Dan Ushman, Founder and CEO of TrendSpider, a Chicago and Denver-based trading platform joins us in this Global Fintech Series interview to talk about his key challenges which starting-up and to share his thoughts on the latest fintech innovations in the market.
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It’s good to have you here today, Dan, tell us a little about yourself!
Sure, well, I’m a 35 year old, life-long ‘serial’ entrepreneur. TrendSpider is my fifth company that I have founded or helped found and it is a chance to combine two of my biggest passions: building software products and financial markets into one project.
What were some of the biggest challenges you and Rus faced when building this product?
We are building a highly sophisticated technical platform geared at experienced, professional traders and market analysts. The biggest challenge is building a product that is robust enough to meet the needs of such a diverse client base. For example, there are thousands and thousands of different trading strategies that utilize different tools and technologies – we have to build a product that is not only adaptable to all these different styles but also useful across them all; in other words we have to add value in a multitude of ways, even ways that we cannot predict ahead of time, in order to be valuable to a large portion of the trading world.
Therein, we have built extremely flexible technology that enhances technical analysis regardless of what method of technical analysis is being used. Building highly customizable software while still “keeping it simple” is a challenge in-and-of itself. But it’s also part of the fun
Honestly, how my biggest observation about fintech innovation as it pertains to the trading and charting world is … “wow, there is very little innovation here.”
Seriously, the charting and technical analysis space is highly underserved. There are a lot of reasons for that, such as the scarcity and cost of reliable real time market data, but it is odd because of how large and vibrant the space is. There also are a lot of entrenched and comfortable players that benefit from the status quo staying where it is – but we really believe there is a better way and are determined to build it. Our platform has realized only half of our long term vision so far, as we continue to mature, we will challenge all the existing players in the space to step up their game or get out of the way.
What are your predictions for this segment, what do you think the B2B Fintech market/landscape would look like in the coming years? How will innovations in fintech impact industries (and which), according to you?
 I think there is going to be a lot of appetite for new age, cloud-based products in the space, much like there has been in other spaces. By way of example, I used to scoff at web-based document editing… I would say “who would edit a word document in a web browser.” But fast forward a few years to today, and I scoff at downloading a word file. The cloud changed everything for enterprise computing and working on a computer, and the cloud will change everything for chart and financial analysis as well.
What are some of the biggest challenges/impediments to global innovations in fintech according to you?
 Adoption of new technologies by an old industry is always a challenge, especially when you present new and innovative approaches. It is hard enough to sell a better widget, when you have to sell a better widget AND a different way to think about using the widget, you start to run into real resistance. The thing about this is that the financial technology world is all about results – and our technology performs – so much of this impediment goes away the moment a client hits that “a ha” realization. And that doesn’t take long once they open their eyes and give us 15 minutes to show them. So I would say getting people to take the time to let us show them the product is the biggest challenge for us.
Could you talk about some of the most innovative trading platforms and technical analysis software platforms in this niche that are being considered game-changers for this niche?
I mean, I am going to be very biased here, but I really must say that TrendSpider is that product. I’ll tell you why. There are a ton of trading platforms out there. There are a bunch of backtesting platforms out there. There are a number of scanners out there. But there is no platform that fully integrates these functions together into one tool, and then ties intelligent algorithms around it to automate the grunt work of using those tools together. TrendSpider is a unique trading platform – one that combines scanning, backtesting, charting, analysis and alerts into one system, and then automates using these tools so that the trader can spend less time analyzing charts and more time…. gasp, trading.
What are some of the top tips you would share with traders who are still defining/setting up their fintech stack to enable a better understanding of the market?
Find a system and stick to it. Be disciplined. Use technology to enforce discipline in yourself and to keep you honest. For me, that means depending heavily on TrendSpider alerts. I do not place a trade unless an alert I set previously goes off. For others that may mean different things -but be honest to yourself and follow your system, whatever that system may be.
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What are some of the top tips you would share with upcoming fintech entrepreneurs who are still in the process of inventing new finance tech solutions?
Don’t make the mistake of over trading and that means more than just placing too many orders — the more charts you are trying to watch at one time, the less you pay attention to each of them. Only watch a few. Use automation where you can to save time. Don’t eyeball levels… actually measure them. Don’t trust your gut, follow the charts. Just be smart, and above all else, manage risk.
How would you hope/wish/aim for the fintech segment to alleviate the top pain points B2B users face?
I think there is a huge pent up demand for automation technology to help guide investment decisions and that extends into the b2b world as much as the retail trading world. Hedge funds, prop shops, trade desks, and hedging organizations all have a need to monitor charts and price levels and all could benefit from utilization of technical analysis in their decision make processes. TrendSpider is uniquely positioned to meet this need in a way that no other company can. We welcome the opportunity to demonstrate the platform to anyone who would be of interest. Then they can decide for themselves what they think.
Tag (mention/write about) the one person in the fintech industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read!
Honestly, I would love to hear what Howard Lindzon, founder of StockTwits and Principal at Social Leverage Capital would say.
We’d love to know about some of your future plans for TrendSpider.
 We plan to build to be the dominant platform for technical analysis. Ultimately, that means integration with brokerages to facilitate the full automation of the entire trading process from finding trading opportunities to executing the trades themselves!
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TrendSpider is an Automated Technical Analysis Software for Day and Swing Traders that automatically helps analyze Stocks, ETFs, Forex, FX, Futures and Crypto charts for traders to save time and improve accuracy.
Dan Ushman is the founder and CEO of TrendSpider. He has been a ‘serial’ tech entrepreneur since 2001, and an avid trader since 2008. Prior to TrendSpider, Dan was CMO at SingleHop, a cloud computing company that he co-founded and helped run until it was acquired in 2018.
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