Gabriel Tracton – Year 12

Jack Smagarinsky – Year 12

Last week, the Emanuel School Investment Club hosted a special guest speaker, John Winters. John is the CEO and Co-founder of Superhero, one of Australia’s leading share trading platforms. Students were fascinated by how Superhero is able to offer $5 brokerage for investors buying Australian shares while offering free brokerage on US shares and ETFs. 

The students learnt that the best entrepreneurial ideas often emerge from thinking about problems in the workplace. John explained how he thought about problems with stock broking, such as the lack of transparency within superannuation funds. He stated: “We started as a super fund, to give people control and full transparency of their superannuation”. He partnered with “The best guy I knew in tech”, Wayne Baskin (Former CTO and Deputy CEO of Booktopia) and along came Superhero, offering self managed superannuation fund (SMSF) and share trading solutions.

BNPL founders Nick Molnar (Co-Founder of Afterpay) and Larry Diamond (Co-Founder of Zip), alongside John’s former clients, provided $8 million in seed round funding for Superhero in September 2020. Last year, Superhero raised an additional $40 million from a range of institutional investors and repeat backing from Nick and Larry, and support from Fred Schebesta (Co-Founder of Finder), bringing its total funding to $48 million in 14 months.

Recently, Superhero announced their merger with cryptocurrency exchange Swyftx (​​co-founded in 2018 by Alex Harper and Angus Goldman), forming a $1.5 billion company with a combined customer base of over 800,000. This business will be the “first in Australia to offer access to both decentralized and traditional finance, supporting trading and investing across cryptocurrencies, equities and superannuation”. This merger is expected to be completed early in the Financial Year of 2023.

John Winters from Superhero

By Gabriel Tracton and Jack Smagarinsky
Founders of the Investment Club