🦄 Pluto: Automated trading for everyone

Pluto is a platform that allows individuals to entirely automate their investments. It allows you to build rule sets (which it calls “strategies”) that make trades on your behalf. Strategies have a variety of options to choose from and can be edited using Pluto’s drag-and-drop builder or with Python code. Prior to launching a strategy, Pluto determines the strength of the rule set based on previously reported returns. When you’re ready to launch a strategy, you can either launch it in a sandbox environment (your “practice portfolio”) or set it live on the market.
🦄 Unicorner Startup of the Week: Pluto
 
 ✍️ Notes From The Editors  
Another day, another awesome team we get to bring to your inbox! We’ve been watching Pluto for some time now. As news in much of the financial world gets seemingly more pessimistic by the day, we’re excited to present the (potential) movers and shakers in the industry.
 
- Ethan and Arek 🦄
 
 
Promoted
 
🥊 • Shadowboxer is a venture studio partnering with early-stage ventures to accelerate their progress. Its product strategists, copywriters, designers, and engineers are experienced venture builders, making them the ultimate partner to early-stage founders. Shadowboxer works for a mix of fee and equity to ensure aligned incentives – they profit only when their partners succeed.
 
Interested in learning more? Reach out to the team.
 
Want to sponsor us? Reply to this email.
 
 
Automated trading for everyone
 
 
Pluto is a platform that allows individuals to entirely automate their investments. It allows you to build rule sets (which it calls “strategies”) that make trades on your behalf. Strategies have a variety of options to choose from and can be edited using Pluto’s drag-and-drop builder or with Python code. Prior to launching a strategy, Pluto determines the strength of the rule set based on previously reported returns. When you’re ready to launch a strategy, you can either launch it in a sandbox environment (your “practice portfolio”) or set it live on the market.
 
 
🔗 Check it out: pluto.fi
 
 
💰 Business Model
Pluto takes a per-order fee of 8 cents and 0.1% of each transaction. Future plans included a profit-driven fee structure to better align Pluto’s success with the success of its customers.
 
📈 Traction and Fundraising
  • Raised $4.2 million seed round from investors like at.inc/, Caffeinated Capital, and Switch Ventures
  • Over 4,000 active portfolios with 20% monthly growth; 80% of portfolios are reported to be hitting their benchmark goals
  • Live portfolios can presently only trade cryptocurrencies, with plans for US equities to be added in 2023 (practice portfolios have all equities available)
 
👫 Founders
  • Jacob Sansbury, CEO: Previously Technical Lead @ NVIDIA, SWE @ Saleae Inc, Security Software Engineer @ Bridgewater Associates
  • Dakota McDaniels, COO: Previously Information Security Analyst @ Lowe’s, Information Technology @ University of South Carolina
  • Caroline Mendel, Head of Community: Creative Arts @ Loyola Marymount University
  
💼 Opportunities
 
🔮 Our Analysis
The concept of automated investing isn’t new. You can set recurring investments, limit orders, and many other kinds of market-reactive transactions on most major platforms out there. Pluto wants to take automated investing further than just being a tool in an investor’s toolbox. It wants automated investing to be the norm of long-term investing. Pluto’s platform, which is still very much so under development, has been built with maximizing user protection in mind. Features like strategy scores, trading shields, and forecasts help investors make more educated decisions before taking a strategy live, and can keep capital safer in the long run. CEO Jacob Sansbury tells us that Pluto’s success will ultimately be determined by whether investors are willing to allow rule sets to make the best decisions for them. In a current climate of much financial uncertainty, having an automated strategy to take care of your investments might be able to alleviate some of the emotional stress of trading through the highs and lows. Its product may still be in the early stages, but we’re interested in the unique bets Pluto is making, and are excited to watch its future (especially with equity trading being offered in 2023).
 
📚 Further Reading
 
 
If you enjoyed today's article, forward this email to a friend!
If you're just seeing this email now, subscribe here.
 
Made with 💜 by the Unicorner Team 🦄
 
 
💰 Business Model
Community is the cornerstone of many up-and-coming startups. It’s certainly been the case for Pluto, where one of the founders focuses entirely on building community. Some points from the team on how to leverage community in building a startup:
 
👥 Building groups that aren’t only focused on your company - Pluto’s team runs a Discord server that has very little to do with Pluto. Rather, it offers a lot of useful info that makes it valuable to stick around. A lot of people naturally choose to sign up for Pluto after being in the server for a while.
 
🎥 Creating informative content - Pluto’s YouTube channel offers a number of informative guides for people looking to learn more about finance.
 
 
Twitter
LinkedIn
 
 
This email was sent to you
You received this email because you signed up with Unicorner.
 
Unsubscribe here 💔
 

Older messages

🦄 crowd.dev: Community-led growth platform for devtools

Monday, November 14, 2022

crowd.dev is a platform that helps developer tool (devtool) teams consolidate and better leverage the community that uses and contributes to their software. Its centralized dashboard keeps track of

🦄 Rewind: The search engine for your life

Monday, November 7, 2022

Rewind offers a software tool that enables you to revisit anything you've seen, said, or heard on your computer. Users can see a graphic timeline of their screen and search through their history to

🦄 Special Edition: Bilt Rewards

Monday, October 31, 2022

For the first time in two years of Unicorner history, we're bringing you a special edition of our weekly rundowns. Bilt Rewards hit unicorn status last week following a whopping $150 million growth

🦄 Warp: A modern terminal

Monday, October 24, 2022

Warp is building a command line interface with additional features. With a vision to modernize the terminal, the company's CLI includes features like command autocomplete, command history, command

🦄 Causal: Better planning platform for business data

Monday, October 17, 2022

Causal is building an improved way for companies to organize and model their financials and business data. Originally created as an alternative to traditional spreadsheets, Causal's platform allows

You Might Also Like

🗞 What's New: How 5 vibe-coded games went viral w/out big audiences

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Also: The definitive AI glossary ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

⏳ 72 hours left! Don’t miss the biggest ecommerce sourcing event of the year

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

This is your last chance to join 9+ sourcing experts LIVE (for FREE!) Hey Friend , Time is running out! ⏳ In just 72 hours, the Ecommerce Product Sourcing & Manufacturing Summit goes live—and if

Positioning Startups in the Age of AI

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Tomasz Tunguz Venture Capitalist If you were forwarded this newsletter, and you'd like to receive it in the future, subscribe here.​ ​Positioning Startups in the Age of AI​ How do you position and

AI strategies for industrials

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

where major players are making moves, and what it means for the future of the space Hi there, AI is top of mind for executives in the industrial sector – and for good reason. The biggest names in

[CEI] Chrome Extension Ideas #181

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

ideas for Twitter/X, YouTube, Email, and Notion ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

$2.7M ARR

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

IRL events coming to TGA ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

Why you’re so angry at work (and what to do about it)

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

A practical framework for transforming big feelings into wisdom ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

Growth Newsletter #244

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

How not to write a terrible cold email ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

🛎️ Hey Friend , did you get your product costs wrong? (Here’s how to fix it)

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Do this to lock in the best ALL-IN price from your supplier—no hidden fees, no last-minute price hikes eating into your margins. Hey Friend , Ask Kian Golzari, one of the top product sourcing experts

The next French unicorns

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

+ Arrival shuts down operations; 'another DeepSeek moment'? View in browser Powered by Vanta Author-Martin by Martin Coulter Good morning there, Chinese AI startup Monica has raised alarm bells