A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation about OpenBB and why we believe open source investment research platforms will disrupt the finance industry over the next 5-10 years.
This wasn’t the first time that I returned to my university to present. Since completing my Master’s Degree in Finance, I often return to talk about my professional journey in Data Science and to mentor Master's students on their career options. That said, this time was special. “Finance“ & “Technology“ are two great passions of mine, and normally, I can only pick one to talk about. Therefore, I was thrilled to represent my company, OpenBB, and speak about both of my favorite topics.
Up until now, there hasn’t been a fully customized financial research tool that allows students and researchers to adapt to their needs. For that reason, they were forced to use a myriad of software, some of which were for data collection and some of which for data processing or performing statistical analysis. As a result, the workflow becomes incredibly complex and time-consuming. That left them to wonder: “Is there an alternative way of doing this?“. This is a story we have heard time after time. We believe that OpenBB, and our root in open-source, can address this painful problem faced by thousands of students and researchers around the world.
Therefore, my primary objective for the presentation was to make sure everyone understand what open-source is, and why it’s so powerful in the context of academia. Despite not having a background in Tech, the students quickly grasped the concept of open source and started to realize its power. Once they did, it became apparent to the students that the wheel does not need to be reinvented. There is a set of financial theories used by professionals and industry practitioners for decades. As an open-source product, OpenBB’s implementation is carefully audited by thousands of contributors and community members. We believe this is a better way of doing investment research, rather than blindly trusting proprietary solutions, of which we cannot see the formulas and calculations. On top of that, being open source allows our users to fork the code, make adjustments that fit their needs, and contribute new ideas and innovation back to the community.
OpenBB is not only a tool - we are building the infrastructure for investment research, accessible to everyone.
Overall, it was an amazing experience for me to present OpenBB at my university. Immediately after the presentation, I received countless questions on how to start using OpenBB. Also, I got to learn that several members have been developing integrations to third-party financial APIs, and this has consumed a great amount of time. Therefore, they were thrilled about OpenBB SDK, which can do the job minutes - quoting in their own words “Christmas has come early“.
I joined OpenBB earlier this year, with the mission to democratize investment research, an area that was dominated by monopolistic and proprietary players. We are working hard every day to build the best product and give everyone access to high-quality data, community-reviewed analytics & machine learning capabilities built on top. I still remember the true excitement on the students' faces after my presentation. It is a great signal that we are heading in the right direction.