John Fawcett (entrepreneur)

John Henry "Fawce" Fawcett Jr. (born 1977) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Tamale Software and Quantopian. He was the CEO of the latter.[1][2][3]

Early life and education

Fawcett was born in 1977 to Ann Fawcett (née Fuller), a nurse, and John H. Fawcett, Sr., a carpenter, business owner, and math teacher. He grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the Pawtucketville neighborhood, with his parents and elder brother, Todd Fawcett. Fawcett and his brother worked at the family business, John H. Fawcett & Sons, until graduating from college.[4] He attended the Ste. Jeanne d'Arc School through the 8th grade,[5] before graduating high school at Phillips Academy. He graduated cum laude with an AB in Materials Science at Harvard University in 1999,[2] and married Caitlin Jones Madera in 2001.[4]

Career

After college he was a programmer for Scient, on a video coding project, and an analyst and programmer for 033 Asset Management, a hedge fund. In 2002 he co-founded Tamale Software, which developed software for fundamental stock analysis. In 2008, Advent Software acquired Tamale for $28 million and shares in the company.[6] He founded Quantopian in August 2011. It aims to create a crowd-sourced hedge fund using a two-sided market for freelance quantitative analysts (algorithm developers) and investors (algorithm users).[2]

By 2015, Quantopian had raised about $24 million in investments from Spark Capital, Global Electronic Trading Company, Khosla Ventures, Wicklow Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and others.[7]

Quantopian stopped operations unexpectedly at the start of 2020,[8] and Fawcett and his cofounder Jean Bredeche joined Robinhood.[9]

Publications

Writing for Wired magazine, Fawcett posits that Quantopian can also be used as a MOOC-like platform for higher education.[10]

References

  1. ^ Fawcett, John. "John Fawcett's Page". WIRED magazine. Retrieved 2015-03-23. John "Fawce" Fawcett is founder and CEO of Quantopian...
  2. ^ a b c Cohan, Peter (1 July 2013). "Quantopian Wants To Turn Stock Trading Algorithmic". Forbes. Retrieved 2015-03-23.
  3. ^ Clarke, Paul (2013-04-16). "This firm is trying to engage, and hire, quants". eFinancialCareers. Retrieved 2015-03-23. John Fawcett, 35, ...
  4. ^ a b "New York Times, Wedding Announcements". New York Times. 2001-08-05. Retrieved 2015-03-23. His father... is an owner of John H. Fawcett & Sons, cabinetmakers in Lowell.
  5. ^ "Alumni News". Ste. Jeanne d'Arc School. Retrieved 2015-03-23. John Fawcett `91 – John is CEO and founder of his second company, Quantopian.
  6. ^ Fernandes, Deirdre (2016-07-29). "5 things you should know about John Fawcett". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2020-04-17.
  7. ^ Alden, William (2013-10-02). "Quantopian Raises $6.7 Million to Help Traders Make Algorithms". The New York Times : DealBook. Retrieved 2015-03-21. Quantopian ... announced on Wednesday that it had raised a financing round from Khosla Ventures and Spark Capital.
  8. ^ "Howls of pain as quant site 'unexpectedly' shuts down". 2 November 2020.
  9. ^ Bredeche, Jean (June 2021). "Robinhood". Medium.
  10. ^ Fawcett, John (2013-06-14). "Hacking Your Education: The Next Generation of Students". WIRED magazine. Archived from the original on 2016-04-29. Retrieved 2015-03-23. ...Quantopian can be another resource for smart people interested in quantitative finance, that aren't necessarily taking the traditional quant path of earning a PhD...


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