How Prop Firms Really Pay Traders (And When They Don’t) | Ep. 325 with Martin Jensen and John Ramos CEOand CTO of Prop Firm Match

So I'm excited today to talk through something that I don't really know much about and I I'm an avid trader in the sense of I've been trading different things from stocks to crypto to other things throughout my my lifetime I remember when I was in elementary school and my teacher gave me here's some fake money put it into some stocks and then we had a contest I interned put that money into the stock and that's actually how I bought my first car back when I was 16 years old so I'm always fascinated with new things and John and Martin you both are going to walk us through exactly what is prop firm match doing and what we need to know so let's first off by that what is prop firm match thank you for that introduction so prop match is a platform that compares prop firms for those not familiar with prop firms prop firms is a kind of company that lets traders trade with more capital than they have on their own so it's a way to for profitable traders to leverage their skills and trade with notably more capital than what they have the access to on their own prop for match compares the best prop firms and have a strict vetting process to ensure that the prop firm is solid that it's has to write backing both in terms of of the team and the funding and do a comprehensive vetting of the firm before we decide if we're going to list it or or not so traders know that that they find only the best prop firms and can compare to find the best one for them on our platform and what type of trading is somebody doing where they need a prop firm I would say most kind of really any kind of trading you have prop firms that you have the forex prop firms you have futures prop firms the crypto prop firms you have stops prop firms so regardless of yeah what kind of assets you you trade there is a prop firms and that that fits and what is the importance of having a prop firm can you can you give me some more details around that like me I'm new to this I want to jump in why do I really need a prop firm and then when I'm looking at it because obviously you all are doing a lot of analysis I imagine you have a lot of data what makes a good one versus one that's not as good so to answer the question about why you need a prop firm first of all it's it depends on on you there are traders who have a lot of capital to trade with and don't necessarily need to to leverage their capital a lot but likely 99% or more of those who do any kind of trading has too little capital to make a living out of it or make a good side salary out of it where prop firms let you go in with less capital and if you have the skills this is like like any kind of trading there is no no magic formula you have to to be good it's only a small percentage that succeeds but if you are among the the best of the best it's an opportunity to leverage your skills and earn more so there are several things that that decides if if a prop firm is good or bad the most important thing is to pay out reliability you have to to know that if you follow the rules and you receive or you accomplish a payout you are actually getting that payout and and that's that's not a given with prop firms that are not verified that are not solid so that's where prop firm match ensures that we vet the the prop firms and comprehensively to to ensure that the traders can be be safe on that aspect then there are several differences when it comes to to pricing when it comes to the rules that the different packages have in terms of how much profit you need to to make and and so on so without going too much into the details there is a lot of variations between the the firms and also the validity of the firms that we we try best to to cover and very comprehensively on our platform to give my take on on prop firms and why someone would want to use a prop firm so I remember when I first started trading I needed $25,000 just to be an intraday trader to day trade basically which means just going in and out of trades multiple times a day you needed a certain threshold and prop firms the barrier to entry the barrier to start trading and potentially make profit was much lower where it's you know you pay a one-time fee maybe a hundred bucks to get access to a specific amount of capital or you pay you know a subscription fee personally I I use a subscription model for futures and I pay around $80 a month I think it's 89 and I have access to to 50,000 if I pass the test right so with with prop firms what you do is you get like a test and if you pass it you get access to make profit with a certain amount of capital and the other reason I like prop firms is because you know trading is is a bit of a difficult sport so it takes time to get good and rather than risking your own capital like let's say I were to go into the market with $25,000 and I'm not a good trader yet I could essentially risk that $25,000 and you know doing things like over trading or you know things that are the traders are susceptible to which you know revenge trading or going until trading emotionally all those those things but if you if you pay a one-time fee and you know you fail the challenge you know okay I just invested $50 to $100 and I lost that investment maybe I need to refocus rethink how I trade and do better the next time so I have a bit of skin in the game I want to do good trading but if I lose that investment I know it's not going to be the end of the world so that's why I like prop firms you know you put a little bit of investment it tests your skills and if you pass the test you pass the challenge you get access to a lot more capital to make profit of that kind of leveraged capital that you get. Got it so it's trying to manage the risk is what I'm hearing what are some things that people need to really look for when they're getting into this what should they what are the dangers like you were just saying some John like you could without it you could spend money and then you lose all your money and you make emotional trades are there any sort of dangers that people need to look out for when they're getting into this type of trading or when they're leveraging prop firms in trading? Yeah just just to follow up on that thread I would say the risk is finding a prop firm that doesn't pay you if you if you do well that's like the worst thing that could happen and that's why prop firm match exists for traders that put their hard time their effort even their money even though it's not as much money but they put their money their time and effort to get good and pass the challenge if at the end you pass and you make profit and you don't get paid that's the worst so that's why prop for match exists so we only list the most reputable firms that will pay traders if they make profit with after passing a challenge so I'd say that's the biggest risk but it's a lot it's a smaller risk than let's say putting up 20,000 and not being a good trader and 20, 25,000 not being a good trader and then losing it all so you know prop firms is a very in the trading world the trading industry prop firms are I'd say they're growing because the business model is attractive low barrier to entry and if I'm a good trader I get access to more capital capital and I get to to profit on that. Based on what's happening right now in the world what's going on in different industries you obviously are seeing what people are doing and you have some I imagine some good data that you're tracking what types of trading are people looking at right now in this moment. So we don't have any trading data the data and the trading isn't happening with us but what would you know we do know which which take us and instruments people trade and currently gold is the most popular pair in the in the industry gold is heavily traded we have now had a lot of volatility in oil the recent days so traders go after volatility so whatever moves you will see you will see increased trading activity in and in addition to today pair stato always well traded such as the yen queue and the euro and so on commodities and the metals are traded heavily these days. When you all got started what was the thing that sparked when you when you're like we have to do this what was it what happened in your life that made that steered you toward this and why did you co-founded together. Yeah so what happened was that both John and me were full-time traders at that point I had been trading for for six years and we're at the point where I was doing well I was consistently profitable and had been that for quite some time but I struggled scaling up so I made enough money to to make a living but not enough to scale up my trading and one of the fascinating things with trading is that what you do with with little capital is exactly the same thing that you need to do with big capital as long as you you trade liquid instruments the only thing that's different is the psychology which is a big factor but the actual clicking of buttons and strategy can be just the same just with much more skin in the game so I got over the concept I heard about the concept of prop firms and were really intrigued by that on a personal level to scale up my my own trading so I reached out to to John who had the same passion for it and when we were looking for prop firms they were really difficult to to find out which prop firms that were reliable which were we were confident would pay out and so on also to know what which firms that suited our style there were no such tools so we decided to to build it knowing that there had to be a lot more traders than just the two of us in in this situation so we decided to build a platform where we would showcase just the best firms and show objective metrics so traders could could use that to base their decision on so that's that's where it all started yeah yeah Martin we were part of the same trading community and we met there and yeah we had the same Martin pitched the idea and I was like this this makes a lot of sense and I was using a prop firm at the time time it's still I'm a lot of traders in our community were using prop firms so yeah it was kind of a no-brainer for me and I had the technology to to build kind of the the initial site and and a lot of the other things we needed so Martin and I we got started pretty much right away so it sounds like the business thrives on community or it kind of creates a community because you're in a community I know that the trading community is always very strong and I like that people collaborate with one another and they want to win together so when when you had this scale and as you're growing this business sounds like you have to cultivate the community because that's a part of it obviously there's also a lot of trust involved because people need to trust you I think always in any trading space trust is huge transparency like all these things are important how as you've grown and scaled have you consistently tried to also uphold those things at the same time so as you you're saying yourself the trust and transparency is key for us so when we launched in 2023 one of the things that made us different from the the sites that were around comparing prop firms was that what we put on the site were only based on objective metrics and that model is something we have hold steady since since then we don't do any besides the initial vetting of the firm we don't do any reviews there was no way for the firm to to pay themselves to a good rating or anything like that so we showcase the objective facts what it costs what the the profit targets are and so on and then instead of us doing any kind of reviews we let traders do the reviews so we have a system where our support is verifying every single review manually and the trader has to have have been traded with the firm so we verify that they actually have been trading with the firm so it's real experiences so now we have almost 10 000 verified reviews from traders that have been trading with the various firms on our site and that's what makes up the the ratings so we are taking ourselves out of the consideration of what's the best firm and so on and let traders decide themselves based on on the metrics and the trader experience that we showcase yeah and you mentioned the idea of community and I think that resonates with us in a specific way like Martin and I coming from a trading community understanding the hardships of trading understanding the successes of trading all that factors in maybe I don't know subconsciously or consciously into how we run the business because we we run the business with ourselves in mind which is we're traders what do we want to see as traders what do we want to uphold as traders how do we want to communicate with traders so that is something I think we both hold very dear and it makes coming to work every day exciting for me because you know trading is a bit of a passion it's something that I've put a lot of hours into and running a business that's aligned with traders is something that I like to hang my hat on something that makes me makes me feel good about what we're doing and and providing that transparency in the industry when you look at the marketing that you've had to do in order to get to I mean 10,000 reviews is a lot and it's only been a couple of years what has been one or two marketing strategies that have helped you when we first started out we had to find a way to to to be seen in game fraction so what we did even before we launched was to launch a a twitter handle where we started the marketing before we we went live and we we found we found a way into the the industry where we made a a fun competition between various prop firms but we made it like a championship where prop firms battled against each other and we compare them in in different metrics where one would come out ahead and we had the community vote and and it became a a big event in the the industry just like a world cup where we ended up with the final and that's something we did even before we we launched which gained a lot of traction so we had we had a flying start when we did they launched a few a few months after so I think that's that's important to to be creative and and find out how you can can stand out and how you can make a a mark especially when you when you are new and need to yeah need need to be seen after that we have focused on building the the brand building the business with the things we have discussed in in mind with transparency and and trust and things have come naturally from from that as we have grown from starting out with just John and I to to now being a about 80 people team and and to an off year that's incredible like in two and a half years the great thing about what you're doing is it's very unique I almost want to say it's like a niche thing because it's it's not it's not so big that eight billion people on the planet know about it but it was a major problem that you saw that no one really had solved before and I think it's hard it's I think it's nowadays hard to find a lot of problems that need to be solved in many industries because so many have been so most people are kind of like redoing what's already happened right like like oh this is a problem it's not a major problem and they're just redoing it but you found a major problem in something you were doing which is very unique and it's a that's a great story what has had to change in the two of you I mean your co-founders it's obviously there's you know amazing parts and complexities around around having just co-founders in general and then growing to 80 people so what's had to change in the two of you whether it's your leadership skills your mindset whatever that is that's that's had to do this as you've gotten to where you are now so when we started out we were two and as we just touched on we are now a lot more and that's a huge difference obviously and things have have gone really really quickly so what we when we started out and also with a small team we could be we didn't need a lot of processes things we got an idea and we went quickly to to execution whereas now we have more people to to to relate to we have we need processes for for what we do to be be scalable so one of the the face we are now is to figure out how we can keep that same mindset we want to to be able to move quick we want to have the fun of a startup but still introduce more processors and make sure that we have a model that's scalable that's less dependent of John and me so that's an interesting challenge that we are in the middle of as we speak yeah as the company grows there's there's more people to talk to there's yeah more processes but it's really enjoyable we have a great team really like communicating with everyone on the team but but yeah when we had Martin first started it was like you know things moved very quickly and things still move fairly quickly but it is with more people there's more communication more people need to know things so things tend to move in a more process type way yeah the agility changes when like you said when you have more people you have to think about could you might have investors you have to think about you there's a lot of things you need to think about as you grow in scale so you can't move as quick but you can still move quick more thoughtfully and I love the the processes and procedures that is something I think a lot of entrepreneurs were like driving 100 miles a second and we sometimes forget that if we had a process and procedure it could make life easier also if we have employees that leave or change then they can just easily pick it up that it sounds so simple but I think so many people do forget to do that but if people want to get in touch with you guys they want to find out more information how can they do so all right so to find out more about us go to propfamatch.com that's where you can find out more about both the team as a whole but most importantly for the traders watching the information about propfam as a whole and the various propfams that we list we also have accounts on on x on instagram youtube every social media that that is out there we post a lot of valuable content for propfam traders with with details around prop trading as a whole and also various propfams well marit and john co-founders of prop firm match I learned something new today I don't know everything but I've definitely learned a lot over the years and I do like it when I can talk to some people doing something that I don't know yet and it's unique and I learned a lot so I appreciate your time today and thanks for joining us on Founder's Story. Thank you. Thank you for having us. If you like the show please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe it really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.