The name on the first door was not Trade Republic. It was Neon Trading.
In 2015 three founders sat in the start-up incubator of comdirect, a German online bank, in Munich. Christian Hecker had studied philosophy and spent years in finance. Thomas Pischke was a physicist. Marco Cancellieri was a computer scientist. Their idea was easy to state and almost absurd for the time: a German version of Robinhood, a phone app where ordinary people could buy shares without paying a bank's fees.
Hecker, meanwhile, was described by backers as the unofficial product chief behind the design of the app.
The early years were slow. Germans are famous for keeping money in savings accounts, and shares have never been a national habit. The company needed more than a clever app. It needed a patient owner. In 2017 Sino AG, a Düsseldorf financial firm, took a majority stake, and its chief, Ingo Hillen, put in about three million euros and became a managing director. It was small money for a financial company, and it kept the founders alive.
The technical heart was Pischke's. Investors have said he built the trading architecture so that trades could be executed extremely cheaply, which is why Trade Republic could charge a flat €1 per order. Hecker, meanwhile, was described by backers as the unofficial product chief behind the design of the app.
The venture funds arrived in 2019 and 2020 with over €60m from Creandum, Project A, Accel and Founders Fund, and Sino lost its majority. In May 2021 came US$900m at a US$5bn valuation.
The price of speed came quickly. In January 2021, during the GameStop frenzy, the app stopped customers from buying certain shares, and more than 4,000 people complained to the regulator, BaFin. In June 2022 the company cut staff when markets turned. In 2024 and 2025, customers complained about slow customer service and delayed depot transfers, and a consumer group sued over claims about interest and deposit protection.
The company kept going. It won a full banking licence from the European Central Bank in December 2023, ending its dependence on partner banks. For the year to 2024 it reported a profit of €34.8m on about €340m of revenue. By April 2026 it said it served about 10 million customers holding around €150bn, and a share sale in December 2025 valued it at €12.5bn.
The lesson for founders is in the first name. Neon Trading was a product idea. Trade Republic became a bank. The change came from someone patient enough to hold the stake before the venture money believed.