Dylan Iskandar

Iskandar began piano at around four or five and classical and jazz guitar at around six; he studied piano and guitar at the Colburn School’s Community School for 13 years under Heewon Kwon. Sequoia Capital describes him as a globally recognized classical pianist at 4. In high school he turned to computer science; while at Mira Costa High School, he did cybersecurity research for the U.S. Department of Defense and published papers on it.⁠[1][1][1][1][2][1][3][2][4]

In 2019, Iskandar met Justin ZhengJustin ZhengJustin Zheng is an American entrepreneur and a co-founder of Catalyst, a startup building AI trading agents. He raised his first seed round at 16 and joined Worldcoin in 2019; in 2025 he co-founded Catalyst with Dylan Iskandar, and in October 2026 the company announced a $30 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital.Open the full entry, when both were teenagers, over a poker game at a conference run by economist Tyler Cowen; the two stayed in touch and eventually decided to start something together.⁠[4][4]

From December 2019 into early 2020, the 14-year-old Iskandar took part for the first time in Google Code-in, an open source contest for pre-university students aged 13 to 17, completing tasks for Liquid Galaxy, a panoramic system that works with Google Earth; a logo he designed was adopted as the official logo of one of the organization’s projects. On February 10, 2020, Google announced the Google Code-in 2019 winners, naming him one of the Grand Prize Winners for the Liquid Galaxy organization.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][6][6]

In April 2023, Edison International named its 30 Edison Scholars for the year, including Iskandar as a senior at Mira Costa High School, awarding him $50,000 over four years to pursue STEM studies. He said the scholarship was not only a financial relief for him and his family but also a validation of their investment. That year he also received an Amazon Future Engineer scholarship.⁠[7][7][7][3][1]

In spring 2023, Iskandar was graduating from high school and had been admitted to Stanford University, where he planned to explore combining music with AI, citing the computational creativity work of Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. He said then that he ultimately hoped to create his own startup combining AI and technology to have an impact on people, and that he would intern that summer at a global proprietary trading firm in New York City. He entered Stanford University as a Jane Street scholar.⁠[1][1][1][1][2]

In 2025, Iskandar left Stanford University and co-founded Catalyst with Justin Zheng, a startup building AI agents for retail trading. Iskandar said the idea is that people will simply state an intent and the agents will handle everything end to end, with the user required to accept each trade. He said the team wants to build safe, trustworthy finance, adding: “A farmer shouldn’t need a hedge fund to be able to hedge.”⁠[2][4][4][4][4]

In March 2026, Catalyst first made its plans public and opened a waitlist. The company initially tested its product with high-frequency traders before turning to a wider retail audience; the company says its pilot generated hundreds of millions of dollars in trading volume over a couple of weeks.⁠[8][8][4]

On October 8, 2026, Catalyst announced a $30 million seed round, about seven months after opening its waitlist. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Jump TradingJump TradingJump Trading is a proprietary trading firm headquartered in Chicago. It was founded in 1999 by two former Chicago Mercantile Exchange pit traders, built its business on algorithmic and high-frequency trading, and trades equities, options, credit, commodities, futures, and digital assets. Since 2021 its crypto business has operated under the Jump Crypto brand and has worked on blockchain infrastructure projects including Wormhole, Pyth, and Firedancer; in December 2024 its subsidiary Tai Mo Shan settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over trading related to TerraUSD, paying about $123 million without admitting or denying the findings.Open the full entry, Peak XV PartnersPeak XV PartnersPeak XV Partners is a venture capital firm that grew out of Sequoia’s India and Southeast Asia business, investing across the seed, venture and growth stages in markets including India, Asia-Pacific and the United States. The firm began operating as Sequoia Capital India in 2006 and adopted its current name and became independent in 2023.Open the full entry, Lux CapitalLux CapitalLux Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Josh Wolfe and Robert Paull, with offices in New York and Silicon Valley. Focused on emerging science and technology, the firm backs companies in fields including life sciences, artificial intelligence, robotics, manufacturing, aerospace and defense through fund investments and by helping to found companies.Open the full entry, Anti FundAnti FundAnti Fund is an investment firm co-founded in 2021 by Jake Paul and Geoff Woo, investing from pre-seed and seed stages through growth-stage companies. The firm combines technical judgment with its founders’ experience in media and consumer brands, focusing on artificial intelligence, robotics, defense and related infrastructure.Open the full entry, CoinbaseCoinbaseCoinbase is a U.S. operator of crypto asset trading platforms, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, whose listed parent is Coinbase Global, Inc.; it went public through a direct listing on Nasdaq (ticker COIN) in April 2021 and joined the S&P 500 in May 2025. It provides crypto trading, custody, staking, and stablecoin-related services, launched USDC with Circle, develops the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, and acquired the crypto options exchange Deribit in 2025; its venture investing operates as Coinbase Ventures.Open the full entry, and Premji InvestPremji InvestPremji Invest is an investment firm established by Azim Premji in 2006, operating across private and public markets in India and the United States, with investment returns primarily supporting the philanthropic work of the Azim Premji Foundation. Its investment areas include technology, financial services, consumer, healthcare and industrials.Open the full entry; the investment was led by Sequoia Capital partner George RobsonGeorge RobsonGeorge Robson is a partner at Sequoia Capital focused on seed and early-stage investing, who has led or co-led financings in fintech and other companies including Pennylane, Zefir, nsave, Tola, Aspora, WithCoverage, and Catalyst. Before joining Sequoia, he worked at Morgan Stanley and Revolut.Open the full entry. Iskandar was 21 at the time.⁠[4][4][8][8][9][4]

Catalyst: Official website: https://catalyst.app/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]