Thomas Pischke

Overview

Thomas Pischke is a German entrepreneur and physicist and one of the three co-founders of Trade Republic, the Berlin-headquartered mobile-first European neobroker and fully licensed bank. He co-founded the company in 2015 in Munich as Neon Trading with Christian Hecker and Marco Cancellieri, and the team relaunched the consumer brand as Trade Republic in 2019.
Why this entity matters

Pischke is one of the operating founders behind the most valuable German FinTech of the mid-2020s. Trade Republic, the company he co-founded, has grown into one of the largest retail investment platforms in Europe — more than 10 million customers, over €150 billion in assets under management, presence in 18 European countries, and a €12.5 billion valuation at the time of the December 2025 secondary round led by Founders Fund. As one of three co-founders responsible for the company's technical, product and mission foundation, Pischke sits inside the small group that has shaped the European neobroker category.
Career, company, or institutional background

Pischke's background is in physics. In 2015 he co-founded the company that would become Trade Republic, together with philosopher Christian Hecker and computer scientist Marco Cancellieri, originally under the Neon Trading name in Munich. The team's central conviction — that European retail investors deserved mobile-first, commission-free access to capital markets — became the design principle of the Trade Republic app launched in 2019. He has since worked alongside his co-founders through the company's institutional funding trajectory, the receipt of a full European Central Bank banking licence in December 2023, the multi-country localisation of 2025, and the December 2025 €1.2 billion secondary round at a €12.5 billion valuation.
Role in the startup, technology, investment, or innovation ecosystem

Pischke is part of the small group of European founders who have built a mobile-first challenger into a fully licensed pan-European bank at scale. His technical and scientific background is one of the sources of the company's product engineering culture, which has combined a low-cost broker offering with the compliance and infrastructure requirements of a supervised bank. Trade Republic's expansion into derivatives, ETF savings plans, bonds, Private Markets, Fixed Income and a crypto wallet, and into 18 European markets, is the operating outcome of that engineering trajectory.
Selected relationships and affiliations

Pischke co-founded Trade Republic together with Christian Hecker (Co-Founder and CEO) and Marco Cancellieri. The company's principal investors, as of the December 2025 secondary transaction, include Founders Fund (round lead), Sequoia Capital, Accel, TCV, Thrive Capital, Wellington Management, GIC, Fidelity, Khosla Ventures, Lingotto Innovation and Aglae. Earlier backers include Creandum, Project A Ventures and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Through Founders Fund the company is indirectly connected to the network of Peter Thiel. The company is licensed and supervised by the European Central Bank and Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht.
Startuprad.io relevance

Thomas Pischke is referenced in Startuprad.io coverage of Trade Republic across the Unicorn Atlas and the DACH FinTech cluster as one of the three co-founders who built one of Europe's leading mobile neobrokers into a fully licensed bank.
Public source context

Publicly available information about Thomas Pischke is drawn from Trade Republic's official press releases and founding history, his https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-pischke-b1234b57/ , and reporting in Financial Times, Reuters, Handelsblatt, Tech.eu and Finance Magnates.

Startuprad.io coverage of Thomas Pischke

Thomas Pischke appears in the following Startuprad.io interviews, news and analysis.

Bonus Episode: Trade Republic becomes Germany’s most valuable Startup with 5.3 bn US$ valuation
Published: 26 May 2021
Last updated: 31 August 2026
Coverage type: Analysis
https://www.startuprad.io/post/bonus-episode-trade-republic-becomes-germany-s-most-valuable-startup-with-5-3-bn-us-valuation

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