Interviews

Can you tell me about TastyTrade? TastyTrade empowers the do-it-yourself investor and enables them to do extraordinary things with their money. We engage our viewers in the financial markets, help them maneuver the markets and identify opportunities. We produce 8 hours of live original programming every day. Our research-based content teaches a logical, mechanical approach to invest while challenging viewers to better understand how active investing can have considerably less risk than a passive buy-and-hold approach. How did you start working at TastyTrade? I am one of the co-founders with Tom Sosnoff. Tom was one of the founders of ThinkorSwim (an online brokerage company we sold to TD Ameritrade for $750M in 2009) and I was ThinkOrSwim’s CFO. Post the acquisition and integration, it was time to fill a void in finance and investing. Tom had a vision to make finance fun and actionable. We set out to create the first financial network that was engaging, actionable and fully transparent. The TastyTrade network was born! What do you enjoy most about working at TastyTrade? I am a firm believer in “Do What You Love, Love What You Do” because you spend a majority of your time doing it. Empowering investors with free useful and actionable information – helping to build investor confidence, is what I find enjoyable. I find it exciting to make trading accessible and attainable for all. Who are your target customers? The TastyTrade target customer does not focus on a specific demographic. We have customers that are millennials all the way to retirees, who range from beginners to advanced investors. The common thread is their desire to learn, be challenged and want to control their money. What is your traction so far?  Viewers have watched 30 million hours of TastyTrade content! Our DIY customers can be found in over 150 countries and the number continues to grow. Who are your competitors? We have no direct competitors that encompass all that we do for the self-directed investor, which includes TastyTrade‘s actionable research-based content with our new brokerage firm’s tailored trading technology and fees that appropriately fit the trading methodology we teach every day on air at www.tastytrade.com. Why do customers use your solution versus your competitors? We don’t have competitors. We find do-it-yourself investors attracted to our 360-degree experience, from in-depth trading content with trade ideas and strategies to technology and brokerage with appropriate, fully transparent fees. What’s your revenue model – how do you generate revenue? Beginning January 2017, we’re launching a new brokerage firm with fees tailored to the methodology of trading we teach. Do you have partners and how do they contribute to the growth of TastyTrade? We are really fortunate enough that our “TastyNation,” our amazing customers who follow us are our ambassadors. We celebrate their successes and their appreciation, feedback, and support are invaluable. We do minimal paid-for marketing, as word-of-mouth (in-person as well as digitally) is the best source to attract new customers. What is your plan for the next six to twelve months? We have a mission to debunk the myths around active vs. passive investing. We plan to redefine “active trading” to help individuals understand what it means to be “active” and help empower them to take control of their finances. The same team built ThinkOrSwim starting in 2000, TastyTrade in 2011, and now we are reemerging in the brokerage industry in January 2017 with ‘tastyworks’…bigger and bolder than ever. In the first year, we expect to exceed levels it took us six years to reach when we built ThinkOrSwim. Is there anything else you’d like to add? We encourage investors to start their “active investing” journey by reading our white paper on active vs. passive investing here

Interviews

Can you tell me about I Know First? At I Know First we truly bring science and math to the financial world by providing daily investment forecasts based on an advanced self-learning algorithm. Our R&D team, led by CTO Lipa Roitman (Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science) has decades of experience in the artificial intelligence field and researching the nature of chaotic systems. The capital market is a very complex and continuously evolving system and I Know First’s  forecasting algorithm utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to find relationships and patterns in large sets of historical stock market data in order to analyze and predict its behavior. Predictions are generated daily for a growing universe of over 3000 securities, including stocks, world indices, ETFs, interest rates and more for the short, medium and long-term horizons. The algorithm is applied to discover the best investment opportunities and used as a decision support system for existing investment processes or to develop systematic trading strategies. Why did you decide to found I Know First? To focus on the capital markets was a natural choice for us. Market participants are overwhelmed by huge amounts of data that need to be digested and understood to be able to navigate through all kinds of market environments successfully. So far only the largest players in the industry with enough resources and know-how could develop and maintain this type of models internally. With our algorithmic AI-based forecasting solutions it became possible also for smaller or non-specialized institutions in this area as well as for individual investors to benefit from this technology. This was our biggest motivation when founding the company. Who are your target customers? Our clients are very diverse. On the institutional side, our typical customers are family offices, hedge funds, and other asset management firms as well as banks. But we also serve individual investors across the globe. In order to generally better understand how we are able to target and attract such a wide range of clients, I’d like to explain you quickly the solutions offered. The system is a stock forecasting and ranking algorithm and the final product is offered in three tiers. The first two tiers comprise our algorithmic forecasting research product. Tier 1 is usually used by private investors, whereby they can subscribe to the best investment opportunities as discovered by I Know First’s self-learning algorithm. They can choose from many standardized packages as e.g. Top10 Technology or Healthcare Stocks or world indices forecasts. A subscription to such package helps them to identify interesting opportunities in a specific investment universe on a daily basis. Tier 2 solution builds upon the first tier, whereby the forecast is customized to the clients’ needs. The product is used by research and analyst teams in hedge funds, banks, and family offices or by financial advisors. Since the system is scalable, additional securities and markets (exchanges) can be incorporated and various assets filtering criteria applied (exchanges, liquidity and risk parameters, industries, fundamental key metrics’ constraints etc.) in order to meet the clients’ needs. So, in the case of a bank, let’s say its analysts follow closely 100 companies from the S&P 100 index when they give recommendations to their clients. They would receive the corresponding forecasts from I Know First for these stocks and use it as a decision support system when consulting their clients. Another example of a client using this service is a wealth management company, which focuses on income generating equity portfolios, invests in MLPs and also implements sector rotation strategies (via ETFs). Around 200 additional securities were integrated into I Know First’s system in order to provide the client with corresponding forecasts. Approximately once a month the custom prediction universe is adjusted to the changing portfolio and needs of the client. Besides the algorithmic forecasting reports, I Know First develops back-tests and offers systematic trading strategies which are used in partnerships with hedge funds and other asset managing entities. These strategies are rules-based and utilize our algorithmic forecasting indicators in order to rank and select the trades as well as the time the execution. This is our Tier 3 offering and here the final product is the trades recommendations for execution, depending on the investment strategy profile chosen. The type of strategies varies, including mean-reversion logic and more trend focused approaches, all generating high positive alpha while keeping beta in the 0.3-0.8 range, and yielding overall high risk-adjusted returns. The strategies can be used in partnership with I Know First to launch hedge funds, mutual funds or other investment vehicles. What’s your revenue model? The first two tiers are priced fixed per month. The prices can range between $159 and $7,500 depending on the subscription level and the customization (or none) needed. The Tier 3 solution instead is offered on a revenue sharing model, meaning we agree with partners on splitting the management and performance fees. Who are your competitors and why customers use your solution versus your competitors? Obviously, our competitors are any kind of companies providing predictive analytical tools for the financial markets but also various stock rating providers. But we see ourselves in a unique position for two reasons. Firstly, our innovative, independent and objective AI-based approach, separates I Know First’s solution from traditional forecasting models and tools, which was developed and tested decades before the incorporation. Secondly, the two-fold business model puts I Know First in a unique position: offering custom and standardized algorithmic forecasts to a variety of clients (institutional and retail) and researching and developing systematic trading strategies for fund management purposes on a revenue sharing basis. The business model proved itself and I Know First has earned clients’ trust for over four years now and is partnering with large financial institutions not only in Israel (asset manager) but also Europe (bank), United States (wealth management) and Japan (financial information provider). Institutional, as well as individual investors and financial advisers, are looking for advanced technologies that not just help them to make investment decisions or recommendations with more confidence but also offer a different perspective on the financial markets. This is whatI Know First is offering to its customers. First of all, self-learning and adaptability separate our predictive system from traditional models. The financial market is a very complex system that continuously evolves beyond established theories and thus can’t be sufficiently explained and predicted by traditional statistical/econometric models. Traditional models rely on those theories and assumptions behind them, which in reality often don’t hold (anymore). Therefore, a more complex self-learning system is needed in order to model the financial markets and adapt to the changes it continuously goes through.I Know First’s algorithm, incorporating multi-layered neural networks, allows to model the market without human derived assumptions and to keep the model flexible. It applies artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to search for patterns in large sets of historical stock market data to generate ranked forecasts. I Know First’s system does not only use the most updated information; it also learns from and evolves with it. It adapts to new conditions and features and has enough learning experience and intelligence to be able to make predictions in circumstances not observed before. The algorithm is constantly proposing “theories”, testing them on years of market data, then validating them on the most recent data, which prevents it over-fitting. If a data input does not improve the model, it is “rejected” and another input can be substituted. This bootstrapping system is self-learning and thus live. The resulting formula is constantly evolving, as new daily data is added and a better machine-proposed “theory” is found. Furthermore, when applying traditional tools often too much subjectivity from the user is found in the assumptions. I Know First algorithmic forecasting technology offers a unique objective, adaptable and self-learning advisory system that is built without any human-derived assumptions and doesn’t include any subjective qualitative features. Moreover, the algorithmic forecasts are updated and ranked daily, helping advisors and/or investors make decisions based on the most recent market events, which are often not incorporated by many rating system providers. Also, our unique predictability indicator helps to identify and focus on more predictable assets and thus enhance the overall performance. I could go on and on with all the advantages the technology offers! And I haven’t even touched the ease of scalability of the system that allows us to integrate additional markets/exchanges, enter new markets and create new business opportunities! Do you have partners and how do they contribute to the growth of I Know First?  Currently, we are very busy with entering new markets, especially Europe and East Asia. We work together with a large European bank on a special offering to their private banking division. The goal is to develop trading ideas generating tool for their high-net-worth clients. Here, of course, the local capital market is very important. So, we are about to add Euronext to our offering. The London Stock Exchange is next. In Asia, especially Japan, South Korea and China are the most interesting markets for us. There we have several local partners with whom we plan to start marketing campaigns and offering I Know First’s solutions there in 2017. Is there anything else you’d like to add? Just a big shout-out to all investment management professionals and algorithmic trading fans out there – we’re coming to your local market soon if we aren’t there already.

Interviews

Tell me about ACME Growth Co. This is an era of digital Darwinism – where the technology and society are evolving faster than businesses can naturally adapt. This sets the stage for a new brand of leadership, a new generation of business models, and revolutionary technology. Traditional companies have been so busy focused on their business output that by the time they pick up their heads to see what is evolving digitally, it gets hard for them to keep working at their primary business goals while harmoniously evolving with the changing technology. One thing we’ve observed, over the past decade, is that no legal, accounting, or insurance firm is hesitant to use relevant existing content and build on that. The same cannot be said about fintechs, start-ups or SMBs. Even though there is a lot of pertinent literature available about sales & marketing, building sales funnels, and growth, for some reason everyone still feels like they need to start from scratch and build their own. ACME Growth Co. is here to change how companies use data. Drawing from our experience in data, sales & marketing, and tech, we’ve developed a ‘Sales Sprint’ – a 5-day intensive, hands-on process to define goals that can be aligned with rapidly changing digital capabilities and traditional expertise. This helps companies to focus on qualitative goals instead of dreams and aspirations. Whereas most ‘agencies’, typically, deploy a dozen junior employees (heck, you’re lucky if they’re all employees and half aren’t interns), we take a different approach. Our founders come from very competitive digital businesses, and as a result, we view the world a bit differently. Instead of leveraging several less-experienced resources, we like to solve the same problem by deploying one or two A-players and pair them with the best, most cutting-edge technology possible. The result is a much more scalable, sustainable and value producing engagement for our partners. We are a different kind of agency. How did you end up creating the name ACME? That’s actually a pretty funny story. Finding a URL that resonates with people is not always easy so we went the opposite direction and picked a strong name that did not resonate with folks so we could define it for ourselves. I also think of watching Looney Tunes may have had an impact. The coyote was very resourceful, innovative, and never gave up on chasing the roadrunner. How do you like it so far? It’s a fantastic company. It’s evolving in a dimension where digital is becoming a part of our everyday consumption of information. We have a great team, some really smart data-driven folks, who work in a non-siloed environment where everyone’s deliverable is able to work at scale. We use the same systems and processes internally as we deploy for our clients. We want to be our own case study. Who are your partners and how do they contribute to the growth of ACME? We do have a lot of partners – fintechs, SMBs, and public companies. We are also in conversations with Fortune 500s (as you can appreciate, some we can’t talk about because due to NDA). As a growth company that focuses on scale and performance, our sales sprint methodology allows us to be able to move through engagements very quickly while adding significant value to our partners along the way. It helps that we also have a suite of amazing partners who want us to succeed and that works both ways. As mentioned above, one of the secret ingredients of our success is using cutting-edge technology. As an example, if we have a messy data project (like cleaning a CRM of years of bad quality data), most people would use tools like excel -> search and replace, or if they get really fancy, pattern matching or regular expressions. For our last project, we used machine learning classifiers and natural language processing – stuff that’s commonly referred to as ‘artificial intelligence’ these days. What is your traction so far? We’re more focused on ‘responsible growth’ than pulling out all the stops. As I write this, I have 231 business cards beside me that I haven’t reached out to, because although we’re hiring as quickly as we can (plug: interested parties should apply on our careers page) to be able to produce consistent and continued results for all our partners. We went from 0 to 6 figures in revenue within the first 30 days of operation and have been adding about 2-3 clients every other week. At some point, we will stop taking on new clients so now is a good time to get involved. Who are your competitors? There are plenty of companies that offer comparable services, but none that offer comparable results. I don’t think we have a lot of competitors who are doing what we do because the service offering that we have is just so valuable. Although there are other businesses out there that are targeting the assortment of people that we would be targeting (we know this, because we’re often called in after our clients have had one, two, or sometimes several attempts with some of these firms), but I don’t think there is an apples-to-apples competitor in the marketplace right now. People have been asking us what separates us from the herd and it really is our unique ability to efficiently use data and technology in tandem to solve problems. For most firms, it’s usually either/or. What do you enjoy the most about ACME? I never really understood holacracy until we built a team that could operate with no silos but severe ownership of tasks. In my role, I get to focus on new clients, investor relations and empowering the rest of the team to succeed. Given that these are some of my core strengths, I really love doing what I get to do at ACME. What is the plan for the next six to twelve months for ACME? We’re going to continue to grow – both in terms of our internal team and the partners we handle. We will be going through a period of acquisitions in the summer as well. How can businesses start using your services? Our process is built around the concepts of moving through a five-day sales & marketing sprint. We strongly recommend all participants to come prepared for very immersive and focused sessions. We will be putting out more content presently but the best way to leverage ACME is to reach out to us directly at neal@ACMEgrowth.co. Would you like to add anything else? The greatest value that we seem to be able to add to most of our conversations is that our team has a unique capability to look at everything a little bit differently. In today’s ever-changing digital world, we believe, that is a highly valuable asset. Also, proper execution is critical. In short, our three pillars are – strategic vision, tactical implementation, and effective execution. We are unconventional. We are the growth experts. We are ACME.

Interviews

Can you tell me about FXStreet? FXStreet is the leading Forex tool and information website for traders. It was launched in the year 2000 and since then it prides itself for being the point of contact of hundreds of different analysts, educators, brokers, and traders that share their analysis, classes, and tools with the FX trading community. We have workers worldwide to follow the market 24/5 and always try to give an objective point of view of what is moving the market. How did you start working at FXStreet? I started in the marketing and accounts department almost 10 years ago. After dealing with clients for many years, understanding their needs and helping them to reach their target audience I started supervising the projects in FXStreet.

What do you enjoy most about working at FXStreet?

Dealing with an international environment, from the people working there, to the market we serve. Who are your target customers? Retail traders. What is your traction so far? We have over 7 million page views between our global audience and mobile users. We work mainly with the English speaking audience although we have also the website in 17 different languages. Who are your competitors? All FX related portals, although with many of them we complement each other and also share some tools or information. As you can see, the Economic Calendar in Myfxbook is powered by FXStreet and we display their widget with spreads, we also display content from forexlive or forexcrunch, so, at the end, we make the market stronger among all the portals offering different tools.

Why customers use your solution versus your competitors?

We provide a full range of tools and information in one place, many traders come for one of our tools, like our charts, rates, economic calendar, news, analysis or live videos, and some use a combination of all of them. What’s your revenue model? We offer a full advertising package for brokers, as well as sell our tools to brokers. We also work as an ad agency for brokers and sell ad space for a network of FX websites. What’s your pricing model? For advertising we work on different packages, partnering with brokers to provide the best results.

Do you have partners and how do they contribute to the growth of FXStreet?

We offer information from many sources, working with contributors worldwide a from a wide range of sources.

What is your plan for the next six to twelve months for FXStreet?

We launched the new website, and we are working now on improvements according to the received feedbacks. We need to make sure we offer all the tools our visitors are looking for.

Interviews

Tell me about the Exeria Exeria is a program that allows one to invest in a different market, no matter what their level of investment knowledge is, and allows them to do so in the manner that they see fit. How did you end up working at Exeria?  One of my ex-students recommended me for the post, and I actually said that finance was not my field of expertise. However, my boss convinced me that it was a worthwhile project. What do you like the most about being a part of Exeria?  The fact that the product is beneficial in so many ways is what I like best. It is educational, and at the same time, practical. So, as you invest in the markets, you learn about them in Exeria. I think a lot of people’s fears lie in the unknown, and that is why the majority of people either do not invest, or they trust others to invest for them and then wish for the best. What is your revenue model? There are two possibilities: you can use Exeria through a participating broker or pay for the service yourself and that would be about $50 per month with program usage, cloud space, and running all included. Who are your customers? Everyone, from those who can afford just a couple hundred dollars to open up an account to the ones that can afford $50,000 accounts or more. We all know that most financial advisors are only working in their own best interest unless they are fiduciaries. Therefore, Exeria will allow most to make their own decisions and work in their own interest. A robo-advisory doesn’t need to pay any bills and therefore has no interest in being less than forthcoming about what is veritably best for you. Whom do you target? All types of investors, whether they are into Forex, futures, or stocks . Exeria can and will cater to your specific needs. Who are your competitors? Betterment, Motifs, Vetr… and the list goes on. Why should clients use your solution versus your competitors’ solutions? We give you open options, which give you more control. I would say that most of our competitors are like Uber. They give you a ride, but you don’t get to keep the car. With us, you get a Rolls Royce, and it’s yours; you decide which direction you take it in. What is your traction so far? Well, in Europe, we have over a few thousand individual users and a major broker who initiated the project has been using the technology successfully for almost 10 years now. Pekao, one of the largest banks in Poland, and Citi Index in England have adopted it as one of the platforms available with their services. Can you disclose any metrics? At this time, since we are developing a whole new online version, it would be unwise to give any stats. However, you can go to our ranking page and see the individual ranking of any given robot. What is the plan for the next six to twelve months for Exeria? We are looking to join with venture capitalists to enlarge the scope of Exeria. We would like social investing to boom, like social media has, and we believe that, with Exeria, it can.

Interviews

Can you tell me about Invest Diva? Invest Diva is an online financial education platform. The goal is to get individuals invested in a diversified portfolio and to teach them how to develop profitable investment strategies on their own. We’re not a broker or a money manager. What we do is provide the education needed for you to be able to manage your own investments. It’s important to manage your own investments because the average American household pays $600,000 in 401(k) fees over a lifetime, but if you just learn how to do it on your own, the overall lifetime payments that you have to make are far less, and your performance is far better.

Why did you decide to start Invest Diva?

First of all, I was an engineer; I studied electrical engineering in Japan. I was the only girl in my class for 7 years; it was not fun. Then, when I was still in Japan, I got into trading, and when the market crashed in 2008, I made money on the market crash, which was quite fascinating, so I became interested in finance. Then I decided to come to New York to work on Wall Street and be more involved in the financial industry. That’s when I learned about some of the scams of brokers and the lack of knowledge, and also the fact that this field is still very male-dominated. Always being one of the only women in my field kind of empowered me to create a platform to support women and educate them to become more financially independent and use their money their own way so that it matches their own needs.

So your target customers are only women?

It’s not only women. That was my goal when I started it, but men and women are definitely welcome. Today, I just got a referral from a man, who was saying “I can’t wait to brag about being an Invest Diva.” So Invest Diva: of course, the name is very feminine, and the primary target audience is women, but the market remains very male-dominated anyway, and finance education is finance education; it’s not related to your gender, so everybody’s welcome. 

Who are your customers?

Our primary customers are women who have no financial education background, and they’re in their 30s, typically single mothers or divorced women who are looking to take care of their own investments. Then there are men who trade on the side of their actual job who are looking for more education. Occupation-wise, we have people from really every occupation: teachers, nurses, university students, dentists, waitresses…really from all over. If you don’t know about investing and you want to learn more, we are here to teach you how.

Out of all of the education packages that you have, which is the most popular one? How many have been sold so far?

Well, a lot of our services are just being developed, so, of course, my most popular service is the one that I first created: the Forex Coffee Break education course. It includes 100 very short, funny videos that teach you about trading, really from the beginning of the beginning to professional institutional level. I made them all myself, so they’re all kind of quirky and cheesy, but they’re very fun and educational. That’s our longest-running and still the most popular education course on Invest Diva. Our second most popular is our Premium Facebook Group which we launched in September 2016. Even though it has only been a few months, we have received great feedback and the number of active members increases every day, which is very exciting for us.

Do you have any partners who help you to grow Invest Diva?

There are three different partners of Invest Diva: We do partner with brokers who are seeking educational materials, so internationally, we have banks, brokers, and investment platforms who we provide educational services and develop trading strategies for. They’re located in Japan, the U.K., Dubai, Singapore, and Cyprus. In the U.S. our partners include NASDAQ, TalkMarkets, and Benzinga. With them, we have sort of a syndication partnership. Then we have individual partners; whenever I find a great investor and educator who I think is elaborate enough to provide their expertise to our audience in an easy-to-understand and non-intimidating way, we create an affiliate partnership with them. For example, one of our most recent partners is Rick Bensignor, who is now providing his trading insights on Invest Diva as well. Who are your competitors? First and foremost, Online Trading Academy. They actually asked me to work for them years ago, but I had different goals. Another competitor is LearnVest. They are money managers, and they target women and try to educate women (mostly millennials) about financial literacy. They’re not directly our competitor because we provide different services. We’re in the same arena and we both have the same end goal, which is education, however, they manage money and take commission fees while we are purely educational. What is your plan for the next six to twelve months? I’m publishing a new book called “Ichimoku Secrets,” which is coming on December 15^th. It’s a technical analysis method that I’ve developed during my years and years of trading. The Ichimoku Secrets Course will be then next step once the book is published. In six months, we are launching our wealth management course, which is going to be very similar to what I teach at universities in New York, where I teach a wealth management class. By the end of 2017, we are looking to increase our subscribers to 200,000.

Is there anything that you would like to add?

If you are a beginner in trading and are intimated by all the fancy financial terminology, my book Invest Diva’s Guide to Making Money in Forex is for you! It was published by McGraw-Hill in 2013 and is still greatly popular among traders.

Interviews

Tell me about Xignite – why did you start the firm?

Xignite is a typical story of a firm that stumbled into a real problem and pivoted to address it. At first, I started the company to create a b2b wealth management platform. I used to run Product Management for Advent Software, a software company providing portfolio management software to investment management firms. Wealth Management was a natural extension from Portfolio Management. We were not quite successful with that wealth management solution. But we needed financial market data in order to power and demo our platform. This was in the early 2000’ and was looking for XML data via APIs, something that just did not exist. We could only find complex legacy solutions instead. So we created our first REST API by scraping Yahoo Finance and using them as demos. We listed our APIs in some of the first API directories of the time, and quickly some firms started asking us to build a commercial version of that API, which we did. This was more than 10 years ago. Today, REST APIs are broadly accepted as a key component of next-generation architectures, our APIs are among the most popular in the world, and we have the privilege to power some of the best wealth management platforms in the world such as robo-advisors Betterment, Personal Capital, and Wealthfront. Can you name some of your clients? Our clients include a wide range of business as shown below: Who are your partners and how they contribute to Xignite growth? Our partners are plentiful and they all contribute to our success in different ways: Amazon Web Services —which we have used since 2008 have allowed us to scale our technology beyond everything we initially imagine and have helped redefine the role and architecture of APIs and their impact on enterprises. Global Exchanges and Data Vendors such as FactSet, Morningstar, NASDAQ, Wall Street Horizon, Mergent, and BATS allow us to distribute and integrate their data into a simple, scalable and one-stop-shop offering that make it easy for our customers to build innovative applications. More below: Technology providers such as ChartIQ and StreamData.io—whose technology helps us enrich our own offering and better serve our clients.

What is your traction so far?

• We have about 1100 customers globally in 55 countries.
• Around 35% of our business is conducted outside of the US with significant growth in Asia and EMEA.
• Through our platform, we reach tens of thousands of firms and tens of millions of users either directly or indirectly via our clients embedding our data into their websites, mobile apps or enterprise SaaS solutions.
• We have more than 45 product offering totaling more than 650 API end points (the largest integrated API suite in the world).
• We have served more than 1.2 Trillion API requests so far in 2016 are on track to serve more than 1.5 trillion. Putting us in the same category as the likes of Twitter, Google, and Netflix—all serving trillions of APIs per year.
• Usage on our platform grows 300% annually.
• Xignite has raised more than $37M in capital in 3 rounds, including a $20.5M Series C round in February 2016.

Can you share your pricing model?

We have more than 45 product offerings each available via annual subscription for unlimited use of our APIs. Each produce covers a specific asset class (e.g. Equities, Forex, Funds, etc.), type of data (quotes, valuations, fundamentals, etc.) and availability (real-time, delayed, historical, etc.)

Why do your customers use your solution verse your competitor’s solution?

Our customers invariably choose us for the simplicity, scalability, and breadth of integration of our APIs. No other provider out there offers the breadth of data we offer on a simple, standard-based REST API platform that can scale like we do.

What is the next six to twelve-month plan for Xignite?

Over the six to twelve months, Xignite focus will be on:

• Respond to global on-the-ground demand in Asia in EMEA by opening offices in Singapore and Hong Kong
• Continuing to expand our global data offering by adding new global exchanges and global fundamental data sets that are in great demand from clients
• Grow our value-added service offering provided on top of our data by launching new open cloud analytics services and vendor of record services
• Promoting the use of our platform globally as an enterprise platform for large financial institutions and global data providers

Anything else you would like to add to the blog post?

We believe that in a few years, all market data will originate in the public cloud—specifically in Amazon Web Services. We also believe that by the same period, most enterprise applications will run in the public cloud and all mobile applications will operate off the public cloud.We are simply trying to be the platform that brings this data to those applications inside the public cloud. And we are  well on our way to accomplishing this vision.

Interviews

Tell me about BankerBay BankerBay is an investment banking deal origination platform that uses a complex algorithmic engine to match corporate seekers of capital with institutional investors of capital around the world, for private equity, M&A, and real estate transactions. Our focus is to replace the heavy-lifting, time-consuming and exceptional expensive labour-intensive parts of the deal origination process, with much more efficient, scientifically precise and scalable solutions. This whole process has traditionally run on a who-you-know basis, resulting in very narrow and often sub-optimal choices for corporates and funds alike. Why did you start BankerBay? Having worked at some of the largest investment banks in the world, and also my own boutique advisory firm, I realized the problems with the industry were systemic. The commonalties were all based on traditional processes being completely predicated on human capital, therefore all the bottlenecks were also caused by human capital. Since the global financial crisis, 65% of this human capital (in investment banking) has been taken out, leaving a massive void and exacerbated a problem with an already flawed system. Opaqueness was another key factor, which meant that deals were often made on the basis of the strength of a personal network, more than the merits of the actual deal. I felt that, in this age of data and communication capabilities, there was no reason a small leather manufacturer in South America, doing really well and requiring $30 million to grow to the next level, should not find the most appropriate capital for the company, where ever in the world that capital comes from. The information flow in the middle market was and still is the most fragmented, so we felt this is where we can offer the greatest value. These realizations prompted me to follow my beliefs in the need for investment banking to change, both to stay relevant and to provide greater value to its customers. To challenge an industry that has not changed since the early 1900’s and introduce technology where it has never been used before. Taking logic from contemporary consumer and social behavior, BankerBay applies it to the relevant functions in the investment-banking world. How long does it take for you to verify people? The user verification process can take anywhere between a few hours to two days depending on the availability of information of the user and the multitude of techniques we then adopt to confirm such data. How many, on average, match deals you already closed? Just for the first 9 months of 2016, $1.6 billion of BankerBay deals were closed. What’s your revenue model? Our revenue model is subscription based. We offer a wide range of attractive subscription options that users can choose from, depending on their exact requirements. How long on average it takes to find a match? After a deal is approved on BankerBay (so after both the users and the parameters of the deal have gone through our curation process), our algo-engine correlates hundreds of thousands of criteria, outputting matches for the deal in milliseconds. Worth highlighting that every single deal on BankerBay is vetted by our team of IB analysts who curate all the information to ensure the deal is institutionally fundable and passes our robust approval process. Who are your partners and how they contribute to BankerBay growth? We have partners in a number of different areas, from data providers to other adjacent technology pioneers. These with our board, advisors and investors that consist of some of the most experienced and accomplished minds in the banking industry, have provided us with exceptionally accelerated growth, and consistent guidance during our short but very fruitful journey thus far. What is your traction so far? How many people so far use your platform? We currently receive over 600 new deals each month, with a deal value of over $14 billion per month. We have over 11,000 users with 500-600 news users joining the platform every month, including most of the largest bulge bracket banks, and over 100 of the Fortune 500 companies who use BankerBay for their global mid-market M&A requirements. We now receive consistent deal flow from 145 countries around the world.   Why do your customers use your solution versus your competitor’s solution? 3 main reasons:

1. Our advanced technology, which has proven to be the backbone of our success. Matches generated by our algorithms are based on exceptionally precise metrics and more science than either exists in the traditional industry or that is being used by other tech platforms in our industry
2. Our curation process, led by our tech-enabled analyst teams ensures only qualified institutional quality deals to flow through the platform
3. We are truly global with deal flow from 145 countries around the world and have four offices in major financial centers from New York to Shanghai

What is the next six to twelve-month plan for BankerBay? The next year will be exceptionally busy for BankerBay. We currently have offices in Singapore, India, and New York and we are opening our Shanghai office right now. China has always been a very big part of our global strategy so we’re very excited about the addition of that team and products. We are also due to open an office in London to cater more to the UK and European markets by 1H17. So suspect I’ll be traveling a lot, sleeping very little, getting a little grayer by the day, but secretly enjoying every minute of it!

Interviews

Can you tell me about I/O Digital? I/O Digital was founded in 2014. We started to create our own digital currency called I/O Coin (IOC). We had a very successful launch and soon after that we released a one of a kind HTML5 wallet. After that first launch period, we started to realize the powerful potential of the underlying technology: the Blockchain. Nobody was talking about Blockchain and only about Bitcoin, but we released a whitepaper explaining our future idea about Blockchain. This project was called DIONS. DIONS is basically the ability to store data in the same Blockchain making it possible to use the technology for more than just a currency. Like storing identity, voting and documents in the Blockchain. Since the inception of I/O Digital, the core team is paying all developments out of their own pockets which result in a rather slow development cycle because of the fund limitation. The good thing about that is every dollar we could spend would be spent very wisely and effectively. Since 2014 we started to develop DIONS and in the first quarter of 2017, we hope to connect our first customer to our Blockchain. I/O Digital is a bit different than other Blockchain initiatives. Most of the current projects started with an ICO and have millions to spend. Like explained we started with our own money. The new initiatives quickly learned that having just money won’t get you easy through the development process. We are all creating new software that has not been developed yet. So our early learning process is giving us a 1.5-year head start of other big funded projects. We are about to deliver, they talk whitepapers. Next to that I/O Digital is an official Foundation. This is important for us because we don’t want to be a commercial company. We develop Blockchain technology which is free to use for companies. These companies want to trust and therefore we want to make sure the source code of the project is protected by the foundation regulations. We fully rely on donations or official memberships with strategic partners to pay for our developments. How did you start working at I/O Digital? I was not the founder of I/O Coin. Joel Bosh (USA, Miami FL) is the founder of the project and is the main private finance person. I started 4 weeks after the project was launched. Joel and I met each other online in one of the chat rooms for new digital currencies. We had some great discussions about Blockchain capabilities and after a few weeks, we realized that working together would be the best choice we could make. I’m very experienced in prototyping, usability and internet projects. The management part of it but also the technical side. Together with the project management and technical experience of Joel we would be a very good team. Since I made the decision to join Joel in his project there was not a minute I have had any regret. We have a very devoted, honest and loyal team working and they all are the best around. What do you enjoy most about working at I/O Digital? First of all the technology. This is new. Before the general public, banks or businesses starting to talk about Blockchain we were already in the game. Talking to businesses, the community behind the project and investors is very rewarding. Everybody is enthusiastic because they realize I/O Digital is doing something that has not been done before and has the potential of changing complete industries in a positive way. Who are your target customers? We don’t have a specific customer. Our Blockchain project is open for every company, government or business to use. We don’t focus on a niche, we are creating the Blockchain for everybody! What is your traction so far?

• Since the start, there have been more than 1.2 million transactions through the Blockchain of I/O Digital.
• There are around 16.2 million I/O Coins in circulation and we have a total market cap of roughly $6 million
• All over the world, people use the network. Currently 32% in the US, 11% in the Netherlands and 11% in Germany.
• We are also represented in Korea, Canada, France, Indonesia, Ukraine and a lot more countries. Truly a global project and we are very proud of that.

Who are your competitors? With our ideas about how Blockchains should work and interact with each other, we don’t consider to have any real competitors. There are some initiatives that have written whitepapers about actually what we are delivering soon, but other projects focus on a niche or specific use case for their Blockchain. So we are one of a kind actually. Why customers use your solution versus your competitors? We have a vision that large companies would have their own blockchain. There will not be one overall leading blockchain that contains all the data of all those companies. That is simply not possible due to data bloat. We think there will be an ecosystem of all different blockchains. We want to be the middle-man for those blockchains because we have specific features built in our blockchain that other blockchains can use. We also provide interoperability between those chains so they can technically “talk” to each other. Next to that we are a non-profit Open Source Foundation and most other projects are commercially focussed. Can you share your pricing model? The only pricing model is that if you want to store data in our Blockchain or use it for interconnectivity, then you pay an x amount of I/O Coin to store that data. These paid (very small) fees will be redistributed amongst the holders/participators in the network. Do you have partners and how do they contribute to the growth of I/O Digital? We currently have no (strategic) partners or investors. We are talking to a few venture capitalists that have a genuine interest in teaming up with us. We are also talking with different large international companies that want to be our first “worldwide strategical partner”. Those talks are not yet in their final stages but interest in our project is great. We are always open to discuss possibilities and opportunities with other interested parties. What is your plan for the next six to twelve months for I/O Digital? First of all, we deliver and launch DIONS. DIONS is a really groundbreaking piece of technology. With this we can store data decentrally, we can send messages (private or public) from point A to B (like a decentralized Twitter) and have an alias system working to convert the large payment addresses to a readable alias. After DIONS we start to work with the next project called “Chameleon”. Chameleon will provide the interoperability between side chains and our own Blockchain. I’m certain that after DIONS launch we will be heavily involved in many business cases that want to create their Proof of Concept on our technology and we can announce possibly an investor or strategic partnership to gain even more traction in the future.

Interviews

Can you tell me about Call Levels? Call Levels is a fintech company that provides financial markets price monitoring and alerts and equalizes the playing field for all levels of investors. Its easy-to-use app interface that only requires a one-time login, after which users will always be able to receive its monitoring and alert functions anytime, anywhere. There are over 300 million investors globally who share 3 common problems in the financial markets and Call Levels alleviate these problems for them:

1. Fear of missing out on market movements and opportunities

2. Existing market notification service not scalable

3. Current solutions are expensive

On the institutional side, Call Levels’ open API offers plug-and-play solutions into existing financial systems. These solutions span across omni-channels such as websites, mobile apps, chatbots in messaging interfaces (Facebook) and Microsoft Excel. Banks, brokerages, and other financial institutions can integrate these solutions into their own or any other third-party platforms without having to invest heavily in building their own systems. Why did you start Call Levels? The idea all started in a car ride conversation between my co-founder, Daniel and myself, when we were discussing about “What is the ONE thing that all financial market participants needed but never had a good solution for?” Call Levels, referring to the commonly used trading floor lingo ‘Call me when the price reaches this level’ was something Daniel used to set with his salespeople during his days as a hedge fund manager (client). This process is labor-intensive, not scalable and expensive for financial institutions. Hence, it is a premium service that is only made available to selected clients. From this, we both decided to focus our relevant skills (being from the Finance industry previously) and startup experience to provide the best price monitoring and alerts technology for everyone in the financial markets. We aim to provide the simplest of solutions to this problem, by developing our own application that addressed these needs. With the realization that the market is saturated with needlessly expensive, complex and unwieldy financial trading tools and applications, Call Levels was created as a free real-time market monitoring and price notification tool. We democratize financial information by making it truly accessible to everyone at no cost. Who are your target customers? With over 300 million investors globally, our solution is targeted at both retail and professional investors who need to be alerted about financial market movements or opportunities. In addition, our cloud-based technology and open API enable us to service both corporations and financial institutions. What is your traction so far?  Call Levels has over 200,000 individual users globally from over 100 countries, a majority of whom are based in key global financial markets such as the US, UK, Dubai, and Singapore. Over the past year, user base has grown 25x due to our ability to scale efficiently by leveraging on our patent-pending cloud solution. Most recently, Call Levels was named the 2nd fastest growing Finance App in the US for Q3 2016 according to App Annie. What’s your revenue model? B2C: A premium subscription model feature will be introduced in our Call Levels mobile app, so that users can increase their Call Levels quota and enjoy enhanced features. B2B: Monthly pricing packages will also be offered for Financial Institutions (Banks & Brokerages), Professionals (Wealth Managers) and Enterprises (Corporate Clients). This encompasses a mix of custom pricing methodology and/or a fixed monthly fee. Why customers use your solution versus your competitors? Call Levels distinguishes itself on the simplicity, accessibility and reliability to deliver immediate price monitoring and notifications to users, consequently enabling them to stay ahead in volatile markets. As we focus our efforts greatly on providing the most accurate and reliable monitoring services, we are the experts on it. Do you have partners and how do they contribute to the growth of Call Levels? Call Levels has successfully established a first-of-its-kind revenue-generating partnership with DBS (the largest bank in Singapore). This deal will allow the latter’s customers to access proprietary market monitoring services and price alerts for SGX equities directly from the Call Levels mobile app. DBS aims to strengthen its retail private client trading capabilities as part of its efforts to enhance client engagement through this partnership that makes tracking investments simpler for its customers. Call Levels has also been selected to present our solution with Microsoft at the recent Fintech Festival in Singapore. What is your plan for the next six to twelve months for Call Levels?

1. Continue Strong User Growth Momentum in Key Financial Markets

2. Expansion into International Markets: HK, Japan etc.

3. Infrastructure and Tech Expansion (Microsoft Excel Plugin, Open API)

4. Secure more Financial Institution Partnerships