My Million Dollar SaaS Idea SUCKED! Here’s how I fixed it.
Are you anything like me? When I first learned how Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence helps people find hidden patterns within data, my first thought is “I’m going to use this to trade stocks!” From reading forums on websites like Reddit and Medium, it seems like this is a very common idea.
But as common as the idea is, it seems like not many people actually did it. Sure, there are cookie-cutter guides on Medium that claim to predict stock prices with LSTMs and Reinforcement Learning, but when you actually try them for yourself, you will fail.
I decided to build a genuinely useful platform to help with algorithmic trading and financial research. The first iteration of the platform was called NextTrade. And it sucked!
So much, that I open-sourced it and entirely gave up on it!
However, by writing about my NextTrade, I was re-inspired by my original vision. I decided to take the lessons that I’ve learned and build an entirely new algorithmic trading platform.
The end result is a faster, more versatile tool that over 4,000 people have used. It’s called NexusTrade.io.
Here’s what sucked about the original NextTrade platform and what I had to fix.
1) Way too HARD to create a trading strategy
The original NextTrade platform allowed users to create trading strategies within a no-code UI. For example, here’s me configuring the idea “30 days have passed since the last buy and SPY is 1 standard deviation below its 30 day average price”.
As you can imagine, utilizing a form like this requires a steep learning curve, particularly for newer users who are curious about the platform and not fully convinced on the value it brings.
Within NexusTrade, I fixed this in two ways.
By speaking with Aurora, the AI Copilot, she will generate a portfolio which you can save to your profile, backtest, and deploy to the market.
In addition to creating algorithmic trading strategies, Aurora can perform in-depth financial analysis and screen for stocks using natural languages. These tools make her versatile for more than just algoirthmic trading.
Secondly, I released an Algorithmic Trading Strategy Library.
The library allows you to take pre-existing strategy templates and evaluate how those strategies performed in the past.
This gives you a starting point for creating strategies. You can see the percent change of the strategy, the sharpe ratio, the drawdown, and more. After finding a strategy that you’re interested in, you can then save it to your profile and deploy it live for real-time paper-trading.
2) Way too SLOW for an algorithmic trading platform
I created the NextTrade platform when I barely knew how to code. As a result, I made several critical design decisions that made it impossible to iterate on, and forced me to give it up. One of these decisions involved utilizing TypeScript for the core trading logic and not thinking about clever strategies to reduce the computation of backtests.
To be clear, this wasn’t a problem for live-trading. I also could’ve made it work for backtesting, even though it took several seconds for a backtest to run over a relatively short time period.
However, this was absolutely unacceptable during genetic optimizations.
Genetic optimization is an AI algorithm that finds the best parameters for the inputs by running simulations that mimic natural selection. In trading, it can be used to find the best possible trading strategy over a given time period.
Because the backtests were so slow, it took days to run large-scale optimizations. This was entirely impractical, especially if I were to ever scale to more than one user. It NEEDED to be faster. A lot faster. And here’s how I fixed this.
I rebuilt the core trading logic from scratch.
Instead of TypeScript, I built everything using Rust, one of the safest and fastest programming languages. I also made clever use of rolling windows and caching to vastly expedite backtest performance.
The end result was a platform that could run large-scale genetic optimizations in minutes. Not days.
3) Way too NICHE for a SaaS platform
If I was to eventually build a SaaS platform that would be worth over a million dollars, I had to make it more accessible to a wider audience.
Don’t get me wrong. Algorithmic trading is very cool. The ability to create, test, optimize, and deploy strategies to the cloud is the next step when it comes to advancing retail trading.
But right now, its incredibly niche. Most people won’t understand why receiving relevant data and executing clever algorithms can help them with their trading.
Thus, I needed to improve the appeal of NexusTrade, and implement new features so that its accessible to traders and investors who have not yet delved into the realm of algorithmic trading.
I did this in two ways. For one, I created a highly detailed stock information page for all US stocks.
Users can find more information about their favorite stocks without having to create an account. Users can learn what the stock actually does, what industries they are in, and get access to useful fundamental metrics about the stock.
Premium users can actually see the change in a metric over time and learn more about what that metric means. For example, by toggling free cash flow, you can see NVIDIA’s change in free cash flow, and what that means for the company.
In addition to viewing a detailed stock information page, users can navigate to a fully-featured stock screener.
The Simple Stock Screener makes it easy for users to find novel investing opportunities in whatever industries they want, including 3D printing, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence.
These tools transform NexusTrade from a super-niche algorithmic trading platform to an extremely versatile investing and research platform that empowers everyday investors.
Conclusion
This article shows how my algorithmic trading platform has improved significantly over the past few years. I transformed it from a slow, borderline useless toy project to a powerful, fully-featured AI-Powered trading platform.
All entreprenuers think they’re businesses should be a multimillion to multibillion dollar project. But many SaaS projects don’t solve real user problems and like to ride on the hypetrain to skyrocket their business into popularity.
NexusTrade.io takes a different approach. I built all of the features knowing they would bring value to everyday retail investors.
And I know that if I keep executing, I will develop the best trading platform that the world has ever seen.
