Here is one parallel you may find helpful – Upgrade Capital is like Moneyball for young traders.

There are, of course, two major differences:

  1. There is no useful data out there on young traders.
    No one is out there watching games and taking notes. Our solution has been to get traders to show their skill on our platform, in an environment specifically designed to give us as much insight as possible into their ability to generate alpha.
     
  2. There is no World Series of Trading.
    Among the many small competitions out there, few offer young talent the opportunity to really shine. Even so, you might say that we already won one major trophy – a student we discovered in March 2013 was picked out two months later by a panel of judges consisting of Ackman, Einhorn, Greenblatt, Klarman, and Price to present his work at the Ira Sohn Conference; you can view his CNBC interview here.

The pace of our work is a little bit different from Moneyball: they pull the trigger on a few of their top picks and then it’s all about the game – we are constantly continuing to gather and analyse data. But the underlying motivation is the same.

There is some truly extraordinary talent out there which up until now would not have been recognised. We want to discover that talent.