Norman Wanto is co-founder and chief executive of Gotrade, the app that lets people outside the US buy fractions of US stocks from $1. He and his two co-founders coded its first version in a shared house.
Chemical Engineering and Small Businesses
He took A levels at Hwa Chong Institution in Singapore and a chemical and biomolecular engineering degree at the National University of Singapore. While still studying he co-founded a charity tutoring group, ANS Learning, and started companies of his own: Cashew Digital, a venture builder, the apparel business The Tee Inkers, and Aeon Mobile, a phone trade-in company with its own pricing systems.
A Team of Three in a House
In 2019 he co-founded Gotrade with Rohit Mulani and David Grant, joined Y Combinator that summer and served as chief technology officer. "Starting literally from a team of 3, coding in a house together, just us co-founders," he wrote in 2021. A founding engineering team of four built the app from scratch. It launched after clearance from the Labuan Financial Services Authority of Malaysia, charged no commission and earned its money on currency conversion. By April 2022 it had 500,000 users in more than 140 countries, won mostly by word of mouth, and had raised a $15.5 million Series A.
From Code to Chief Executive
In 2023 Mulani moved to chairman and handed him the top job. "Norman is a true systems thinker," Mulani wrote, calling him one of the most talented technical people he had worked with. Gotrade was then close to 1 million users and past $1 billion in trades. He is now based in Jakarta, Indonesia, one of its key markets, where it runs under local futures rules.
A Market of New Investors
On CNBC Indonesia in July 2025 he said registered investors in the country had jumped into the tens of millions in four to five years, driven by rising share prices since the pandemic, financial influencers and fear of missing out. He trains in Hyrox racing, the fitness competition spreading across Southeast Asia.
In 2021 he called the $7 million seed round only the first mile of many. The engineer who coded Gotrade in a house now runs it, still selling the same $1 share.
