Today we’d like to introduce you to Linwood Ma.
Linwood, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I have a degree in Architecture from UIUC, and I came through the creative industry (design) to randomly end up in FinTech, Trading specifically. I met Tom Sosnoff while a freelancer and he pulled me into the Trading world at thinkorswim (founded in Chicago). I was the CTO at thinkorswim and was lucky enough to receive a lot of experience and exposure to the technical side of software development, design and IT infrastructure, mainly as a side effect of Tom not wanting to hire a lot of people to manage the business.
I’m now the CTO of the overall tastytrade.com/tastyworks.com organization, but I am probably most useful in managing the Brokerage’s Trading platform design and features.
There are a ton of really talented folks who do the hard work of making all of this work.
Because I grew up downstate, I feel that I’m exceptionally midwestern. I don’t care much for pomp and circumstance, fame, or any superfluous formality.
Has it been a smooth road?
Like any other business which starts from nothing and grows into a profitable, job-creating institution, there are always rough spots. Some of the biggest struggles we’ve experienced along with every other tech startup is the proper hiring, nurturing, and engaging of a software development staff and keeping that in balance with the amount, scope and complexity of the work. Lately, I enjoy thinking about this as being akin to the cooling process involved in creating an Einstein-Bose condensate (laser-evaporative cooling, specifically). Taking some poetic liberty, a group of developers that has undergone this evaporative process, exhibits super-fluidity, less internal friction, and the ability to gain joy from their technical achievements and skills in an environment where we try to remove a lot of the middle management.
People will always be at the core of a business, both as customers and equally as important as employees. That’s where a lot of the struggles will always lie, I think.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
My part of the tastytrade/tastyworks business is in developing the trading toolkit for the customers and for employees. While my very talented team takes care of a lot of the details, and should receive much Kudos for their effort, my main role is to guide some of the overarching approaches in the product line, as well as acting as a gateway for the integration of new ideas into the existing architecture and end-user experience. We have a few guiding principles that we’ve found to be very valuable:
1) Are we already doing something similar? This leads us to try and integrate feature requests more deeply with the foundational work that we’ve already invested time in.
2) Is this optimizing a process or establishing one? Optimizing comes last. It’s very important to do it, but due to the stage of product development we are likely to defer many kinds of optimization until a later stage. This helps focus our development work on features and tasks which are more appropriate for product iteration, at least in the core DNA of that product.
3) Broad adoption sometimes requires simplifying the problem set. The market segment that we do best at, is one which is relatively small, but that’s part of why we’re so good at what we do – we are really good at expanding our own addressable segment. We frequently do that, not by offering more minutiae in our product, but by making that product easier in a simpler fashion. Think Instagram filters, and Garageband “no wrong notes” modes. My own analogy is that we make “Tablesaws, not CNC Machines”. CNC machines are awesome at repetitive, low-tolerance machining, but Tablesaws do one task so well, that it trumps the complexity of the CNC for a very large set of common tasks.
4) Put your money where your mouth is. If you have a feature request that involves investment, we consider it in a much lower priority if you are not currently following that process with your own money, and ideally it is proven to work in that context.
5) Does it improve our customer’s success in some way, or does it make them safer in some situations? Nothing is guaranteed, especially in the context of a financially oriented company.
The highest priority features are those that improve the chances that our customer will remain our customer and be happier about it.
It would be important to mention here that we also have a set of guiding principles in the development of internal tools as well, if our employees are happier at their work, they’ll be much better equipped to ensure our customers are happy.
What were you like growing up?
I’d say I’m pretty midwestern. I’m going to be successful if I can provide opportunities for my company, employees, customers and (by extending this) to my Family, Community and out into the more abstract areas like Profession, Culture, Art, Science. I also enjoy an occasional “like” on Facebook.
Contact Info:
- Address: tastytrade – 19 N Sangamon St., Chicago, IL 60607
tastyworks – 1000 W. Fulton Market, Suite 220, Chicago, IL 60607 - Website: tastytrade.com | tastyworks.com
- Phone: 855.468.2789 | 888.247.1963
- Email: support@tastytrade.com | support@tastyworks.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/tastytrade
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/tastytrade | facebook.com/thetastyworks
- Twitter: @tastytrade | @thetastyworks
Image Credit:
tastytrade | tastyworks
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
