Site: Ycharts.com
Founded: 2009
Clients: Financial advisors, RIAs, wealth managers, asset managers
Value proposition: Cloud-based investment tools
The executive team: Sean Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer
Ara Anjargolian, Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer
Caleb Eplett, Vice President of Product Management
YCharts is a fintech company that provides cloud-based investment tools, including stock charts and ratings, as well as economic indicators. YCharts offers unique data streams and features that visually communicate unique insights.
I had the pleasure of speaking with three YCharts representatives to learn how their services and offerings differ from the competition and how they have built a strong technical foundation for future endeavors.
Ara Anjargolian received a BS in electric engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. Anjargolian worked as a lead engineer for Tribune Interactive (ForSaleByOwner.com), where he led the development of a real estate platform. During his time at Tribune, he met Shawn Carpenter, with whom he would eventually found YCharts in 2009.
Sean Brown has worked in various roles in the software and financial services industries. Prior to joining YCharts in 2006, Brown led a division at ICE Data Services (formerly Interactive Data) called 7ticks, which was an IaaS provider for low-latency trading networks and software.
Caleb Eplett has worked in finance for over ten years. He started his career as a financial advisor at Ameriprise and then worked as a trader for a firm based in Chicago. Eplett came to YCharts in 2012, initially as an account manager. Over the past seven years he has worked his way up to vice president of product management, a role that combines managing the product and development teams.
YCharts In A Nutshell
Like the name of the company implies, YCharts has a lot of charts. Eplett says the company covers any series you can think of, from simple things like stock prices, to calculations on financial and economic data. The YCharts tools allow users to pull data into the same chart to look at different data variations based on historical data and percentage changes over time.
Apart from charts, the company has other visualization tools such as tables. Traditionally, to look at data, advisors would have to filter and sort everything and export it to Excel. However, YCharts has a cloud-based web tool that can display and aggregate data from different companies and fiscal calendars.
Brown says using the tools is fairly straightforward. If a wealth advisor or asset manager is looking to create a newsletter or a presentation for a prospect or client meeting, they can use YCharts to show trends and performances to bring insights into their message.