August 2018. In a quiet, tense conference room, Capital.com’s founding team was facing an existential threat. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) had just tightened leverage regulations dramatically, slashing the company’s revenue five-fold overnight. With marketing budgets cut by 90%, Capital.com stood on the brink, staring at a stark choice: shut down or fight.
A single question broke the silence, sparking resolve: “Why did we start this company in the first place?”
To answer this question, we need to go back to 2016, the year in which Capital.com was born. The company was created by a unique blend of mathematicians, tech visionaries and financial experts, led by serial entrepreneur Viktor Prokopenya, who had already built – and sold – the software development company Viaden Media. It was initially conceived as an ultra-fast trading software for professional traders but the founding team quickly saw a larger opportunity.
“Why build an exclusive system for a handful of traders when we could build a product for millions?” asked Viktor Prokopenya.
So, the team tore everything down and rebuilt it, this time not just for professionals but for everyday traders. “We took our experience and shifted the focus from building trading strategies to building a product that simplified trading for everyone,” recalls Ihar Morazau, a key founding member and now Chief Architect of Capital.com. “We began developing software – both back-end and front-end – from the ground up.”
Adapting the exchange-trading experience of its early prototype, the team set about designing a product with the retail user firmly in mind – it had to be easy-to-use, fast and low-cost. It was also around this time that companies and consumers were increasingly gravitating to mobile technology, so the timing couldn’t have been better. The widespread adoption of smartphones and growing internet usage were encouraging the whole world to move online, with companies like Uber and Airbnb reshaping entire industries. Why not trading?
This vision prompted Capital.com to reinvent itself as a mobile-first retail trading platform. It invested over $1 million to acquire the premium domain “Capital.com,” knowing that credibility was essential for capturing mainstream trust. By the end of 2016, the business side of Capital.com was set up. Although there wasn’t a fully functional app as yet, establishing the corporate framework was crucial. This ensured that salaries could be paid and the startup’s momentum was maintained, effectively extending its runway.
“Everyone on the engineering team was savvy with financial markets and trading and we definitely knew the markets ourselves. This allowed us to make a lot of decisions on our own, from documenting to coding, meaning that we could move faster,” Morazau would recall. In 2017, Capital.com launched as an app- and web-based platform specifically for retail traders. By the end of the year, the platform was live, streamlined and intuitive, built specifically to demystify trading and level the playing field between Wall Street and Main Street. Shortly afterwards, the company secured its first licence in Europe.
The journey that followed, however, would be far from straightforward.
COVID-19, meme stock mania and the lessons learned
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 completely transformed the way people worked, lived and interacted online. With more people confined to their homes, learning how to trade and invest online grew in popularity. This influx of new traders, combined with extreme market fluctuations, strained many brokerage platforms. Operational disruptions and overwhelmed customer support teams were part of daily life for many brokers during this period, causing many to retreat until the markets returned to some semblance of ‘normality.’
But while many trading platforms pulled back, Capital.com did something different – it revved up its marketing engine.
Unlike the traditional consumer staples sector, online trading platforms are at the mercy of market volatility. Take a company such as Coca-Cola, whose market size remains relatively constant, determined by price multiplied by the number of bottles sold. By comparison, the financial services sector fluctuates significantly. Market size here depends on transaction volumes multiplied by transaction fees. Recognising this, Capital.com made a strategic decision that would be its key innovation – to dynamically adjust marketing spend in real-time, according to market volatility.
The strategy paid off spectacularly. As global markets whipsawed and other platforms hesitated, traders flocked to the Capital.com platform, fuelling record growth. But it wasn’t just savvy marketing that helped the company earn its stripes during this period; how the company went on to handle the meme stock frenzy of early 2021 would make it known as the time when Capital.com firmly won the hearts and minds of the retail trading community.
In early 2021, the unprecedented surge of retail interest in stocks like GameStop (GME) and AMC Entertainment challenged many platforms in the sector. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of traders swept up by meme stock mania, most trading platforms experienced downtime, restricted trading on these volatile stocks or stopped onboarding new clients altogether. Some brokers even raised minimum deposit requirements to $1,000 or more, effectively sidelining smaller retail traders.
Capital.com could have succumbed to the same fate but, instead, it decided to double down and use the moment to affirm its allegiance to retail traders the world over. The company’s servers remained stable throughout this period and, unlike most of its competitors, it continued to honour each and every single trade placed by its clients during the peak of the meme stock frenzy.
Social media buzzed with praise for Capital.com’s reliability. Many traders took to Reddit, commending Capital.com, hailing it as a ‘good broker’ and praising it for not restricting trading when many other well-known platforms were doing just that.
While technology played a central role
in validating the company’s infrastructure during this time, it would be too simple to pin it down to technology alone – its people played a key role, too.
As Capital.com’s back-office teams worked around the clock to handle the influx of new users and increased trading volumes in popular meme stocks, it was still struggling to handle all the new demand from traders. It was at this point that teams from different departments pitched in to support the overloaded back-office staff. This “all-hands-on-deck” mentality ultimately helped the company stay the course during the peak of the meme stock frenzy.
By the end of 2021, Capital.com had managed to steady the ship. Client trading volumes had soared by more than 280%, sailing past the $1 trillion mark, and the company was growing fast. But progress rarely follows a straight line. Just as it was making headway in the aftermath of meme stock mania, the team was struck a devastating blow – and this time, the stakes were higher.
The war in Ukraine and new leadership
With key development offices in Ukraine, the 2022 conflict not only threatened to derail the business entirely but, more importantly, it posed real danger to its people. The company was quick to react. Within days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, immediate steps were taken to evacuate staff to secure locations, ensuring that they had the support they needed in an unfolding crisis. And the company didn’t stop there. Recognising the need for long-term solutions, it began arranging permanent relocations for its displaced staff and, in some cases, even set up offices in new countries, solely to accommodate displaced employees.
The scale of the operation was huge for a company of Capital.com’s size but, once again, its people were at the centre of this effort. Leaders personally intervened – booking flights, handling visas, offering personal funds – to ensure that every member of staff reached a safe haven.
From country CEOs to customer support teams, everyone was involved in moving employees and their families out of the war zones to safety. “Our country CEOs were meeting staff at the airport and driving them to their temporary accommodation; our dealing directors were booking flights online and legal teams were occupied with little else other than processing visa applications for affected staff,” explained one senior Capital.com executive.
The company’s staff in Kyiv were especially vulnerable in the first few days of the war. Some employees had to pack up their cars and drive for days before reaching the border to catch their flights. Others had no access to funds and relied on the charity and goodwill of their colleagues in Warsaw, London and Limassol to help get them out of the Ukrainian capital safely. “I couldn’t withdraw any money from my account but a senior leader gave me his personal bank card and told me to use it during that time. Once I was in a safe place, I was then connected with our payments team,” explained one Capital.com employee, who relocated to Cyprus in the middle of the war.
Everyone rallied together and did what was required to get people over the line. “No-one had to ask twice and everyone just willingly pitched in. At the end of the day, we were driven by how much faster we could get everyone to safety if we did it as a team. It was pretty amazing,” said one Capital.com employee based in Limassol who was involved in the relocation project.
The company also made its position clear by channelling resources to those most in need and donating over $1 million to humanitarian aid efforts in Ukraine. The funds went directly to four vital charities: The Red Cross Society of Ukraine, The Humanitarian Relief Fund under the Ministry of Social Policy for Ukraine, ASAP Rescue and Global Giving. In a moment of global crisis, the company made its stance clear: values over profits, people over business.
This period of uncertainty also tested the strength of Capital.com’s leadership. The company had to review its longer-term growth plans and assess if it was still fit for purpose. “The war in Ukraine was an unprecedented event which tested not just our culture but also our way of operating and doing business. Once we knew that our people had been safely relocated, we then got down to looking at the business and we knew that we needed a new blueprint for success,” said Vitaly Kedyk, Head of Digital Assets at Capital.com.
Providing stability and strong leadership became a priority during this time. The Capital.com Board took the decision to bring in a stalwart of the industry to help steer the company on its new course. As CEO, Peter Hetherington, former CEO of FTSE 250 company IG Group, navigated the uncertainty with a focus on minimising disruption to the company’s operations while ensuring the safety and wellbeing of its employees. “Peter’s steady hand through this crisis ensured that Capital.com emerged not just intact but stronger. His ability to lead the company through one of the most uncertain periods in its history was instrumental in shaping its future trajectory,” said Vitaly Kedyk.
2022 and beyond – A keen focus on new markets and preserving culture
Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Capital.com began deepening its investments in stable, emerging markets like the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Embracing the UAE wasn’t just a strategic decision; it was transformational. The UAE provided robust regulatory frameworks, an openness to innovation and a thriving ecosystem for fintech growth. With a renewed focus, Capital.com invested significantly in building a local presence, understanding regional nuances and aligning closely with regional market needs. The UAE quickly became a cornerstone of Capital.com’s global growth strategy.
By early 2023, global client trading volumes were growing once again. For the first time, trading volumes surpassed $1.2 trillion – an important milestone that confirmed that the company was moving into the next stage of its lifecycle. In 2024, Capital.com obtained a licence from the UAE’s Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) and that same year the volume of trade from the UAE was the highest across all markets, totalling $468.9 billion.
Today, the company is 1,000-strong, with offices in London, Dubai, Melbourne, Warsaw, Limassol, Vilnius, Sofia and Nassau. It is regulated in five different jurisdictions and, with trading volumes in excess of $1.7 trillion, is one of the fastest-growing fintech companies to emerge in the retail trading space in this decade. Indeed, its growth has been so impressive that Deloitte has crowned it the #1 Fastest Growing Tech Company in the Middle East and Cyprus for three years in a row (Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50, 2024).
Capital.com now has plans to expand into new regions and diversify its offering to provide a more comprehensive range of investment and trading products. While external factors may very well play a part in its success, there is something more enduring which contributes to this company’s tenacity – its people.
Anyone speaking with a wide cross-section of its employees will see that there exists a genuine sense of community, where everyone cares for and respects everyone else. Whether they are developers assisting the operations teams or staff from unrelated departments stepping in to help manage client queries in times of crisis, the sense of camaraderie is evident throughout the organisation.
As one employee put it, “The company is driven by people and the people at Capital.com are really good people.” Whether by design or by default, the company’s internal culture is based on support and mutual respect rather than competition and self-interest. “I think that the team at Capital.com understands that we are not in competition with each other. We are all working together towards one goal,” added another employee.
The company is determined not to become another tech giant losing its soul in the race for scale. “We’re not the kind of company that gets comfortable,” one long-serving Cyprus-based employee shared. “Every day, we’re given the freedom—and the responsibility—
to build the future. And that’s the thrill of it. No limits. No red tape. Just the best idea
winning.”
As Capital.com moves toward becoming a comprehensive neo-broker with an expansive product suite, one guiding principle remains unchanged – the belief reaffirmed in that tense 2018 meeting: people first, profits second.
This clarity, matched with the courage to pivot in adversity, continues to fuel the company’s journey, proving that true innovation comes from adaptability, strategic insight and unwavering humanity.
Main photo (from left to right): Valentina Rzheutskaya, Executive Director & Chief Legal Officer; Ariel Segev, Group CFO; Elpida Gavriil, Head of Operations; and Christoforos Soutzis, CEO of Europe.
(Photo by TASPHO)
This interview first appeared in the October edition of GOLD magazine. Click here to view it.
