Genovest was originally made for my family and myself. It gives us the power to make investment choices on our own so we're not tied to a broker or advisor, and so we can compete with the hot-shots on Wall Street. We hope it helps people become better investors where they can be the masters of their own investment decisions. This company started as a personal project for me, quickly turned into a deep passion, and eventually I discovered I had created something anybody with an income needs. Genovest is still certainly in its infancy, but the path to its beginning is none the less a good story to tell.
The Romance of Robotics
When I was a kid, I used to build robots. These were not glorified remote control cars or simple kits, I wanted to design and build a fully autonomous robot from scratch that made its own decisions. I was 8 years old at the time, but the thought of a tiny creature of my own construction was so enticing I didn't even consider the scope of the challenge. If anything, the difficulty of the task made me want it even more. It took many years before I had made something I felt was close to my original vision, but in that time I had learned about circuit design, digital logic, and programming.
At about this time, my dad had sneakily gotten my brother Taylor and me interested in the stock market. We would research stock strategies for him in the summer and have great discussions about how companies and the market worked. I dreamed of connecting these two interests of mine, but wasn't enticed enough to drop my current project.
The fascination I had developed for technology lead me to start a FIRST Robotics team in high school, after which I began working on a degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. I am a proud native Minnesotan, but UW had a fantastic engineering department, particularly for my field, so I left home, leaving all my hobby equipment behind me (save my handy multimeter) and trusting that the university would satiate my desire for challenge.
Know Thyself
The summer after my sophomore year, I started my first internship at a small company in the distant suburbs of Milwaukee. I was 400 miles away from my robotics equipment, so after work there was nothing to do! It barely took half an evening of personal reflection to realize I needed a new project. I needed something that would keep me entertained for years to come that I could re-attach my young identity to. Furthermore, I thought it would be mighty convenient if I could use all the effort I'd undoubtedly pour into the project to my advantage, instead of just recreation. I had just taken the class on artificial intelligence (AI) so the subject was still fresh and exciting in my mind, and I had helped start an investment club at the university to boot. When I finally put it together, it seemed like the conclusion had been staring me in the face for years, and I simply needed to open my eyes. My next big project would be building an AI that could trade the stock market for me. My robots would no longer live in the physical world; they would be virtual minds that sifted through millions of data points and draw conclusions billions of times faster than I ever could. I began working that very night.
When I returned to the university, I spent the little free time I had on my new project and always looked forward to the nights I could turn on some music and dive deep into the small world I was building for myself. The project snowballed. I started taking classes in accordance with it, and I even took on a comrade in the endeavor - Luke Schroeder. He had joined my robotics team in high school after I had already graduated, but since my dad was still coaching the team and obviously talking with me about what I was building, I learned about Luke quickly. This guy was incredible. He soaked up amazing amounts of data and drew conclusions as quickly and easily as taking a drink of water. He was still in high school at the time, so in some capacity I was his mentor, but mostly we were a team.
A Gentle Push
Just before my final semester, my favorite professor called me in for a private meeting. He and another professor were starting a new course on software entrepreneurship, and he was inviting me to be a part of the inaugural class. I was honored, thrilled, and exceptionally excited! Part of the curriculum was giving a pitch for our own company, and I knew exactly what I wanted my pitch to be. I wanted to build a hedge fund around the trading algorithms I was developing in my project. I talked with my professors about the idea and they advised me to instead sell some sort of tool online as a service for investors to use. I ignored their advice and pressed on with my original idea, too carried away by the romantic notion of my algorithms autonomously trading the market.
Now we needed a name. I can vividly remember pacing around the lab late one night, talking with my dad on the phone, thinking of names. Around this time, I was experimenting with the genetic algorithm and having great success. Genetic algorithm... investing... Genovest! Not only did the name fit, we felt it had broad appeal if we decided to move the company in a different direction. A few bucks later we owned genovest.com and called it a night, feeling hopeful and accomplished.
I gave my pitch, the semester ended, and I graduated with six job offers on the table. A few companies required I cease any and all work on Genovest. That was unacceptable. The project had already become part of my identity and part of my long term vision. If all else failed, I'd use what I had created to manage my own investments! In the end I joined a small startup to get a realistic perspective on starting a business. Of any time in my life to be taking risks, fresh out of college was absolutely the best.
Our First Pivot
My dad is the idea guy. He'd come to me multiple times a week with something new to try with the program I'd written, but I do not consider myself a "fast" programmer. I might be quick, but moreover I make deliberate and calculated design decisions, especially when it comes to my projects. Luke saw this too, so we decided to build a system where Dad could try investment ideas on his own without having to run them through one of us. All my trading algorithms were built on top of a market simulation engine, so the plan was to build a website in front of it and let Dad plug rules directly in to the simulator from a web browser.
Luke wrote the first incarnation of the website and I put it on genovest.com for Dad to use. It quickly became apparent Dad was not the only one who would find this useful. This was a "backtester" similar in spirit to the one my brother and I used when doing stock research as kids. Ours, however, was faster, simpler, much more intuitive, and exceptionally more powerful. Everything was on one page, rules were straight forward so it was easy to understand what the simulation was doing, and you could combine financial metrics any way you wanted!
As much as I wanted to continue working on trading algorithms, I could not ignore the obvious next step, nor deny the excitement of what it implied. Certainly my dad was not the only person who would find this useful. With some work, we could make this tool available to everyone! Ironically, what Genovest turned into is almost exactly what my professors suggested while in the entrepreneurship class.
Next...
The story thus far is simply an introduction to the spirit on which this company is founded. There is still a year and a half of hard work and soul searching to bring the story up to date with where the company is today, but the core tenets are here. I do this because I love it and I know that people need this. This project is very dear to everybody in this company and we take great pride in what we create. We can't wait to show you what we have planned next.