In a featured live episode of “Marketopolis” at the Benzinga Fintech Day & Awards 2025 in New York City on Monday, Anthony Denier, CEO and Group President of Webull Corp (NASDAQ:BULL), offered a rare look into the brokerage’s founding, its unique global strategy and his advice for founders in a tough market.
Denier, who has led the company’s rapid expansion, shared a little-known fact about his origins.
"Many people don’t know this, but yes, I am CEO of Webull… but what people don’t know is that I am also employee number one at Webull," Denier said. "Not only did I start the LLC here in the U.S., but I hired the first person. So I’m extremely proud of that."
The ‘Sophisticated Investor’ Niche
Since its launch in 2018, Denier said Webull has differentiated itself by not chasing first-time investors.
“We’ve stuck to concentrating on sophisticated investors,” Denier explained. He pointed out that for many users, “Webull is their third brokerage account, as opposed to a lot of our peers where that digital broker may be their first brokerage account.”
This strategy, he noted, allowed Webull to carve out a unique position, attracting sophisticated clients from legacy platforms who wanted zero-commission trading without sacrificing functionality, as well as users from first-generation fintech apps seeking more advanced data and analysis.
EXCLUSIVE: Prediction Markets Expert Says Surge ‘Gives Me Hope,’ ‘There’s An Appetite For Fun’
The Evolved Investor And Global Growth
A central theme of the discussion was the evolution of the retail investor, who Denier says has become much more discerning.
"As retail investors have evolved, they’ve gone from getting not only access to information six years ago to now understanding which information is valuable and which is noise," he said.
Denier also highlighted Webull’s global operations, which include 14 broker-dealers worldwide, as a key differentiator and growth engine.
"We’re seeing international growth even trumps the U.S. growth, which is extremely exciting," he said, pointing to a convergence of investor attitudes worldwide, driven by shared information.
"If you are an investor in, let’s say, Nvidia and you’re sitting in Kuala Lumpur, you’re… reading… the same Reddit channels as someone that’s sitting in New York… we’re starting to see the attitude and the conviction really start to align."
EXCLUSIVE: Private Markets For Retail Investors—More Than ‘Just OpenAI And SpaceX’
Future Focus: Tokenization And ‘Boring’ Fixed Income
Looking ahead, Denier cited tokenization as a key to future global market access, which could one day allow a “U.S. customer… to trade Brazilian stocks.”
But he also focused on a less-hyped area he believes will have a major impact.
“I think it’s still a little boring for the general audience, but fixed income,” he said. Denier noted that Webull has already launched corporate bonds and U.S. Treasuries. “Creating a retail-friendly version of investing in these products is something that I think is going to have a lot of impact in the next couple of years.”
A ‘No Substitute For The Grind’ Mentality
Addressing the founders and executives in the audience, Denier shared his core management philosophy.
"There is no substitute for the grind. There is no substitute for hard work," he said.
Denier shared his own “not really good recruiting method” of asking employees to return to the office five days a week since the end of 2022.
“My team has gotten here because we have been so aggressive in making sure that we are collaborative, we are working our asses off every single day and we do not let setbacks make us shy away from what we’re trying to build.”
More cutting-edge ideas emerged from the Benzinga Fintech Day & Awards 2025. See more details from the event here and find more coverage on Benzinga.com.
Photo courtesy of Corynn Egreczky
