It started with faxes. Actual, literal faxes. In a world where you can tokenize your dog’s DNA and mint it on the blockchain before breakfast, public companies were still using faxes to transfer equity. Wet signatures, medallion guarantees, and compliance paperwork moving at the speed of a 1998 office printer. For Rob Schoder, Jr., that wasn’t a quirk of the system. It was a glitch begging to be debugged.
So in 2022, after running portfolio ops during AngelList’s leap from 8,000 to 35,000 investments, Schoder teamed up with Poornaprajna Udupi to build Vinyl Equity, a next-gen SEC-registered transfer agent with the swagger of a fintech startup and the backbone of capital markets compliance. Headquartered in Chicago with engineering firepower out of Mangaluru, this crew isn’t just updating the system, they’re overhauling the whole damn soundboard.
And now, with $11.5 million in fresh Seed funding from heavy-hitters like Index Ventures and Spark Capital (plus Infinity Ventures, Cambrian Fintech, and some strategically sharp angels), Vinyl is pushing volume on a space that’s been too quiet for too long. Their pitch isn’t just cleaner UX or better dashboards, it’s full stack, cloud native infrastructure that actually understands what it means to run a modern public company.
Forget DWAC fees. Forget medallion signatures. Vinyl’s T+1 equity transfers hit faster than most inbox replies. Their platform runs on API-first logic, giving issuers real-time shareholder visibility, AI powered compliance, and digital KYC with facial recognition, all SOC 2, GDPR, and CCPA compliant. This isn’t some warmed-over modernization story. It’s capital markets with a new operating system. One built for speed, transparency, and scale.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t a niche problem they’re solving. About 90% of transfer agents are still caught in the amber of legacy systems. Vinyl isn’t playing fintech cosplay, they’re aiming at a $1B+ market desperately in need of better tooling. And while others are trying to optimize within the lines, Vinyl’s quietly redrawing the ledger itself.
Salute to Rob Schoder Jr. and Poornaprajna Udupi. You saw the cracks in the system and decided to build new scaffolding. Shoutout to Silvio Conte (Joe) (ex-JP Morgan) for bringing serious partnership game to the table. From the U.S. to India, this team is scaling like they’ve been here before because they have.
Discussion about this post
No posts