Trality is among the startups selected to present to leading investors like SeedX Lichtenstein, Capnamic Ventures, G+D Ventures and High-Tech Gründerfonds at the 11th FinTech Forum, 21st Nov. 2019 in Frankfurt: https://ftf11.eventbrite.com

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself, both at work and leisure.

Hi! I’m Moritz and I’m co-founder and CEO of Trality, a platform bringing together creators and followers of trading bots, enabling them to beat the market with algorithmic trading.
I hold a Ph.D. from WU Vienna and display broad professional experience in strategy, finance, project management and research. I’m passionate about crypto, love everything digital and am driven by data. I co-founded Trality in order to make the tools of Wall St. available to everyone.

 

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

Trality offers a one-stop shop for trading bots, which caters both to bot creators, who want to develop high-performing algorithms as well as followers, who lack experience and/or time to do so. 

Specifically, on the one hand, the Trality Bot Creator provides creators (and everyone who wants to become one) with all the tools needed to develop professional trading bots. On the other hand, the Trality Bot Marketplace lets followers rent created bots while providing its creator with the opportunity to earn a risk-free side income.

 

3. How did you get your startup idea and how did you go about launching it?

While studies show that up to 90% of Wall Street trading is done by algorithms, such algorithmic trading has remained largely absent from private investing — mostly because setup and maintenance of trading bots, which are used to execute the algorithms, are complex and time-consuming. We noticed this gap from our personal experience in trading and hence starting building the platform in the evenings after work and weekends. 

 

4. How did you finance your startup, and what learnings would you like to share from the fund-raising journey?

We were lucky to have received a generous grant from the city of Vienna (specifically the Vienna Business Agency) which helped us tremendously in getting Trality off the ground. If you are in a country where public funding is available, every founder should try to do his/her first financing steps via these vehicles. 

 

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

Trading and ML. The former lies at the heart and soul of Trality and is therefore a natural interest, the latter interests me because I am reading a lot of research on how techniques such as reinforcement learning or simulation environments for accelerated learning can have a profound impact on trading and finance in general. It is one of our main goals at Trality to stay at the forefront of these developments.

 

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech startups in Europe, and how can we help? 

Opportunities are endless with all the technological advances on the horizon! It will however always remain important to work together and use forums such as the FinTech Forum to align strategies and goals so that innovation isn’t hindered. Likewise, regulation will have to be closely monitored and possibilities for adjustments should be communicated with a common voice.

 

7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?

Unpopular opinion: don’t be too intrigued by corporate cooperation opportunities such as “innovation” labs, accelerators or the like. If you wish to succeed globally with a truly innovative product, don’t be slowed down by (or worse, integrated into the value chain of) a corporate behemoth 😉