Moving to NYC but squeezed by student loans and living costs, Johnna opened her first brokerage account to find her way out. Early losses—and a detour chasing WSB memes—showed what doesn’t work. 

She later tried diverse trading styles, shadowed serious traders, paid for premium communities, and journaling regularly. Slowly, painfully, she iterated her way to +344% returns in 1H25.

But the process revealed a bigger problem. Social trading was a trap—noisy, time-consuming, FOMO-driven. The tools that existed either oversimplified or were overwhelmed.

Retail investors deserved better.

Johnna combined her Wall Street experience and ML research background with a simple question: What if the million-dollar lessons from her trading journey could be packaged into a product? She partnered with Guang—Informatics Olympiad gold medalist and Nature Machine Intelligence cover author—to build it.

That's why we created Folio: to democratize the intelligence layer for retail investing. No more drowning in Discord channels or posts. No more FOMO trades. Just the rational signals and community insights you need to take control of your financial future.