Looking for Infrastructure That Works Like Infrastructure Should

Fragment helps fintech companies build reliable financial products without rebuilding accounting infrastructure from scratch. Their ledger API powers everything from neobanks to payment platforms, letting small engineering teams ship products that previously required armies of accountants and custom-built systems.

When Fragment needed a 401(k) provider, they brought the same framework they apply to their own product decisions. They wanted something that worked reliably, felt pleasant, and would resonate with their team. 

Backed by the team that built the first ledgers at Robinhood, Stripe and Affirm, Fragment knew what good financial infrastructure looks like. They needed a partner who thought in systems, not just compliance checkboxes.

Building from Pain-point to Product

Fragment's founding story starts with a painful insight. After selling their previous company, the founders built a private investment platform to syndicate deals. The investing interface was straightforward. The accounting nightmare wasn't. Each investor had more than 40 different balances to track, requiring armies of accountants and endless manual reconciliation between product balances and bank balances.

"We realized the real opportunity wasn't the investment front-end," Neckel says. "It was the programmatic accounting system sitting between the product and the bank."

Underneath every financial product sits double-entry bookkeeping. Every transaction fans out into multiple entries across multiple balance sheets. Fragment's solution: build a horizontal API that provides an immutable, real-time double-entry ledger as infrastructure. It is the same foundational layer that companies like Robinhood, Square, and Uber built in-house, but now available as an API.

"The goal is to let a team of three or four engineers ship Robinhood-level financial products," Neckel explains. Their early adopters proved that former engineers from those same companies who had built ledgers once, never wanted to do it again.

Why Basic Capital: Market-Native Thinking and Shared Philosophy

What resonated about Basic Capital was the market-native approach. The founding team includes people who've run markets on both the public side and private side. They want the flexibility to invest how they want, with more investing options and greater control. 

As Neckel put it, “Basic Capital has built infrastructure for long-term wealth building the same way we've built infrastructure for accounting and balance integrity. The mental models align."

Fragment provides the accounting primitives so fintech companies can focus on user-facing products. Basic Capital provides the retirement infrastructure so companies like Fragment can focus on building their business. The onboarding experience reflected that philosophy: smooth, transparent, and built by people who understand how financial systems actually work.

For infrastructure builders choosing infrastructure, the fit matters. Fragment chose a partner who understands the foundations, thinks in systems, and builds for the long term. Just like good infrastructure should.

Photo Credit: Suze Creedon