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Media - Thursday, September 22, 2005

Oanda - Profile

HQ: New York, NY

Founded: OANDA was spun out of an econometric research and development firm called Olsen and Associates in 1995.

Management: Dr. Richard Olsen is Chairman and co-founder and Dr. Michael Stumm is CTO and co-founder.

Investors: In September 2005, Index Ventures made a solo $17M Series A investment in Oanda.

Business Model: Oanda began as a destination for travelers to get current prices on global currencies. It added information for currency investors, where users can use a database of currency information and research. Oanda offers timing services, forecasts, predictive modeling and a currency exchange game that offers trading simulation. Oanda gets much of its traffic and usage by syndicating its feeds of localized prices to other Websites - it claims that 35,000 organizations currently use its feeds. Additionally, early in 2001, OANDA launched its FXTrade platform, targeting the forex market.

Competitors: Forex Capital Markets, Forex.com, REFCOFX, Yahoo Finance, X-Rates.com.

Dirt: Currency trading is a $2 trillion a day business (50 times the size of the US equities market), yet there is no eTrade for this market and it is not common for consumers to trade currencies. Oanda is looking for this to change by making currenc trading accessible. OANDA has been profitable since it launched FXTrade so it is using the investment to try to distance itself from the competition. There are numerous potential competitors including eTrade, but what Oanda has accomplished since it launched in 1995 is not easy to replicate.