The 2013 Tech 50: Kirk Wylie

Buzzworthy technology alone does not a successful start-up make. A new company needs founders with patience and perseverance for business development as well as coding, and venture capital can provide a big boost. London-based OpenGamma has all those ingredients and, co-founder Kirk Wylie believes, the power to reinvent trading and risk analytics with open-source software that users can configure and modify without a lot of outside help. The former head of front-office software architecture at KBC Financial Products sought to build what he couldn’t find from legacy vendors: an easily customized platform that spanned trading and risk management and met traders’ and analysts’ needs for transparency and timeliness. Formed in 2009, the company released OpenGamma Platform 1.0 in April 2012 and four months later completed a $15 million Series C venture capital round in which ICAP and its Euclid Opportunities fund joined previous investors Accel Partners and FirstMark Capital. Wylie, 37, says that although open-source economics are attractive, he sells the product “not as a low-cost solution” but for its “ability to do business restructuring.” Wylie became executive chairman in March, handing the CEO title to Mas Nakachi, who had worked nearly ten years for Calypso Technology. “We can take the best of what the legacy vendors do and still be disruptive in our technology and business model,” Wylie says.