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YC Root AccessThe Startup Powering Billions In Trades Every Day
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
OneChronos applies combinatorial auctions to modernize institutional stock trading infrastructure
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 ideasCombinatorial 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
SPEAKERS
Jared Friedman
hostYC partner and host/interviewer for the episode.
Kelly Littlepage
guestCo-founder of OneChronos (smart markets/combinatorial auction-based equity trading).
Steven Johnson
guestCo-founder of OneChronos with a background in cybersecurity and large-scale data/market systems engineering.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
