One of the Fintech investors that Finance Magnates wrote about last year, Illuminate Financial Management LLP, a venture capital firm based in the UK, has just led a series A round of funding for $4 million into US-based ChartIQ, with participation from Tribeca Angels, ValueStream, and other angel investors, according to an official press release. The investment was made using funding from the company's fund backed by Deutsche Borse and other funders.
The Virginia-based company already has over 100 firms that license its ChartIQ trading technology and said the new infusion will help it meet the needs of its growing global clientele, including its expansion efforts after setting up a new office in New York and London.
Board Role
One of Illuminate Financial's partners, Mark Whitcroft, joins ChartIQ's board where the company will have a seat. This is in line with its thesis of being active investors in its portfolio companies, where it will be helping actively in the next stages of ChartIQ's growth.
This active role the company will have will help align its own FinTech expertise with ChartIQ's business, and as the firm advises its other portfolio companies in related segments of finance, it will provide more than just funding as part of the deal.
Chart IQ CEO Dan Schleifer said in the joint press release: “It was critical that we found a venture partner that shared our vision for the future of capital markets technology. Illuminate’s focus on Fintech and deep experience in capital markets is the perfect fit.”
Commenting in the official press release, Josh Elwell of ValueStream, one of the existing investors in ChartIQ and current board member, said: “ChartIQ has a world-class team and product. We are excited to continue our support.”
HTML5 need for speed
One of the reasons that HTML5 is becoming adopted at a higher rate appears to be the responsiveness and performance when compared for example to flash-based platforms and related web-based products.
ChartIQ provides a charting library, webtrader for MT4, widgets, and web-based trading systems, among other solutions that Leverage HTML5 in an effort to deliver faster performance and help improve client's trading experience - as users become more sensitive to even sub-second delays in page loading and refresh rates.
3rd Party Developers
Some of the interesting products include ChartIQ's trading systems tool which helps traders backtest their trading against historical data to simulate how a trading strategy would have fared over time. The company clearly has significant expertise in this space, and a proven business model that necessitated the funding, as a third party developer.
With regard to the importance of speed for UI/UX related customer experience, this trend of "responsiveness importance" across online products appears to be one of the driving themes behind the funding and a trend that should persist into future product creations, and across trading platforms, as new programming scripts and language evolves with the aim of speed and scalability in mind. And, is one that investors are currently betting on HTML5 to lead.
