I’m genuinely curious about who the target customers are for this platform. In terms of simple strategies (see signals A and B, fire order, wait for signal C, exit market, profit), there’s just no chance of a startup beating the established HFT players on execution speed. In terms of sophisticated model generation, training, optimization, etc., I don’t see being able to compete with them either. Their data and computational resources are just too good. You interviewed 100s of traders; I wonder how many truly successful ones you talked to. Did you give more weight to their input than the less successful ones?

I’m certainly biased here, as I’ve spent many years building infrastructure for large HFT firms. If nothing else, it’s made it crystal clear that there’s smart money in the market and dumb money in the market. On my own, I’m absolutely the dumb money when I compare my resources to infrastructures costing $300M or more and hundreds of the brightest people around. Unsurprisingly, I keep my money in mutual funds.

I wish you the best of luck, though. I hope you prove me wrong.