I took some time recently to renew my vision and recenter on the core reason we built QuantConnect. In the end, it was simple; we are in service, we empower creators to build, and we trailblaze the open-quant wild-west. We pioneer when everyone thinks it is crazy. We’re an innovation engine, breaking open access to the world of quant.

Focusing on this core why I can see a 5+ year future with QuantConnect, scaling to make it the ubiquitous infrastructure of quant. We can solve and open-source critical modeling and integration challenges of quant investing, helping millions of people and thousands of funds worldwide. Our infrastructure will make quantitative investments safer, more efficient, and earn better returns.

We’ve always said we’re going to be the Linux of finance, but what does that mean? Tangibly we should be the operating system-level architecture of finance, built to run a global ecosystem of financial applications (investments, fintech). A good operating system performs most of its work invisibly - connecting storage, display, and network hardware from disparate manufacturers into a single experience. Through defined standards and open code, hardware manufacturers implement drivers and tests in Linux pre-releases to ensure a smooth user experience. Today, Linux-based servers run 97% of the world’s computers.

This operating-system metaphor has impeccable parallels to our work. Just like Linux kernel memory management and multi-threading, complex financial modeling is a sensitive problem that should be solved once, open-sourced, and leveraged to make millions of people’s work more efficient. There are millions of dataset integrations and thousands of brokerage APIs to connect — that are ultimately required plumbing like hardware device drivers. That plumbing should be addressed in an open-source way by the vendors to save developers millions of hours. Most vendors stop at creating a REST API or an SDK today; I believe tomorrow they’ll stop once they’ve integrated with LEAN.

By 2030 I believe we can be the infinity cloud quant engine, with every data source, every asset class, and brokerage integration. Taught in every university and powering thousands of funds. We won’t just be 10x better than alternatives; we will be 10,000x better. Who still considers writing an operating system? Funds will interview in LEAN and accept LEAN algorithms for job applications to reduce enormous training and recruiting costs. Fund infrastructure will be a mix of open-source and closed-source modifications, with everyone running a LEAN V8 engine under the hood. Individuals will have access to the same powerful, low-cost infrastructure.

HOW DO WE GET THERE?

To create this open-finance vision, we need to scale the execution of our current “kernel”, and four pillars: education, datasets, licensable code, and brokerage integrations. This comes down to:

• Free Quantitative Education Programs
• Free Access to Financial Data
• Low-Code GUI with Market of Code Components and Strategies
• Massive Data Cache with 2000+ Linked, Formatted, Alt Data Sources
• All Brokerages Ready for Live Trading on World-Class Cloud Infrastructure
• Financial Modeling Challenges Solved and Open Sourced for All Asset Classes
• Data Ingestion, Security Linking Challenges Solved and Open Sourced

WHAT BUSINESS SUSTAINS THIS WORK

A core theme of our strategy so far is that information should be free, but people will pay for convenience. The last two decades have shown software, and data businesses are mostly driven to commoditization. In the next few years, I believe we’ll see financial data available for its lowest cost, with many of those data businesses expanding into analytics to prepare for the future.

We can scale charging for the convenience of our cloud service and maintain cost-comparable cloud infrastructure with healthy margins. We will fine-tune our conversion funnel to score and tag leads and build a marketing+sales team to pursue larger commercial deals. We can develop a series of business solution packages, for an end-to-end offer for business clients.

Leaning into the commoditization of quant technology will assist in LEAN capturing market share and not leave air for proprietary quant technology or competing clouds to breathe. We should open-source the “device driver” data and brokerage integrations to encourage study by vendors and maintenance by the community. Such a strategy requires faith that we’ll consolidate the market under the LEAN ecosystem and that a significant part of the market will opt for convenience.

Each pillar will have its own revenue model. Brokerages will provide commissions on trading volumes and marketing projects to subsidize user infrastructure costs. Datasets and Code Modules can be sold through a hosted marketplace. Course completion certificates for our educational program can be issued to our graduates to reply to job advertisements posted in the QuantConnect community.

We’re at the peak sales volume, client base, and industry recognition that we’ve ever seen. All achieved with a ridiculously “duct-tape” sales and marketing infrastructure. Yet despite that, QuantConnect grew sales from 400k to $1M, 250% in 2021. What would it look like with more than 1 person on the UX team? Any actual marketing team? An actual sales team? What if someone led the university educational efforts full-time? Doing anything else other than doubling down now would be an enormous waste of the potential pent-up in the company and recognition we’ve developed.