Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: The Fintech Blueprint
Episode: How Alpaca built the API brokerage for 300+ global fintechs across 45 Countries, with CEO Yoshi Yokokawa
Description: In this episode, Lex chats with Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO of Alpaca — a brokerage infrastructure company that provides API-based trading and custody services to fintechs and developers globally.
The conversation begins with their shared experience at Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial crisis, where Yoshi worked in fixed income securitization and learned that even when market participants sense a bubble, they keep dancing because timing the exit is impossible. After Lehman's collapse, Yoshi pursued entrepreneurship, building a computer vision AI company acquired by Kyocera before founding Alpaca in 2017. Initially inspired by Robinhood, Yoshi pivoted after experiencing firsthand the friction of...