Startup Spotlight Q&A: BITA

Mr. Victor Gomez is a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer at BITA. He also co-founded and served as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director at of Bongour, Previously, he served as Senior Vice President at DB1 Ventures. Before joining DB1 Ventures, he was responsible for innovation management at MD+S. He acted for several years as CEO and co-founder of Funding4Learning, a global crowdfunding platform for educational projects and accumulated several years of experience as an investment consultant for pension funds and endowments at Mercer Consulting. He holds an MBA from WHU School of Management, a Master of Science in Financial Advisory from the University of Barcelona and a Bachelor in Economics at the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

BITA is the world’s first provider of end-to-end infrastructure for indexation and systematic investing. Using BITA’s technology, asset managers and institutional investors can design, backtest, calculate and analyze passive and systematic strategies without relying on clunky systems, complex internal tools, or spending significant amounts of money in index and data licenses.

Keep reading if you want to learn more about BITA!

— In a single sentence, what does BITA do?

We provide high-performance infrastructure and indexing services to institutional investors and financial institutions.

– How did BITA come to be? What was the problem you found and the ‘aha’ moment?

“The index industry is experiencing exponential growth. Today, more than 3 million indexes are calculated globally. The area of indexing experiencing the highest growth is customized indexation.

Clients are constantly approaching index providers in order to request index calculation and administration services, covering a large variety of methodologies, asset classes, and specific requirements.

This process takes a long time and requires many iterations between clients and index providers. This is something that Victor Gomez, BITA’s founder, experienced after working for one of the largest European index providers.

BITA is changing the complete business model of the industry. We are shifting the model from the licensing of data and intellectual property to the licensing of technology instead. An index delivery project that up until now can take up to 3 months, can be instead managed directly by clients, on a completely customized basis, in minutes.

— What sets BITA apart in the market?

By effectively enabling clients to self-index and take control of the product design process, while still being able to outsource regulation-crucial functions to an independent agent, we are:

-Reducing product development times
-Making index customization easier
-Reducing data costs
-Allowing scalable, repeatable but yet customizable processes

— What milestone are you most proud of so far?

Like the case for many startups, the most important milestone for us was securing our first large institutional client, only a couple of weeks after launching our initial product.

— Have you pursued funding and if so, what steps did you take?

We are planning to complete a series A round by Q2/Q3 this year. We already have a solid pipeline of world-class investors interested in our company.

– What KPIs are you tracking that you think will lead to revenue generation/growth?

We constantly look at important KPIs such as:
-Pipeline growth and pipeline quality
-Churn rates
-Sales cycle days
-MRR
-Lifetime Value
-Others.

— How do you build and develop talent?

BITA’s main headquarters are located in Frankfurt (Germany), the de-facto financial capital of the Eurozone, and one of the premier financial centers in the world. Frankfurt is home to some of the largest European index providers, so it is a good city to recruit talent.

Aside from that, we have been able to assemble a team of promising, highly qualified technical professionals in South America. The Latin American background of the founders, in conjunction with excellent knowledge and network in that geography has allowed the company to maintain development centers there.

An index provider is always in “mission critical mode”, and BITA is no exception, with operations working on a 24/7 basis. Therefore we dedicated extensive time to train and mentor our employees. Given the difficulty of finding professionals with specific expertise in this industry, we rely heavily on intensive on-the-job training.

Aside from Frankfurt, we also have a presence in Barcelona (Spain) and in Caracas (Venezuela), and we are looking to open further offices in London and New York over the next months. We believe that the diversity of backgrounds on a team is a major factor for success.

— What are the biggest challenges for the team?

I think one of the biggest challenges for us has been keeping our index operations without hiccups at all times. Our competitors in the indexing space tend to be very large corporations with tons of resources and staff.

Our way to overcome this is a combination of usage of the latest technology, automation, and the great commitment of our employees.

— What’s been the biggest success for the team? How did you celebrate?

One of the greatest moments for us was when we received the authorization by the German Financial Regulator (BaFin) to act as a Registered Benchmark Administrator. This opened many doors for us and allowed us to serve global large institutions.

— What’s something you’re constantly thinking about?

Probably my biggest obsession, in relation to our company, is to make sure that our clients are satisfied. I think that doing business goes beyond the delivery of a product or service; it is also the establishment of good personal relationships with your customers.

— What advice would you give to other founders?

As a startup founder, you need to take care of your health. A founder can’t escape stress but needs to learn to manage it and stay healthy, as this is one of the most critical factors for the sustainability of a venture.

— Have you been or are you part of a corporate startup program or accelerator? If so, which ones and what have been the benefits?

We have taken part in two major startup programs in Europe. In 2019 we took part in the Startupbootcamp Fintech Programme in Amsterdam, and in 2020, we were part of Accenture’s Fintech Innovation Lab in London.

Both programs provided great opportunities for networking and getting exposure to very large organizations.