Spotlight Series: Andrei Iotici
Juniper Square Engineering is more than just engineering — we’re people too. We’re introducing our Spotlight Series to showcase various team members over time. These articles will highlight a series of questions related to our teammates’ work as well as their lives outside of work. We’ll be interweaving spotlight articles like this one throughout our other content.
Without further ado, meet Andrei Iotici.
Andrei Iotici
Engineering Manager, Fundraising
What is your background, and where were you working before Juniper Square?
I joined Juniper Square from Amazon where I spent over 4 years leading several teams. Most recently, the Stations Sequencing team at Amazon Music, where we focused on creating hyper-personalized adaptive sequences of songs in an endless-play format.
Why did you join Juniper Square, and what keeps you here?
With an ethos of democratizing investments in private equity, it was hard to resist the socially conscious approach the company took. Coupled with explosive growth potential in a multi-trillion dollar industry that Juniper Square is pulling into the digital age and leaders that care about culture as much as profits, it has a mix of ingredients that spoke to me loudly.
Which of the Juniper Square Core Values do you identify with the most?
Given the values are a holistic representation of the JSQ philosophy and work so well together makes it difficult to pick just one; however, if I were to be pressed, I’d say ‘Think like an Owner’ as I believe it encapsulates the type of success thinking that puts the customer and company interests above any individual and allows us all to be directly in charge of our collective destiny.
What team do you support? What are you focusing on over the next year?
Juniper Square offers solutions to both sponsors/investment managers (GPs) and investors (LPs) in private equity markets; it is currently organized into 3 tracks each focused on company-level OKRs: Administration, Networking and Fundraising.
The Administration track is focused on supporting asset and fund administration as well as backbone infrastructure; they help automate many aspects of financial and the back office processes — from tracking assets and investments to organizing fund payouts and distributions (ensuring security and accuracy in sensitive financial transactions). It also supports communication infrastructure such as email in a centralized fashion.
The Network track focuses on the investor’s (LP) full experience from a centralized data hub, leveraging our investor relationship graph to perform advanced analysis, foster investor and sponsor (investment manager — GP) relationships and eventually offer recommendations on how to maximize investment efficacy while minimizing risk exposure.
Last but not least is the Fundraising track, which I support, and is all about connecting deal sponsors (GPs) and investors (LPs). Our features enable a seamless experience in managing all aspects of the fundraising lifecycle — streamlining communication with investors, centralizing document/contract management, automating data collection and back-office processes.
All the workflow automation and relationship management will pave the way into the creation of Capital markets where we’ll get a chance to take a bold step toward our vision of democratizing private equity investments.
My first foray into Fundraising is with Subscriptions — which is a collection of features, organized in a workflow, that help investment managers streamline the interaction and documentation with potential investors. I’m very excited for us to optimize and innovate in the Subscriptions space which is core to the Fundraising track. There is a lot we can do to help better organize, manage workflows and offer timely, astute recommendations to our clients.
How does your team operate?
We employ an agile/scrum model for managing day-to-day. We have forged a tight-knit relationship with our product and design partners and attempt to tackle as much as we can iteratively.
What is your management philosophy?
I believe that leaders should help their teams as well as individuals on those teams find their purpose — their “why”. In doing so, you’ll be able to amplify the talent around you in creating and executing a high-quality, exciting product. Then you just have to remove roadblocks and let engineers do what they’re great at.
If you were on a deserted island and could only bring one item, what would it be and why?
A solar-powered desalination machine. Because water is the essence of life.
What’s one fun fact about you?
I once lived in the 6th coldest capital in the world (for quite a while).
What is your favorite movie of all time?
Ooh — I have to pick just one? I’m kind of a movie person so not sure if I can do just one. When I was younger I mused with the idea of filmmaking so this is a heavily redacted list of movies I would have loved to make at some point: Gattaca, Before Sunset (but really all of Linklater’s ‘before’ trilogy), Se7en and Blade Runner (both of them) made this very short list.
Do you have any book recommendations?
My reading is always a bit all over the map and these are some standouts from my past:
Tim Ferriss — ‘The 4 hour workweek’, David Chang — ‘Eat a Peach’ and/or Bourdain’s ‘Kitchen Confidential’ (if, like me, you’re fascinated by the mystical world of professional cooks/kitchens), Simon Sinek — ‘Start with Why’ (I recommend this for any aspiring leader), Peter Thiel — ‘Zero to One’, James Gleick — ‘Chaos’ and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series (which I’m currently re-reading).
When not at work, what are you up to?
Hiking, skiing, looking for purveyors of good food, wine and beer.
What is the kindest thing someone has done for you?
I had to renovate my entire house on a timeline and a small, selfless, tireless, group of friends jumped in with both feet to help; what ensued was an absolutely crazy summer of non-stop reno. To this day, I’m moved to think about the level of sustained kindness that went into that monumental effort. Over time I paid a few folks back with more reno but that hasn’t diminished from that collective act of kindness that I’m forever grateful for.
