors you have to think about you, there's a lot of things you need to think about as you grow and scale. So you can't move as quick, but you can still move quick, more thoughtfully. And I love the processes and procedures. That is something I think a lot of entrepreneurs were like driving 100 miles a second. And we sometimes forget that if we had a process and procedure, it could make life easier. Also, if we have employees that leave or change, then they can just easily pick it up that it sounds so simple.

22:02But I think so many people do forget to do that.

22:05Daniel Robbins:But if people want to get in touch with you guys, they want to find out more information. How can they do so? All right, so to find out more about us, go to propfirmatch.com. That's where you can find out more about both the team as a whole, but most importantly for the traders watching, the information about PropFirm as a whole and the various PropFirms that we list. we list we also have uh accounts on on x on instagram youtube every social media that that is out there we post a lot of uh valuable content for prop firm traders with with details around prop trading as a whole and also various prop firms well marit and john co-founders of prop firm match.

23:01Daniel Robbins:I learned something new today. I don't know everything, but I've definitely learned a lot over the years. And I do like it when I can talk to some people doing something that I don't know yet. And it's unique. And I learned a lot. So I appreciate your time today. And thanks for joining us on Founder's Story. Thank you. Thank you for having us. If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.