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The 2016 Trading Technology 40: Dave Snowdon

No. 39 Dave Snowdon, Metamako

    39
    Dave Snowdon
    Co–Chief Technology Officer
    Metamako
    PNR

    Like Level39 in London and other financial technology innovation hubs around the world, Sydney’s Stone & Chalk is primarily populated by software entrepreneurs hoping to bring their apps, analytics and other tools to the attention of buyers and investors. By contrast, Metamako is a hardware company that was already making waves in the trading industry when it announced its move into Stone & Chalk last summer. Founded three years ago byDave Snowdonand his co-CTOs Scott Newham and Charles Thomas, and building on their financial market engineering experience, Metamako develops high-performance network devices specifically for firms that depend on low latency. It’s not just about raw speed, as in the nanosecond-measured two-way communications verified in benchmark testing of the company’s FPGA (field-programmable gate array) devices. Market players are looking for “deterministic latency,” a predictability that is “more important than latency,” Snowdon, 35, asserts. “Determinism will help provide a fairness improvement to the markets.” Signs that Metamako is delivering on its motto of “simplifying networks, reducing latency and increasing flexibility”: It has doubled its original team size, to 16, and opened offices in London and New York. Fintech start-ups have a hard time making their first sales, especially to large financial institutions. Metamako found “early adopters” at high frequency trading firms willing to experiment with offerings when they were “still half-baked,” Snowdon explains. Now doors have opened at banks, brokerages and exchanges, and in the telecommunications industry. Those users are considering additional ways to apply the technology, such as in security and systems monitoring. Network monitoring is a prerequisite for compliance with Europe’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II), which Snowdon notes had to be delayed in part because of technological shortcomings. MetaWatch, a Metamako application launched in November, addresses part of the problem with “highly accurate time-stamping and data capture, he says.”

    2016 Trading Technology 40
    Click below to view profiles
    1.Raymond Tierney III
    Bloomberg
    2.Richard Prager
    BlackRock
    3.Chris Isaacson
    BATS Global Markets
    4.Jonathan Ross
    KCG Holdings
    5.Bradley Peterson
    Nasdaq
    6.Brad Levy
    Markit
    7.Dan Keegan
    Citi
    8.Ronald DePoalo
    富达机构
    9.Raj Mahajan
    Goldman Sachs Group
    10.Ari Studnitzer
    CME Group
    11.Mayur Kapani
    Intercontinental Exchange
    12.Gerald O’Connell
    CBOE Holdings
    13.Nicholas Themelis
    MarketAxess Holdings.
    14.Gil Mandelzis
    EBS BrokerTec (ICAP)
    15.Bill Chow and Richard Leung
    Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
    16.Rob Park
    IEX Group
    17.Philip Weisberg
    Thomson Reuters
    18.John Mackay (Mack) Gill
    MillenniumIT
    19.Robert Cornish
    International Securities Exchange
    20.Paul Hamill
    城堡证券
    21.Eric Noll
    Convergex
    22.Tyler Moeller and Joshua Walsky
    Broadway Technology
    23.Rishi Nangalia
    REDI Holdings
    24.Veronica Augustsson
    Cinnober Financial Technology
    25.Alasdair Haynes
    Aquis Exchange
    26.Manoj Narang
    Mana Partners
    27.Gaurav Suri
    Arcesium
    28.Robert Sloan
    S3 Partners
    29.Anton Katz and Stephen Mock
    AQR Capital Mgmt
    30.Stu Taylor
    Algomi
    31.D. Keith Ross Jr.
    PDQ Enterprises
    32.Donal Byrne
    Corvil
    33.Alfred Eskandar
    Portware
    34.R. Cromwell Coulson
    OTC Markets Group
    35.Masayuki Hosaka
    Rakuten
    36.Peter Maragos and David Karat
    Dash Financial
    37.Amar Kuchinad
    Electronifie
    38.詹妮弗·纳亚尔
    SR Labs
    39.Dave Snowdon
    Metamako
    40.Dan Raju
    Tradier

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