In late April
the fledgling Palo Alto, California–based company launched the beta
version of a network that it hopes will unshackle Wall Street from its
terminal obsession.
...
Symphony
is designed to be its own messaging platform and plug into all the
other tools that a financial professional might communicate through —
e-mail, internal chat network, text messaging. Gurle says there are
roughly 50,000 Symphony users today; a general market release will
follow in July, with the goal of growing to 100,000 users by the end of
the year. Content and workflows — to manage and execute trades, for
instance — will be added to the network in 2016, and Gurle plans to
build what he calls an App Store–like ecosystem that he hopes will
become a hosting ground for small, innovative fintech companies.
Beyond
openness — a quality the closed-box Bloomberg terminal is often accused
of not exhibiting — price should also make Symphony’s offering
attractive. Gurle says the service will cost no more than $30 a person
per month, placing it well below the $20,000 needed for an annual
Bloomberg subscription.
Symphony is backed by some of global
capital’s heaviest hitters: 15 sell- and buy-side institutions,
including asset manager BlackRock, hedge fund firm Citadel and Goldman
Sachs Group, pooled funds to provide it with $66 million in venture
capital late last year.
Read the article on Institutional Investor here: Is David Gurle’s Symphony a Big Threat to Bloomberg? | Institutional Investor
