Introduced by a mutual friend, Ian first heard of our vision for Investa when we were a team of two working from my parents’ garage. We took the chance to give him a run through of the options market and explain a number of ways in which we saw the toolkit of UK investors as being inferior to their US equivalents and how there is a chance to change that.
Despite it being very early days Ian bought into the vision and joined as an advisor, tasked with the role of laying the technical foundations and building a strong engineering team.
As the relationship grew and the more we watched as options trading took off in other markets, Ian became increasingly convinced that there is a great opportunity for disruption in the UK market. Ian’s commitment and contribution to Investa gradually increased as his interest in accelerating developments in the retail trading landscape also grew.
We expressed to Ian we would love him onboard full time and Ian made it clear that he wanted to make this his next full time project. We were of course delighted, given the pitfalls he had already helped us to avoid as an advisor by that point.
Fast forward just over a year since those first conversations from the garage and we have no doubt that we have the best person in the business to be leading the technology side of Investa.