Hedge Fund Startup Sets Up High-Frequency Trading Electronic Platform

Overview

A newly-formed hedge fund with an experienced discretionary trading background sought to build an electronic trading platform to execute its systematic HFT strategies. The partners had deep market knowledge but no prior experience building or operating electronic trading infrastructure.

This engagement reflects our core model: retained technical governance that operates alongside existing engineering teams, providing architectural authority without replacing headcount.

The Challenge

The fund needed to build an entire electronic trading infrastructure from scratch — exchange connectivity, order routing, risk management, and monitoring — while simultaneously developing strategy logic and building investor relationships. With limited time and capital, every infrastructure decision needed to be right the first time. Vendor sales cycles and marketing claims made it impossible to evaluate options objectively.

Our Approach

• Principal Architect engagement: full infrastructure design from connectivity to post-trade
• Unbiased vendor evaluation across 12 technology providers across 6 categories
• Connectivity architecture: co-location selection, feed handlers, FIX/native protocol design
• Pre-trade risk framework: position limits, kill switch, latency circuit breakers
• Operational runbook design for daily open, monitoring, and market close procedures
• Strategic Intervention support during first live trading month

Outcomes