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The Startup Powering Billions In Trades Every Day

When Kelly Littlepage and Steven Johnson launched OneChronos in 2022, they weren’t just launching a new stock exchange — they were rewriting the rules of how markets work. After more than a decade of obsessing over an obscure auction theory from their undergrad days, and six years of quietly solving deep technical and regulatory problems, they built a new kind of trading venue from scratch — one that now handles billions of dollars in trades every day, accounting for over 0.3% of all U.S. equity volume. In this episode, they talk about growing up hacking computers in the suburbs, their unlikely path through Caltech and hedge funds, and the long road to convincing Wall Street to embrace a radically better way to trade. Chapters: 00:00 - Intro: A New Kind of Stock Exchange 01:15 - The Origin Story 02:45 - From Auction Theory to Wall Street 04:30 - The Idea Behind OneChronos 06:00 - How Trading Actually Works Today 06:45 - Going All In: Quitting Jobs, Joining YC 08:45 - Solving Two Deep Tech Problems 10:00 - The Regulatory Gauntlet 14:00 - Launching: From 200 Shares to Billions 15:15 - Sticking With It for 6 Years 17:00 - What Makes the OneChronos Model Unique 23:45 - The Future of Markets & Infrastructure 27:00 - Should You Leave a High-Paying Job to Build? 30:45 - What It Takes to Build for Wall Street

Jared FriedmanhostKelly LittlepageguestSteven Johnsonguest
Jun 29, 202533mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

OneChronos applies combinatorial auctions to modernize institutional stock trading infrastructure

  1. OneChronos is a new U.S. equities exchange that, within three years of launching, handles over 0.3% of daily U.S. equity volume—billions of dollars—despite being largely unknown outside institutional circles.
  2. The founders connect auction theory (especially combinatorial auctions) with real trading pain: portfolio managers need to express multi-asset intent and constraints, but today’s limit-order-book infrastructure forces risky, sequential execution.
  3. Building the exchange required solving two “deep tech” problems—fast large-scale optimization plus user accessibility for a foreign market concept—alongside a lengthy regulatory approval and education process.
  4. The company overcame the marketplace cold start by persuading early institutional participants to connect even when day-one liquidity was tiny (about 200 shares), then grew into production trading after initial testing and onboarding.
  5. The founders argue “smart markets” will extend beyond equities into other asset classes and even real-economy markets (e.g., compute/GPU capacity) wherever complements, substitutes, and non-price constraints matter.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Combinatorial auctions let traders express true multi-asset intent, not fragments.

Instead of legging into positions via algorithms and “hoping for the best,” participants can submit bundled orders with constraints (e.g., all-or-nothing) so the market clears the whole package atomically.

The core improvement targets the exposure problem and “ships passing in the night.”

By allowing bids on portfolios (with complements/substitutes), traders avoid being stuck with unhedged partial fills and can match with counterparties whose full economic interests previously couldn’t be discovered.

Building an exchange is as much commercial and regulatory as it is technical.

Beyond optimization and systems engineering, OneChronos had to educate regulators on a nonstandard matching model and satisfy operational requirements, while also solving the hardest go-to-market issue: initial liquidity.

Novel market structure can win if it’s “obviously right” to sophisticated early adopters.

Early institutions connected even with minimal volume because they believed the mechanism mattered and wanted first-mover reps and client signaling advantages if the venue succeeded.

Regulators can be partners when the mechanism is clearly explained and grounded.

The founders describe repeated deep-dive meetings and a regulator remarking it may be time to consider alternatives to the limit order book, contradicting the stereotype that regulators only block change.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

“OneChronos is a new kind of stock exchange, kind of like a Nasdaq.”

— Jared Friedman

“We look only at price and volume, and we completely ignore… time as a way of doing priority.”

— Steven Johnson

‘Yeah, well, maybe it’s time that we look at different alternatives to the limit order book.’

— Steven Johnson (quoting a regulator)

“We’re especially grateful for the ones that plugged into a market that traded 200 shares on its first day of existence.”

— Kelly Littlepage

“You can get one shot at launching this the right way.”

— Kelly Littlepage

Combinatorial auctions and exposure problemAtomic multi-leg institutional tradesLimit order book vs. price-time priority alternativesLatency races and market microstructure as distributed systemsRegulatory approval, FINRA/SEC process, and educationCold start liquidity in new trading venuesScaling optimization in (near) real-time marketsSmall-team, engineering-led culture and critical-systems mindsetFuture expansion: FX, European equities, other asset classesCompute/GPU markets as a smart-market application

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