Ivan Ashminov is co-founder and chair of Trading 212, the London, England, broker that pioneered commission-free and fractional share investing in the UK and Europe. A self-taught programmer from Sofia, Bulgaria, he built the first version of the platform in his mid-twenties with Borislav Nedialkov and gave it a name borrowed from a Manhattan area code.
A Bedroom Full of Modems
"From the age of 12, I was hooked on computers," he has said. Before the internet took off he sat in his bedroom taking apart dial-up modems, then spent years online teaching himself to code. At Sofia University, where he studied computer science and maths, he outpaced the curriculum and became a technical assistant to his professor. Frustrated that the first dotcom wave was passing him by, he went into selling software development, building websites and management systems.
Six Months to a Trading Platform
Nedialkov worked at a small brokerage serving CMC Markets in London, and the two wondered whether they could build a trading platform of their own. It took six months. Trading platforms were then expensive to build and complex to use, and he set out to make one an ordinary person could click and use, sacrificing features to do it. Not wanting to spend much on a domain, he wanted a name like "trading and something." "A number seemed good and 212 was the area code for Manhattan, which signalled Wall Street," he said. It was also the name of his favourite Carolina Herrera scent.
From Sofia to London
He moved the business to the UK around 2013, when it had about 100 people. By May 2025 it had about 650, 130 of them in London near the Bloomberg building, with most of the rest developing software and handling customer service in Bulgaria. It served 4.5 million customers, 3 million in the UK, and growth was helped by its cash ISA. "We make our money by charging small fees on high volumes," he said. Group revenue reached $345.8M in 2025.
He has gone back to coding for the first time in years to prototype AI tools for customers, and has no plans yet to launch in the US. He is a father of three who takes long, intense walks with a camera. "I'm not stopping," he has said. "I know how fragile it can be." The teenager who took modems apart in Sofia now runs one of Britain's largest investing apps, and still distrusts the success.
