The 2017 Trading Tech 40: Dan Raju

Application programming interfaces (APIs) have become popular vehicles for reducing the time and resources required to bring innovative financial products to market. Tradier, co-founded in 2013 by Dan Raju, calls itself "the first brokerage API company." More than 100 companies and thousands of developers are using the "brokerage as a platform," with support from Charlotte, North Carolina–based Tradier Brokerage, to assemble and deliver data and trading tools for financial clients. Tradier slashes years off traditional development time frames, enabling trading platforms and digital advisers to be launched in weeks or months, says Raju, 42. According to a testimonial from Dan Schleifer, CEO of ChartIQ, "Integrating Tradier's API into our mobile charting platform was a breeze." Raju adds that execution and custody costs in the Tradier API cloud are one third the market rate.

A former head of global technology infrastructure and operations at the Associated Press and chief information officer of online brokerage TradeKing (now part of Ally Financial), Raju is currently executive chair and CIO of Tradier. In June 2016 he handed the CEO title to Stephen Ehrlich, who was founder and CEO of Lightspeed Financial and previously CEO of the E-Trade Professional Trading Group, to lead Tradier through a global expansion stage.