Built by investors,
for investors
We didn't set out to build a company. We built tools we needed for our own investing, shared them with friends, and people kept asking how to pay us.
W21
The story starts with spreadsheets
It's 2020. COVID has everyone locked in their apartments. Jake Ruth, a software engineer at Oscar Health ($OSCR) in New York, starts watching YouTube videos about investing. He stumbles onto Daniel Pronk's channel.
Daniel had something different. Confident but not arrogant. Focused on actual fundamentals and real financials, not hype. Jake finally understood how to invest with confidence.
But there was a problem. Daniel was spending 5-10 hours every week manually plugging data into Excel spreadsheets. In 2020. Jake, being an engineer, couldn't accept this reality.
Jake built an automation that did in 3 seconds what took Daniel 10 hours. Then he started emailing Daniel about it.
The two-month chase
Daniel's channel was blowing up. Hundreds of people were pitching him ideas. Jake's emails looked like spam.
But Jake was relentless. He sent weekly progress updates for two months straight. Multiple paragraphs each time. Screenshots of what he was building. Daniel didn't respond to a single one.
"Eventually it got to the point where I was like, wow, okay, this guy is not going to stop until I respond."
- Daniel Pronk
Daniel finally responded. They scheduled a 30-minute Zoom call. It lasted two and a half hours. There may have been beers involved.
People asked to pay us
They started building together. The original name? Stonk Reporter. They shared early versions in Daniel's Discord community of about 200 people.
The reaction was immediate. Daniel was using seven different paid platforms to get all the features he needed. People in the Discord had the same frustration. They started asking: "How do I give you my money?"
That was the lightbulb moment. This wasn't just a tool for Daniel anymore. Other people had the same problems.
Y Combinator found us
Most startups spend months applying to Y Combinator. They reached out to us on LinkedIn.
We weren't thinking about accelerators. We were just building something useful. But YC saw what we were doing and basically said: "Why aren't you applying?"
Daniel didn't even know who Y Combinator was at the time.
"When people say 'Oh my god, you got into Y Combinator? That's a dream!' I was like... cool."
- Daniel Pronk
From spreadsheets to 100+ countries
Jake discovers Daniel's YouTube channel
Builds an automation that does in 3 seconds what took Daniel 10 hours. Starts the 2-month email campaign.
First call: 30 minutes turns into 2.5 hours
Daniel finally responds. They hit it off immediately. Jake leaves his job at Oscar Health to work on this full-time.
Y Combinator (W21) recruits them
YC reaches out on LinkedIn. First year they offered $375K MFN investments. Remote batch due to COVID saves the company. Daniel stays in Canada.
Launch day (before they felt ready)
YC "bullied" them into launching. 300-400 paying subscribers in the first two weeks. They thought the product looked terrible.
1,000 paying subscribers
Launch of Insight Scores (now called Stock Scores) pushes them past 1,000 subscribers. Raise $1.3M+ seed round.
Investors in 100+ countries
8-person remote team. 170,000+ stocks and ETFs across 70+ exchanges. 35 years of financial data. Still building tools we use daily for our own investing.
Our incentives are aligned with yours
This matters more than features.
Brokerages
Profit when you trade more. Every click, every transaction, every "free" feature is designed to get you trading.
Stock Unlock
Profit when you invest smarter. We make money from subscriptions, not from your trading activity. Your success is our success.
What we don't do:
- Sell your data
- Trade on your information
- Accept payment for stock recommendations
- Execute trades (we literally can't (read-only connections))
The team behind Stock Unlock
We're a remote team of engineers, designers, and investment nerds spread across the globe. We use Stock Unlock every day for our own investing.
Team meetup, Kyoto
Engineering offsite
Part of the team, 2025
Still founders. Still building.
Five years in, we're still the same people who started this. Daniel still runs his YouTube channel and actively invests. Jake still writes code every day. We go to fintech conferences not because we have to, but because we're genuinely curious about making investing better.
When you use Stock Unlock, you're using tools we built because we needed them ourselves. That hasn't changed.
At Finovate Spring
See what we built
No signup required. Just search for any stock and explore.