It’s been exactly 13 years since I quit my last “proper” job at Nomura in FX to work independently, culminating in cofounding Turnleaf Analytics with Alexander Denev a few years ago to do economic forecasting. Each time I reach this anniversary, I write about what I’ve learnt from this journey, and it seems to change subtly each year. In the post below, I go through things that I’ve learnt as an independent.
Enjoy what you do
This seems obvious, right? You spend a large amount of time at your work. If you enjoy what you do, it makes it so much easier to work hard and go the extra mile. When you build a startup, you need to sell the idea to everyone: if you really believe in the idea too, that’s an important starting point.
An excellent team is invaluable
I sometimes see posts on LinkedIn and other places, on the possibility of a one person unicorn. This may well happen. I’ve worked by myself independently, and it can work, but I’ve found the results are much better working in a team and with a cofounder. The difficulty is not so much when things are smooth sailing. It’s more when things are tough, having a cofounder and a team is crucial to brainstorm how to fix things.
Funding helps you grow quicker
Bootstrapping a startup can work. I did bootstrap in the past and it was successful, although it was more of a consulting model, and there the product was basically me. However, at Turnleaf Analytics, we are building a scalable product, namely economic forecasts and the MARCOS platform. Funding has been important to accelerate our growth, enabling us to build a product (and grow it). I’ll probably elaborate on this in a later post.
Managing risk to mitigate the downside
In financial markets, the signal is so noisy, you will inevitably end up making the wrong decision on a trade roughly half the time, even if you are an extremely successful trader. When running a business, you’ll also make mistakes. However, just like with trading, the key is to make sure you manage the risk, so if there is a downside, it is at least manageable.
Learning from mistakes
Given that mistakes are inevitable, at least learn from them. Sometimes what might appear to be a short term mistake, can help you change the course for the future. When forecasting, we learn far more from when we miss a print, than when we hit a print. Over time, these lessons have cumulatively improved our model accuracy.
At the start of my independence journey, the idea was to sell quant research papers, that didn’t work out and I ended up living off my own trading. However, the lessons I learnt from that helped ensure the next two projects have been more successful, firstly consulting and latterly Turnleaf Analytics.
Feedback and reaction
Lots of folks will give you feedback (and you should try to ask for it too), whether it’s from your team, clients, investors etc. It’s important to listen to it, in particular because everyone has a different vantage point. At the same time, ultimately you need to make up your mind, particularly, because some of the advice you hear will be contradictory.
Conclusion
It’s not easy to do your own thing, but I’m very glad to have tried, and excited about the years ahead at Turnleaf Analytics. What will I learn in the coming year? Let’s see, but I would guess some of it will be totally new! Below, a photo of me just before embarking on the journey, a younger me. Just remember, keep smiling!