An algorithmic trading hedge fund. We can outperform the benchmark while keeping fees bare minimum because all our admin is outsourced to LLMs and agents. What a world we live in.

One of the most successful quant traders in history, Jim Simons studied topology in the 60s. It’s rumored he used deep neural networks in his trading before they were cool. This post really brought the two together for me in a way I didn’t understand before.

According to Perplexity, Perplexity is lying about its user agent: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/According-to-this-QpoXEZ_AS...

I typically work within Jupyter Notebooks since it’s easier to build tutorials with text and markdown. But I agree: even looking at the code output I can tell almost immediately it’s made up.

I think spending the money adds an urgency to ship. If not it's "just" your time.

There’s a risk. I’ve certainly been burned many times in the past. However I’ve learned and spot some issues up front.

It helps to go through referrals too.

This is definitely true.

My plan was to brining in freelancers just to get the thing built - because I couldn't get it done.

I've since brought on two technical co-founders with a stake in the project to avoid what you're describing.

I was only able to bring them in because I had a product launched.

That is some rare foresight. Typically, this is not how it goes. Usually, the pressure to keep adding new features is too high, the codebase too large, and the desired functionality too amorphous for any sort of refactoring or rewrite.

All very, very true.

Going through a trusted source is best.

It was a very sudden mind shift for me. All of the sudden one day I said f* it. If I want this thing to exist, I need to focus on shipping. Not building.

The next day I hired up the freelance team.

Some people just like to build. Others want to run a product.

Either is cool. Just don't get them mixed up.

This story was about getting the first iteration of my product launched (somewhere beyond MVP but still rough).

I had a fractional CTO / project manager / React dev + backend dev + devops + designer. All between 50% and 100% for 8 weeks. I also heavily participated in backend work.

Total cost came in a little over US20k.

I did not stipulate milestones and I was lucky because everything worked out (except documentation).

I definitely suggest stipulating milestones.