Behind the Scenes: My Journey to Co-Founding Fig Investments

Our Origin, Evolution, and Vision for the Future

Dear reader,

It has been a year and half since the genesis of Fig Investments. It all started with a simple idea (and winning a hackathon with it): use financial instruments as little lego blocks. We would use these blocks to piece together a fresh batch of investment products. The best part? You get a clear picture of the risk involved and the return you can expect. This is incredibly powerful. By knowing what your risk and return will be before you buy something, your investing objectives becomes more clear and less stressful.

Over the past year, that idea evolved to what Fig Investment is today: a technology platform that delivers bespoke structured investment products for the next generation of investors. We have been busy developing and testing Fig’s platform, ensuring its security, robustness, and usability. As we move closer to launching the platform, we would like to thank our private beta tests. We're genuinely excited to have you here, embarking on what we promise is going to be an exciting journey. Let's dive in on a high level.

Our Core Mission

At the heart of Fig Investments, there's a straight-shooting mission: we're focused on delivering cutting-edge structured investment products for the digital age. We see the merger between finance and technology as a catalyst for real change. By marrying prudent financial engineering with innovative thinking, we're primed to deliver the next generation of investment products for investors worldwide.

Why Fig Investments

Before Fig, I saw a gap between what investors want and what products investors have access to. The world is evolving, at a faster pace than ever. Yet the current available investment products remains stagnant. There are many reasons for this stagnancy - primarily due to structural issues in the finance industry which naturally arose due to passage of time.

In the rapidly transforming technology landscape, investors expect more. They want products to be delivered faster, more customizable, and more transparent. Fig Investments is the answer to a pressing need for a new kind of technology platform - one that can keep pace with changes, leverage emerging technologies, and work with institutions, large and small, to deliver these new investment products to the end-clients.

How to deliver these new investment products into hands of investors? By working together with trusted distribution channels: financial institutions. We help institutions new and old, empowering them with the Fig’s technology and innovation. Regardless of technological advances, Fig’s process is rooted in prudence and robustness. Like the fig fruit which has withstood the test of time, we view fig fruit as a symbol for Fig Investments’ products: rich, sophisticated, yet timeless.

A Bit of Personal History

In 2022, I co-founded Fig Investments with a long time childhood friend, Tony. By chance we had complementary backgrounds: Tony was always interested in tech as I am for finance. In 2013-2015 we first heard about blockchains, which was the first real interesting merger between technology and finance. Back then we bought small amounts of coins (on MtGox - a different story) and sold some, and mining Ether using consumer graphics cards, making $30 / month. It was a blast.

Fast forward to 2017, Tony is in Silicon Valley and I started a new job as the youngest portfolio manager at an asset management firm. We converged again, discussing the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) bubble and AI. Crypto was clearly in a speculative bubble with projects raising billions of dollars using ICOs, mostly fraud. But it was exciting with Bitcoin reached $20,000 and Ether $1,400. AI was also facing a breakthrough after a long winter with image recognition unlocking many practical use cases such as facial recognition and diagnostic image recognition. As with any new technology, there was the hype cycles and the subsequent burst of hopes due to unreasonable expectations. After 2017, we saw both the AI and blockchain industry experience burst of bubble and subsequent winter.

But like any winter, it doesn’t last forever. Technology that has real world application does not die. It simply hibernates and grows until it reaches a point of inflection. Then in 2022, Tony and I are convicted on the real use of blockchain & AI and we decided to apply our skills to our passion - marry technology with finance, and start Fig Investments together (previously named Sollar).

We didn’t know if more technology winters are coming. We just knew what we are working on can change the world. That thought alone is all we need.

The Future

We see Fig Investments as a financial creative studio, acclaimed for its trailblazing approach, dedication to technological focus, and all the while grounded in prudence and underpinned by rigour. We're not just adapting to the future; we aim to shape it by integrating advanced technologies and forward-thinking practices to bring in a new era of investing.

As we move forward, we aim to continually develop our platform's capabilities, aligning them with our commitment to a sustainable financial future. This involves expanding into domains like AI-driven risk assessment, blockchain for transparent transactions, and machine learning models to expand our product design space.

Join Us

We're thrilled to invite you to join our journey. Whether you are personally interested in our products or are an institution looking to offer Fig Investment’s products to your clients, we are excited to have you here. Together, we can shape the future of investing and leave a positive mark on our industry and our world.

In Conclusion

In the upcoming post, we will dive deeper into what is Fig and what we do in more detail.

On a weekly basis I will either write about Fig Investments or be exploring the intersection between technology and finance. If you are not already, please stay in touch. You can email me directly at gm@fig.investments. You can follow Fig Investments on Twitter and LinkedIn. I am always interested in your thoughts and feedback.

Remember that none of the information presented on this letter and blog are investment advice or solicitation of any kind. Fig Investments currently is not offering any investment products. You should do your independent due diligence before investing money into any asset. Please see Fig Investments’ disclosures here.

Your journey with us is just kicking off, and we're eager to walk this path with you.