Direct Match (YC W15) Aims To Make Bond Trading As Easy As Stock Trading

by Y Combinator2/16/2015

“Jim Greco sat in front of his computer at Jeffries Investment Bank headquarters in New York and thought about the futility of his bond trading job. He was about to pull up a file on his PC and then make a physical phone call to another institution to place an order for a bond transaction. Something needed to be done.

Unlike the stock market, the bond market doesn’t have a centralized system where traders can plainly see the fees involved in the trade. This means traders have to ask each bank, one by one, either by phone or electronically, what they are willing to sell a Treasury bond for.

It seems pretty archaic, but it’s the way the bond market operates for the most part right now.

This gave Greco an idea that might seem rather simple: put the bond market online. Greco and his co-founder Galen Simmons created the Y Combinator-backed Direct Match, an online bond trading platform that centralizes that information so it can be as easy to trade bonds as it is to trade stocks.”

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  • Y Combinator

    Y Combinator created a new model for funding early stage startups. Twice a year we invest a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200). The startups move to Silicon