#402 Thomas Peterffy: The $80 Billion Founder Who Automates Everything

Founders

David Senra

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4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I didn’t know who Thomas Peterffy was. I was shocked to learn that he is 81 years old, worth $80 billion dollars, and has built his $120 billion company, Interactive Brokers, into one of the most efficient companies in the world. I discovered Peterffy by reading this incredible profile about him. I couldn’t put it down. That’s what this episode is about. Episode sponsors: ⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before a few days ago, I didn't know who Tomas Petterfrey was, and I was shocked to learn that he's
0:04.3	81 years old. He's worth $80 billion, and he's built his $120 billion company, Interactor
0:10.1	brokers, into one of the most efficient companies in the world. So, for example, in 2024,
0:15.4	they generated $3.7 billion in profits on just $5.2 billion in revenue. And I discovered Petterfee by reading this incredible profile about him that was written by Colossus. And I actually couldn't put it down and immediately called my friend Patrick, who's the founder of Colossus. And I told him that I wanted to make an episode on Petrophy's incredible life story. So that is what this episode is about. I want to get right into the profile,
0:43.7	which will be linked below and is written by Dom Cook. And so Dom writes, I'm at the $108 million Aspen House of Tomas Petrfee. Once inside, I find Petrophy hunched over his chair. His piercing
0:49.7	eyes look up at me in confusion as I was introduced. I thought we were doing this over Zoom,
0:54.7	he said. My stomach dropped. Where have you come from? He asked. London. That's crazy, he said,
1:01.8	as if I'd come by boat. To a man who has spent the past 60 years automating as much of his
1:07.1	business as possible, to the point where interactive brokers has 71% profit margins.
1:12.2	My journey to meet him was an absurd misallocation of resources.
1:16.8	Pederfy is the 23rd richest person in the world.
1:19.5	He pioneered automated trading and built one of the largest options market makers on Earth.
1:24.5	He is the reason that you can trade stocks in your pajamas.
1:28.8	His second act,
1:34.7	Interactive Brokers, is worth over $100 billion. I was surprised that he was surprised that anyone would travel to hear his story. He settled down in his chair and began to explain
1:40.1	how he got his start in life by dragging a metal bathtub through the rubble of post-war Budapest.
1:47.1	I was born during a Soviet bombing raid, Petrfee began.
1:50.8	It was September 30th, 1944, and the Red Army was pushing into Hungary.
1:55.7	He remembers nothing until he was five, by which time Hungary belonged to the communists
2:00.0	and his father had vanished,
2:01.7	having divorced his mother and fled the country when pederfy was two.
2:05.8	I often remember my mother crying, and I'd ask, Mom, why are you crying?
	...

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