two finance guys with one massive problem and an app now valued at $550M
this is the story of paul erlanger and se yong park
> paul started in traditional finance at deutsche bank > se yong did too > then both joined dYdX > spent years watching people struggle with on chain trading > crypto was powerful but not built for normal people
then they asked
what if trading crypto felt like using a normal app?
> in 2025, both teamed up with prashan dharmasena > they started building fomo > the idea was remove the complexity > one account with multiple chains > no manual bridging and gas headaches
but they also noticed something bigger
> trading isn't just financial, it's social > so fomo made trades visible with trading + social media > also added apple pay option > suddenly buying crypto didn't feel like crypto > just download, fund and trade
> the numbers exploded with 120K+ users > then 600K+ > now 625K+ > $4B+ trading volume > 110M+ social interactions > 68K+ people bought crypto for the first time
then investors noticed
> benchmark led a $17M Series A > and in June 2026, index ventures led a $75M Series B > valuation $550M > their bigger vision is the social layer of finance
sometimes the biggest startup isn't the one creating new technology
it's the one hiding the complexity everyone else accepted