Market-Ready or MVP? Our experience at Siege | The Financial Technologist

It is common wisdom for FinTech companies launching new products to go to market with a Minimum Viable Product (‘MVP’). This strategy has the benefit of limiting the initial outlay while testing the market’s appetite. But when considering the specifics of their industry segment, Siege decided to pioneer a different approach: develop a market-ready infrastructure. A difficult decision Opting to develop and deploy a market-ready platform before earning revenue is a tough challenge. Not only does it require upfront investment to carry the project along a realistic timeframe, it also presents the difficult exercise of simultaneously managing IT delivery, client/partner engagement, onboarding times and product adoption. Additionally, when dealing with very large institutions, that have little appetite to test half-baked solutions in a trading environment, procurement and onboarding are measured in months, or often years. These are major hurdles to overcome for a start-up, so we decided to optimise the time by building a fully functional and robust infrastructure. We had to be confident we were addressing real, material issues, with the right solutions, and that our team, combining deep industry knowledge and technology expertise, had the ability to deliver. By working closely with early adopters from the beginning, we were able to validate and adapt our product strategy while developing the platform. As we are now scaling and launching new services, we think it was the right strategy for Siege, and well worth the investment. A platform to expansion Siege’s mission is to build cost-reducing solutions for market participants, initially for FX and then expand to other asset classes. To achieve this, we have developed a unique core matching engine and low-latency messaging infrastructure; these components are the foundation supporting all our services, from dark pool trading without market impact to block order trading and allocation mechanisms. The platform has already shown that it performs at scale by handling large amounts of data and activity without loss of performance or stability. Additionally, its market-ready state enables our developers to iterate and improve products more effectively, without the limitations of building from fragmented, disparate, or legacy technology components. Following the launch of MidPool in 2021, we are now deploying NetFix™ and currently working with key partners on NetBook, planned for initial release later this year. This rapid product expansion alongside a growing activity in MidPool would not have been possible without an advanced technology stack; from this platform, Siege will continue to expand and grow its position in the financial markets industry. You can read Claude's article and further industry insights in the latest edition of The Financial Technologist. Download your free copy here.