Jaime Rogozinski: Why WallStreetBets Took Off

The man who founded WallStreetBets, Jaime Rogozinski, didn’t love trading stocks. At least not at first. In the mid-2000s, as a side hustle, Rogozinski could afford to plunk around $1,000 in shares of Google. It cost him a $30 commission to buy and a $30 commission to sell, meaning that fees gobbled up 6% of the trade. “I’m like, wow, this sucks,” says Rogozinski. “Clearly, it works if you have a ton of money but it doesn’t work if you have $1,000 bucks.”