Fast-moving markets need fast-moving technology. And when you're as reliant on technology-based solutions as Nasdaq, we're talking single millisecond fast. Their ability to offer customers reliable and instant access to their products is the engine that drives truly efficient markets. From stock exchanges doing $200 billion in trades a day, to parking lots that can adapt to real-time supply and demand – the deterministic and reliable flow of data makes a dynamic market possible anywhere, and that's where 5G comes into play.
In this episode of The Restless Ones, we sit with Brad Peterson, EVP, CIO, and CTO of Nasdaq. Brad's career philosophy is one to be admired - “the industry you are most attracted to will inform your quality of life” - so choose wisely. We'll hear Brad discuss a wide range of topics, from his penchant for network effect-driven technologies to his belief on how innovation by combination, and the distributed brainpower it can bring, will help keep Nasdaq at the forefront of technology and markets.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
And as that most of our trading is machine to machine.
We're counting in single microseconds, and when I look at
wireless and human response time, the newer five G and
even some of the optimizations of four G right now
are getting down to twenty milliseconds. So if you can
get down to the single digit millisecond latency, all of
(00:25):
a sudden, it opens up the door for a brand
new set of machine to machine applications. I think there's
a big new industry in there somewhere. Welcome to the
restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than a
decade really learning about technology one makes it take and
then describing and explaining that to my audience. But it's
(00:47):
the conversations with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the leaders
at the intersection of technology and business, that fascinate me
the most. In partnership with T Mobile for Business, I
explore the unique EAK set of challenges that see I
O S and C t o S face from advancements
in cloud and edge computing, software as a service, Internet
(01:08):
of things, and of course five G. We are often
left wondering how the leading minds and business continued to thrive.
Let's find out. Our guest today is Brad Peterson, executive
vice president and chief Technology and Chief Information Officer for NASDAK.
(01:30):
Brad has extensive experience in the financial and tech sectors.
That experience informs his unique approach to defining challenges and
solutions while serving both internal and external partners at NASDAK
and meeting their technological needs. Brad, thank you so much
for being here with us today, And before we really
(01:53):
dive into your role and your experience and your leadership philosophy,
I wanted to learn a little bit more about you.
So when did you first get interested in the field
of technology. My father worked at Ford and he came
home one day and said, there are gonna be a
hundreds of computers in cars in the future. And I
(02:16):
didn't even know what a computer was, so it was
it sounded pretty fascinating, and so I asked him a
little more about what was so special about a computer,
and so he made it very personal and said, well,
someday it's actually going to be able to do your
homework for you. And at that point hooked. So I've
got something that I don't have to do it someone
else is going to do it. Of course, we may
(02:38):
get into that about how far away your your general
intelligence and your ability of computers to do your homework fully,
But that was the day I think I remember getting
hooked on this while your father was very forward thinking,
because I think the average car now has between fifty
and a hundred fifty CPUs and it so right on
the money. Well, what was your first job in the field.
(03:02):
I started as a programmer at a bank, and I
was able to do something applying programming to business problems
versus in school. You were pretty much solving kind of
scientific and mathematical problems, and I found that pretty interesting.
That's something that resonates with me, the idea of taking
(03:23):
stuff you have learned through your academic experience and then
applying it to real world situations. Skipping far enough ahead,
when did you join the team of Nasdaq? When did
that actually happen and what was your initial role? Well,
I joined in two thousand thirteen, right at the beginning
of the year. I would say the same role that
I have today, although our company has changed, so my
(03:44):
role in leading technology is ever changing. I was recruited
to New York City and really think about the future
of NASDAC and help form the strategy and and move
more towards a technology oriented company. Verse is the heritage
of a financial services exchange that that applied technology, which
(04:06):
really was the seed of of NAZZAC. It's spent fifty
years now, so we celebrate our fiftieth anniversary. That's incredible.
And to be brought in right at the beginning of
something so transformational, I'm sure that was really exciting. And
you oversee roles of of c I O and c
t O. Do those roles intertwined pretty naturally or do
(04:27):
you find it it's more compartmentalized that you're It's very
much holistic. And I would say my last two roles
I was both c I O and CTO. I came
from Schwab where I had both. And if you think
about the c I O role at NAZZAC, we run
all the technology for ourselves and that includes the traditional
(04:49):
c I O role that is technology used by employees,
whereas the CTO is building the technology sell to customers.
But we have a huge amount of technology that is
above and beyond any normal technologies supplied employees. But for
our exchanges in North America and and in Europe, so
(05:09):
you think about that. In a lot of companies they
are not intertwined very much. In NASDAC, it is an
intertwined C I O CTO role and the lines blur
quite a bit. How do you describe your role to somebody.
Let's say you're at a cocktail party and someone says, so,
what do you do? Well, I swim laps to work out,
So if if I'm going to be cold and need
(05:31):
to start swimming again, I'll just say I run technology
at NASDAC. So I wouldn't do that to you, But
if I'm in a pool, that's my quick answer, and
they usually try and stop me to say what does
that mean? And if they don't, then I know they're
not interested and that was sufficient. But I would say
that the role that I play, obviously is a leadership one.
It's really important to communicate with the other leaders of
(05:54):
the business. What are the implications of technology trends and
specifically disruptive technologies that might offer us, first an opportunity,
So where can we spot something that we think is
going to emerge and surprise everyone at the pace that
it comes because of the nature of the technology, but
also be on the lookout for disruptive technologies that could
(06:18):
disrupt our businesses. There's both sides of it. There's the
positive and there's the negative. And if you're looking out
close enough and tuning to all the things that are
going on in the world, which of which there are many,
you can distill it down to a list of about
a dozen technologies that create opportunity or risk for your business.
(06:39):
I think our team is pretty well versed at this
point after hanging out for eight years. I think we've
tuned into in most cases the right trends and then
positioned ourselves well to improve our business and certainly keep
our business vibrant and alive and modern. Speaking of your team,
how big is your partment? How many people do you manage?
(07:02):
So we're over two thousand, two thousand sixty four to
be exact, and the company is just about We are
not quite half, but I would say given our strategy
and our trajectory, the technology organization will become more than
half the company in the long run. A lot of
companies like to claim that they are technology companies. So
(07:25):
I like to look at a couple of things. One is,
do you sell technology to customers? Do they actually pay
you for technology, and we check the box there. So
we are the number one provider of technology to other
exchanges and corporations with our corporate platforms. And then it's
what percentage of your workforce are technologists? And there I
(07:46):
think usually if if you're over fifty, it's another clear
check the box. So we're close on that front and
clearly qualifying the other. Well, you've you've touched on something
that I want to know a little or about. I
think a lot of people when they think of NASDAK
might think of it as quote unquote just a stock
(08:06):
market where you know a lot of trading activity happens.
But how would you describe what NASDAK is and what
it does to kind of clear away that misconception. I'm
going to give you an answer I've never given before,
so you get some unique content here if you unpack
what NAZDAC does stand for. Did Originally it's the National
(08:29):
Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System. We are not
that anymore. We're now a global company and automated quotation
system is very limiting. We do a lot more than
just automated quotations. We absolutely do run markets as you mentioned,
and they trade. We have clearing system we have surveillance systems,
(08:51):
and we have recently purchased an anti financial crime company.
When I do answer the question, now, I first start
with the NAS a market that everyone knows and gives
us so much brand awareness and prominence every day on TV.
It is that and it's a great business, but it
is also corporate platforms. We provide governance solutions for companies
(09:15):
to run their board meetings. We have tools for the
investor relations officer. So when a company goes public, there's
a lot of things they have to do quickly to
go from adolescents to adulthood. We've been asked what are
the best tools, so we decide why not provide them ourselves.
And then E s G. Environment, Social and governance is
(09:35):
a big new trend. We see a role of expanding
our corporate platforms into helping companies really up their game
in terms of e s G. Awareness and communication, and
then investor intelligence. Within that is our index business, which
is a phenomenal business in its own outright. And then
(09:56):
the final one is market technology. We're in a unique
position because we run our own exchanges in the Nordics
and the us, so we get great depth of understanding
what it takes to run a market reliably with capacity,
with security and performance, and we're able to sell to
folks that traditionally in an industry might be your competitors,
(10:18):
but because exchanges in capital markets are geographically franchised, we're
able to be a provider without the normal worries that
you might be doing business with a competitor. It's quite
a unique business and we're the leader by far in
that business. We call it market infrastructure Operators, where we
will sell them our trade and clearing, surveillance, risk management systems.
(10:42):
I very much appreciated that Brad demystified NASDAC for me,
giving me a clearer picture as to the role of
the organization plays. With that established, I felt it was
time to dive into learning more about Brad's approach to leadership,
and one thing I really wanted to know was how
is journey through different industries informed his approach to leadership
(11:03):
in MAZDAC. Yeah, I would say in hindsight that has
been one of the best experiences. I didn't design it
that way, but just this opportunity to work in financial services,
in telecommunications and any commerce everyone. I learned something along
the way. It really started in telecommunications. I observed they
(11:23):
were implementing something called Signaling System seven, which was a
out of band control network that really flattened the whole
telcom network itself. So I took that away from my
first job and saying, that's a brilliant architecture. So every
industry has provided me with a view into a unique
(11:44):
architecture that I have looked for in the new industries
is this applicable? And certainly out of band signaling and
control is very much a buzzword today of observe ability,
and in telcom it was telemetry. But that is how
you understand today what sas products where your uptake is
(12:05):
how you can improve your product. The full improvement cycle
is really this notion of instrumenting. You know what's happening.
And fortunately modern sas products lend themselves towards incredible instrumentation
and data about what's what's really happening real time and
gives you a chance to recover so versus a physical product.
(12:25):
And then at eBay, what's interesting is if you think
about shopping, you're consuming huge amounts of product information just visually,
and then periodically you'll stop in your brows and pick something,
compare and and buy it. So if you think about
the asymmetry to the amount of products you look at
to the transactions, the architecture that I was exposed to
(12:49):
an eBay was about massive amounts of simulation of someone
browsing if you will, they're kind of virtually walking and
shopping to the transactions when they actually buy. So we
had this massive read infrastructure, and it brought on the
advent of a big data. Really it was some of
the early applications. It's amazing hearing these experiences you had
(13:13):
as various transformational technologies were starting to emerge and mature.
I love that. That also leads me to the next question,
which is that you've worked in cutting edge technology companies
and industries, you've worked in finance. What is it about
these sorts of jobs that really appeals to you. Well,
(13:34):
there is an attraction. So I did get some advice
early on that the industry you pick has more to
do with your your outcome and quality of life than
what you do with that industry. So I married that
was something I also learned at the time called positive
network externalities in economics and it's been shortened to networks effects.
(13:57):
So I'm very much attracted to industries where networks effects
are in play. And you know, simply it's something becomes
more valuable the more people are on the network if
you will or are connected via that product or service.
eBay was one of the grandest examples of it. So
(14:17):
I would say I do look for companies that do
have some network's effects attributes in their business model. If
there's one thing most businesses can agree on these days,
it's that change has never come about so quickly. New
ways of working have become the norm. As a result,
(14:40):
the status quo no longer cuts it when it comes
to helping businesses adapt and innovate. That's why T Mobile
for Business uses unconventional thinking to help businesses work smarter
and grow faster. Only T Mobile offers America's largest and
fastest five gene network. It's just one reason they're better
able to help businesses solve the real world challenges they
(15:01):
face as they evolve. For instance, their new WFX solutions
help team members stay connected and productive where work happens.
With nearly two and a half times the network coverage
of a T and T nearly four times more than
Verizon and forty billion dollars invested in network and business
improvements over the next three years. T Mobile for Business
(15:23):
is better for your business right now and into the future.
See what they can do for your organization at T
mobile dot com. Slash Unconventional Open Signal awarded T mobile
fastest five G network based on average speeds. USA five
G User Experience Report January. Capable device required coverage not
available in some areas. Some users may require certain planner
feature see T mobile dot com. As Brad pointed out,
(15:55):
the network effect describes an organization that increases in value
as you add more people to that network. Organizations that
benefit from the network effect have more opportunities to create
products internally and externally that can have an exponentially powerful
impact as the network grows, and so Brad's experiences and
(16:15):
industries that have that network effect clearly played a part
in guiding his career. I wanted to shift the conversation
over to emerging technologies, and as you all know, I'm
fascinated by the seemingly limitless applications of five G connectivity.
I also knew that Brad had once said at a
conference that while the high throughput of five G is amazing.
(16:39):
What he was personally excited about was the low latency
associated with five G. I asked him if he could
expand upon that. Sure, We in NAZDAC, most of our
trading is machine to machine. We're counting in single microseconds,
and when I look at wireless and human response time
is you know, hundred to three hundred milliseconds. The newer
(17:03):
five G and even some of the optimizations of four
G right now are getting down to twenty milliseconds. So
if if you can get down to the single digit
millisecond latency and you can improve the determinism and the reliability,
all of a sudden, it opens up the door for
a brand new set of machine to machine applications. And
(17:27):
I think that is first of all, incredibly exciting because
I don't even know what they are. I could posit
what they're up, I would be wrong. But there's going
to be something that emerges and we go, this is
wonderful um that we can do that. It's a machine
to machine and then it's married with edge compute. And
what you're seeing is the major cloud providers are extending
(17:49):
their cloud infrastructure. They're doing deals with the telecom providers.
It also may play into self driving cars or other
communication and with localized infrastructure that now is enabled with
communications capability that you can just think about new ways
of dynamically pricing them. So that's why when I first
(18:13):
thought about the lower latency and reliability coupled with the
greater capacity of of five GUM started my my creative
juices going, I think there's a big new industry in
there somewhere. I couldn't agree more. I always look at
at certain developments and technology as being kind of a
(18:34):
seesaw where you'll see one side of technology make sudden
improvements and leave another side of it behind, and then
eventually there becomes a rebalancing, and the emergence of five
g to me, is one of those where you say, oh,
the thing that used to be the bottleneck is no
longer a bottleneck, and now all the things that you
wish you could have done with that technology but you
(18:57):
were limited because of those barriers there no longer an issue.
So now now what is standing in your way? I
remember when I first started hearing the phrase Internet of things,
and it didn't really mean anything to me, And now
we live in a world where billions of devices are
connected to networks. What's your view of Internet things as
an emerging technology? Are there ways that you're eager to
(19:20):
leverage IoT in what you do? Yes, Where we specifically
would apply it at NASDAC is this notion of anything
that is statically priced that should be dynamically priced. So
we we because we're in the market's business, if you will,
we start to see everything in terms of a market.
(19:41):
And what if you had better resource allocation, because you
could run a mini market and and allocate those resources
in a different way. And however you want to design
that market. You know, whatever what is the market structure
of it could yield the outcome. But that's where IoT
fits in. That's where the five G low latent machine
to machine fits in. Where you might not even know
(20:03):
that a market was run, that you put out a
bid for something and it happens, the market crosses, it
fulfills at the right price, and you haven't even used
up your think time yet. So building applications like that,
And the simplest one is, let's just go to New
York City around Madison Square Garden when there's an event there,
(20:25):
a concert, the parking should be more expensively closer in
you are and less the further out you are. But
it's it's statically priced, or it's starting to become dynamically priced.
But but that's just a great example of if if
the car and the parking space can mediate, and you
(20:46):
then get directed to that parking space and you accept
your you've given your car a limit order if you will,
and it accepts on your behalf, so you're you're not
even in the loop, and you're you know, wow, I
had to park three blocks of way when I went
to the last concert and two blocks away this time,
and I gave it a fifteen dollar you know, limit order.
(21:07):
That's pretty cool. So all those things huge productivity, left
huge revenue opportunity for UM. For you know, a city
like New York so so and and it's technology that's
here right, you could you could see that that happening.
So those kinds of things to me, UM, I get
(21:27):
really excited about running markets, building technology and and I
think micro markets UM is one of my favorite examples.
I actually really love that example too. It makes me
think of having a having a negotiation with my with
my app about how much I'm willing to pay for
the convenience of not having to walk too far to
(21:48):
get to a venue that speaks to be on a
very personal level. Or maybe content, you know, the media
content when you're confronted with something you haven't subscribed to
but you really want to read it, and there's a
micro market opportunity there as well. I come across things
all the time and in some cases I think I
would love to pay for this one specific piece of content,
(22:10):
but I don't really have that option. If there were
a more broad approach to this, then I would probably
be far more likely to go through those avenues and
my in my research, so that really speaks to me too. Well.
What would you say would be the most important technological
change in the last few years with regard to uh TO,
(22:35):
to the work at NASDAC Well, I would say we're
right now studying other companies like Stripe and Twilio and
this concept of innovation by combination, So you the building
blocks are there in terms of a P I S
and and just the acceleration of of of those companies
(22:58):
being able to go global and and I think Stripe
is quoted as saying they have over a million customers
just that incredible growth because they made their products so
consumable by engineers. So that trend of the engineer now
is the one that buys your product. So they integrated in,
they test it, they see that it works, and now
(23:21):
you have a business that starts to grow organically from
the build point when the engineer discovers it. We're decomposing
our markets to to be consumable a p I S
and then what we want to do is see who
who creatively finds uses for those So that kind of
comes back to I just think it's fascinating how that
(23:43):
has happened so quickly. Yeah, it really creates an opportunity
for collaboration. Well, then, who, in your opinion in tech
leadership is really killing it right now? Who are the
people you look to and you say, this person really
has their finger on the pulse of what is going on. Well,
I've been listening in clubhouse to Mark Andresen and I
(24:07):
do always learn something. Mark has incredible insight to what's
going on. Of course he's sitting right at the edge
of everyone that comes in, you know that's doing something interesting.
And then on the business side, I would say Patrick
Collison and his brother John at Stripe, So they they
are incredibly thoughtful people for especially for their age. I'm
(24:31):
just very impressed with how they're going about building their company,
how they're learning about, you know, problems in the world
and addressing them in a responsible way. So I just
think they're they're too outstanding. UM entrepreneurs who are who
are building a great company? Great answer. We've talked about
(24:52):
quite a few technologies so far. I found that people
can have misconceptions about some tech sometimes because the definitions
get ambiguous. I'm thinking about stuff like artificial intelligence or
machine learning. I'm curious, what do you see as the
most widely misunderstood technology, most misunderstood I would say probably
(25:15):
the whole crypto right now, and certainly what is unique
about all the different cryptocurrencies. So even with bitcoin, I
I always asked someone, did you read the paper, the
the original PDF that's on the internet. Um, that's nine
pages long, and no one almost no one says yes,
(25:38):
I've read it. So I always go go read it.
It's not bad, you know, and maybe you get down
to page five or six, and if you don't have
a technical background, it starts to to get difficult to understand.
But the first five pages are tremendous about what it is.
Then there's all these cryptocurrencies. I think algorand Is is
(25:59):
a great one. I up and to have studied that one,
and they're solving real problems the cost of the mining
and the block verification is brilliant, and then also trying
to solve the centralization of the mining in certain parts
of the world. So I think they have a real purpose.
So they've they've gone about it. And then some are
(26:20):
scalability and transaction rates, but a lot of them, um,
I think people are investing them and they have no
idea what what is the foundational if there is any
algorith and Bitcoin have an ethereum have some foundational unique
technology and attributes, most of the other ones don't. And
so I would say that to me still seems like
(26:44):
very misunderstood about what are the what are they trying
to accomplish. I agree. When one of the major ones
in the stories is literally a cryptocurrency that was created
as kind of a joke and is now having a
fairly imp us have run, you do start to wonder
how many people bothered to read Satoshi's paper back in
(27:06):
the day. So yeah, I think that you are right
on the money, so to speak with that one. So Brad,
we have time for just one more question. We all
know that money never sleeps, even when people make their
shut eye. What is it that keeps you up at night?
The answer for me what keeps me up at night
(27:27):
is a literal one because of the business we're in
and we're running critical infrastructure, and then also our customers
are using our technology to run their critical infrastructure. There's
always some customer that got their market hours around the world,
so even in the Middle East, they're running their markets
on Sundays and in Asia when I'm supposed to be sleeping,
(27:50):
that's daytime for them. It is oftentimes when I have
to respond to a crisis, but fortunately those are not
every night, otherwise I would not get any sleep. Thank
you so much for joining us. I greatly appreciate your
time and I've learned a lot just through this conversation,
so thank you well. I appreciate you having me, Jonathan
(28:10):
look forward to doing it again. What really struck me
in my conversation with Brad was how he takes an
almost free association approach to problem solving, using his experience
in one field to guide his point of view and approach.
(28:31):
In another it makes him extremely adaptable. He brings forward
solutions that might not seem obvious, but once applied, they
become the sort of thing that in hindsight seems like
it should have been obvious. It's really hard to spot
those solutions in advance, though. It's really the restless ones
(28:51):
who are able to take that kind of approach. I
feel that much of what we covered from leveraging software
as a service to other wild applications and beyond, and
of course how the benefits of five G are ripe
for new applications that can take advantage of low latency.
All of that has widespread applicability and it makes me
(29:12):
excited to see what's next. Join us for more conversations
with innovative leaders here on the Restless Ones. We'll be
speaking with more c I O s and c t
O s from different industries to hone in on the
skills and tech it takes to be a pioneer. See
you next time. These days, new ways of working have
(29:38):
become the norm, and the status quo no longer cuts
it when it comes to helping businesses evolve and grow.
That's why T Mobile for Business uses unconventional thinking to
help businesses sees innovation only. T Mobile offers America's largest
and fastest five gene network, which makes their new WFX
solutions possible, letting businesses stay connected and reductive where work happens.
(30:02):
See what T Mobile for Business can do for you
at t mobile dot com. Slash Unconventional Open Signal awarded.
T Mobile fastest five G network based on average speeds.
USA five G User Experience Report, January. Capable device required
coverage not available in some areas. Some users may require
certain plann or features see mobile dot com
And as that most of our trading is machine to machine.
We're counting in single microseconds, and when I look at
wireless and human response time, the newer five G and
even some of the optimizations of four G right now
are getting down to twenty milliseconds. So if you can
get down to the single digit millisecond latency, all of
(00:25):
a sudden, it opens up the door for a brand
new set of machine to machine applications. I think there's
a big new industry in there somewhere. Welcome to the
restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than a
decade really learning about technology one makes it take and
then describing and explaining that to my audience. But it's
(00:47):
the conversations with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the leaders
at the intersection of technology and business, that fascinate me
the most. In partnership with T Mobile for Business, I
explore the unique EAK set of challenges that see I
O S and C t o S face from advancements
in cloud and edge computing, software as a service, Internet
(01:08):
of things, and of course five G. We are often
left wondering how the leading minds and business continued to thrive.
Let's find out. Our guest today is Brad Peterson, executive
vice president and chief Technology and Chief Information Officer for NASDAK.
(01:30):
Brad has extensive experience in the financial and tech sectors.
That experience informs his unique approach to defining challenges and
solutions while serving both internal and external partners at NASDAK
and meeting their technological needs. Brad, thank you so much
for being here with us today, And before we really
(01:53):
dive into your role and your experience and your leadership philosophy,
I wanted to learn a little bit more about you.
So when did you first get interested in the field
of technology. My father worked at Ford and he came
home one day and said, there are gonna be a
hundreds of computers in cars in the future. And I
(02:16):
didn't even know what a computer was, so it was
it sounded pretty fascinating, and so I asked him a
little more about what was so special about a computer,
and so he made it very personal and said, well,
someday it's actually going to be able to do your
homework for you. And at that point hooked. So I've
got something that I don't have to do it someone
else is going to do it. Of course, we may
(02:38):
get into that about how far away your your general
intelligence and your ability of computers to do your homework fully,
But that was the day I think I remember getting
hooked on this while your father was very forward thinking,
because I think the average car now has between fifty
and a hundred fifty CPUs and it so right on
the money. Well, what was your first job in the field.
(03:02):
I started as a programmer at a bank, and I
was able to do something applying programming to business problems
versus in school. You were pretty much solving kind of
scientific and mathematical problems, and I found that pretty interesting.
That's something that resonates with me, the idea of taking
(03:23):
stuff you have learned through your academic experience and then
applying it to real world situations. Skipping far enough ahead,
when did you join the team of Nasdaq? When did
that actually happen and what was your initial role? Well,
I joined in two thousand thirteen, right at the beginning
of the year. I would say the same role that
I have today, although our company has changed, so my
(03:44):
role in leading technology is ever changing. I was recruited
to New York City and really think about the future
of NASDAC and help form the strategy and and move
more towards a technology oriented company. Verse is the heritage
of a financial services exchange that that applied technology, which
(04:06):
really was the seed of of NAZZAC. It's spent fifty
years now, so we celebrate our fiftieth anniversary. That's incredible.
And to be brought in right at the beginning of
something so transformational, I'm sure that was really exciting. And
you oversee roles of of c I O and c
t O. Do those roles intertwined pretty naturally or do
(04:27):
you find it it's more compartmentalized that you're It's very
much holistic. And I would say my last two roles
I was both c I O and CTO. I came
from Schwab where I had both. And if you think
about the c I O role at NAZZAC, we run
all the technology for ourselves and that includes the traditional
(04:49):
c I O role that is technology used by employees,
whereas the CTO is building the technology sell to customers.
But we have a huge amount of technology that is
above and beyond any normal technologies supplied employees. But for
our exchanges in North America and and in Europe, so
(05:09):
you think about that. In a lot of companies they
are not intertwined very much. In NASDAC, it is an
intertwined C I O CTO role and the lines blur
quite a bit. How do you describe your role to somebody.
Let's say you're at a cocktail party and someone says, so,
what do you do? Well, I swim laps to work out,
So if if I'm going to be cold and need
(05:31):
to start swimming again, I'll just say I run technology
at NASDAC. So I wouldn't do that to you, But
if I'm in a pool, that's my quick answer, and
they usually try and stop me to say what does
that mean? And if they don't, then I know they're
not interested and that was sufficient. But I would say
that the role that I play, obviously is a leadership one.
It's really important to communicate with the other leaders of
(05:54):
the business. What are the implications of technology trends and
specifically disruptive technologies that might offer us, first an opportunity,
So where can we spot something that we think is
going to emerge and surprise everyone at the pace that
it comes because of the nature of the technology, but
also be on the lookout for disruptive technologies that could
(06:18):
disrupt our businesses. There's both sides of it. There's the
positive and there's the negative. And if you're looking out
close enough and tuning to all the things that are
going on in the world, which of which there are many,
you can distill it down to a list of about
a dozen technologies that create opportunity or risk for your business.
(06:39):
I think our team is pretty well versed at this
point after hanging out for eight years. I think we've
tuned into in most cases the right trends and then
positioned ourselves well to improve our business and certainly keep
our business vibrant and alive and modern. Speaking of your team,
how big is your partment? How many people do you manage?
(07:02):
So we're over two thousand, two thousand sixty four to
be exact, and the company is just about We are
not quite half, but I would say given our strategy
and our trajectory, the technology organization will become more than
half the company in the long run. A lot of
companies like to claim that they are technology companies. So
(07:25):
I like to look at a couple of things. One is,
do you sell technology to customers? Do they actually pay
you for technology, and we check the box there. So
we are the number one provider of technology to other
exchanges and corporations with our corporate platforms. And then it's
what percentage of your workforce are technologists? And there I
(07:46):
think usually if if you're over fifty, it's another clear
check the box. So we're close on that front and
clearly qualifying the other. Well, you've you've touched on something
that I want to know a little or about. I
think a lot of people when they think of NASDAK
might think of it as quote unquote just a stock
(08:06):
market where you know a lot of trading activity happens.
But how would you describe what NASDAK is and what
it does to kind of clear away that misconception. I'm
going to give you an answer I've never given before,
so you get some unique content here if you unpack
what NAZDAC does stand for. Did Originally it's the National
(08:29):
Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System. We are not
that anymore. We're now a global company and automated quotation
system is very limiting. We do a lot more than
just automated quotations. We absolutely do run markets as you mentioned,
and they trade. We have clearing system we have surveillance systems,
(08:51):
and we have recently purchased an anti financial crime company.
When I do answer the question, now, I first start
with the NAS a market that everyone knows and gives
us so much brand awareness and prominence every day on TV.
It is that and it's a great business, but it
is also corporate platforms. We provide governance solutions for companies
(09:15):
to run their board meetings. We have tools for the
investor relations officer. So when a company goes public, there's
a lot of things they have to do quickly to
go from adolescents to adulthood. We've been asked what are
the best tools, so we decide why not provide them ourselves.
And then E s G. Environment, Social and governance is
(09:35):
a big new trend. We see a role of expanding
our corporate platforms into helping companies really up their game
in terms of e s G. Awareness and communication, and
then investor intelligence. Within that is our index business, which
is a phenomenal business in its own outright. And then
(09:56):
the final one is market technology. We're in a unique
position because we run our own exchanges in the Nordics
and the us, so we get great depth of understanding
what it takes to run a market reliably with capacity,
with security and performance, and we're able to sell to
folks that traditionally in an industry might be your competitors,
(10:18):
but because exchanges in capital markets are geographically franchised, we're
able to be a provider without the normal worries that
you might be doing business with a competitor. It's quite
a unique business and we're the leader by far in
that business. We call it market infrastructure Operators, where we
will sell them our trade and clearing, surveillance, risk management systems.
(10:42):
I very much appreciated that Brad demystified NASDAC for me,
giving me a clearer picture as to the role of
the organization plays. With that established, I felt it was
time to dive into learning more about Brad's approach to leadership,
and one thing I really wanted to know was how
is journey through different industries informed his approach to leadership
(11:03):
in MAZDAC. Yeah, I would say in hindsight that has
been one of the best experiences. I didn't design it
that way, but just this opportunity to work in financial services,
in telecommunications and any commerce everyone. I learned something along
the way. It really started in telecommunications. I observed they
(11:23):
were implementing something called Signaling System seven, which was a
out of band control network that really flattened the whole
telcom network itself. So I took that away from my
first job and saying, that's a brilliant architecture. So every
industry has provided me with a view into a unique
(11:44):
architecture that I have looked for in the new industries
is this applicable? And certainly out of band signaling and
control is very much a buzzword today of observe ability,
and in telcom it was telemetry. But that is how
you understand today what sas products where your uptake is
(12:05):
how you can improve your product. The full improvement cycle
is really this notion of instrumenting. You know what's happening.
And fortunately modern sas products lend themselves towards incredible instrumentation
and data about what's what's really happening real time and
gives you a chance to recover so versus a physical product.
(12:25):
And then at eBay, what's interesting is if you think
about shopping, you're consuming huge amounts of product information just visually,
and then periodically you'll stop in your brows and pick something,
compare and and buy it. So if you think about
the asymmetry to the amount of products you look at
to the transactions, the architecture that I was exposed to
(12:49):
an eBay was about massive amounts of simulation of someone
browsing if you will, they're kind of virtually walking and
shopping to the transactions when they actually buy. So we
had this massive read infrastructure, and it brought on the
advent of a big data. Really it was some of
the early applications. It's amazing hearing these experiences you had
(13:13):
as various transformational technologies were starting to emerge and mature.
I love that. That also leads me to the next question,
which is that you've worked in cutting edge technology companies
and industries, you've worked in finance. What is it about
these sorts of jobs that really appeals to you. Well,
(13:34):
there is an attraction. So I did get some advice
early on that the industry you pick has more to
do with your your outcome and quality of life than
what you do with that industry. So I married that
was something I also learned at the time called positive
network externalities in economics and it's been shortened to networks effects.
(13:57):
So I'm very much attracted to industries where networks effects
are in play. And you know, simply it's something becomes
more valuable the more people are on the network if
you will or are connected via that product or service.
eBay was one of the grandest examples of it. So
(14:17):
I would say I do look for companies that do
have some network's effects attributes in their business model. If
there's one thing most businesses can agree on these days,
it's that change has never come about so quickly. New
ways of working have become the norm. As a result,
(14:40):
the status quo no longer cuts it when it comes
to helping businesses adapt and innovate. That's why T Mobile
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(15:01):
face as they evolve. For instance, their new WFX solutions
help team members stay connected and productive where work happens.
With nearly two and a half times the network coverage
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(15:23):
is better for your business right now and into the future.
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fastest five G network based on average speeds. USA five
G User Experience Report January. Capable device required coverage not
available in some areas. Some users may require certain planner
feature see T mobile dot com. As Brad pointed out,
(15:55):
the network effect describes an organization that increases in value
as you add more people to that network. Organizations that
benefit from the network effect have more opportunities to create
products internally and externally that can have an exponentially powerful
impact as the network grows, and so Brad's experiences and
(16:15):
industries that have that network effect clearly played a part
in guiding his career. I wanted to shift the conversation
over to emerging technologies, and as you all know, I'm
fascinated by the seemingly limitless applications of five G connectivity.
I also knew that Brad had once said at a
conference that while the high throughput of five G is amazing.
(16:39):
What he was personally excited about was the low latency
associated with five G. I asked him if he could
expand upon that. Sure, We in NAZDAC, most of our
trading is machine to machine. We're counting in single microseconds,
and when I look at wireless and human response time
is you know, hundred to three hundred milliseconds. The newer
(17:03):
five G and even some of the optimizations of four
G right now are getting down to twenty milliseconds. So
if if you can get down to the single digit
millisecond latency and you can improve the determinism and the reliability,
all of a sudden, it opens up the door for
a brand new set of machine to machine applications. And
(17:27):
I think that is first of all, incredibly exciting because
I don't even know what they are. I could posit
what they're up, I would be wrong. But there's going
to be something that emerges and we go, this is
wonderful um that we can do that. It's a machine
to machine and then it's married with edge compute. And
what you're seeing is the major cloud providers are extending
(17:49):
their cloud infrastructure. They're doing deals with the telecom providers.
It also may play into self driving cars or other
communication and with localized infrastructure that now is enabled with
communications capability that you can just think about new ways
of dynamically pricing them. So that's why when I first
(18:13):
thought about the lower latency and reliability coupled with the
greater capacity of of five GUM started my my creative
juices going, I think there's a big new industry in
there somewhere. I couldn't agree more. I always look at
at certain developments and technology as being kind of a
(18:34):
seesaw where you'll see one side of technology make sudden
improvements and leave another side of it behind, and then
eventually there becomes a rebalancing, and the emergence of five
g to me, is one of those where you say, oh,
the thing that used to be the bottleneck is no
longer a bottleneck, and now all the things that you
wish you could have done with that technology but you
(18:57):
were limited because of those barriers there no longer an issue.
So now now what is standing in your way? I
remember when I first started hearing the phrase Internet of things,
and it didn't really mean anything to me, And now
we live in a world where billions of devices are
connected to networks. What's your view of Internet things as
an emerging technology? Are there ways that you're eager to
(19:20):
leverage IoT in what you do? Yes, Where we specifically
would apply it at NASDAC is this notion of anything
that is statically priced that should be dynamically priced. So
we we because we're in the market's business, if you will,
we start to see everything in terms of a market.
(19:41):
And what if you had better resource allocation, because you
could run a mini market and and allocate those resources
in a different way. And however you want to design
that market. You know, whatever what is the market structure
of it could yield the outcome. But that's where IoT
fits in. That's where the five G low latent machine
to machine fits in. Where you might not even know
(20:03):
that a market was run, that you put out a
bid for something and it happens, the market crosses, it
fulfills at the right price, and you haven't even used
up your think time yet. So building applications like that,
And the simplest one is, let's just go to New
York City around Madison Square Garden when there's an event there,
(20:25):
a concert, the parking should be more expensively closer in
you are and less the further out you are. But
it's it's statically priced, or it's starting to become dynamically priced.
But but that's just a great example of if if
the car and the parking space can mediate, and you
(20:46):
then get directed to that parking space and you accept
your you've given your car a limit order if you will,
and it accepts on your behalf, so you're you're not
even in the loop, and you're you know, wow, I
had to park three blocks of way when I went
to the last concert and two blocks away this time,
and I gave it a fifteen dollar you know, limit order.
(21:07):
That's pretty cool. So all those things huge productivity, left
huge revenue opportunity for UM. For you know, a city
like New York so so and and it's technology that's
here right, you could you could see that that happening.
So those kinds of things to me, UM, I get
(21:27):
really excited about running markets, building technology and and I
think micro markets UM is one of my favorite examples.
I actually really love that example too. It makes me
think of having a having a negotiation with my with
my app about how much I'm willing to pay for
the convenience of not having to walk too far to
(21:48):
get to a venue that speaks to be on a
very personal level. Or maybe content, you know, the media
content when you're confronted with something you haven't subscribed to
but you really want to read it, and there's a
micro market opportunity there as well. I come across things
all the time and in some cases I think I
would love to pay for this one specific piece of content,
(22:10):
but I don't really have that option. If there were
a more broad approach to this, then I would probably
be far more likely to go through those avenues and
my in my research, so that really speaks to me too. Well.
What would you say would be the most important technological
change in the last few years with regard to uh TO,
(22:35):
to the work at NASDAC Well, I would say we're
right now studying other companies like Stripe and Twilio and
this concept of innovation by combination, So you the building
blocks are there in terms of a P I S
and and just the acceleration of of of those companies
(22:58):
being able to go global and and I think Stripe
is quoted as saying they have over a million customers
just that incredible growth because they made their products so
consumable by engineers. So that trend of the engineer now
is the one that buys your product. So they integrated in,
they test it, they see that it works, and now
(23:21):
you have a business that starts to grow organically from
the build point when the engineer discovers it. We're decomposing
our markets to to be consumable a p I S
and then what we want to do is see who
who creatively finds uses for those So that kind of
comes back to I just think it's fascinating how that
(23:43):
has happened so quickly. Yeah, it really creates an opportunity
for collaboration. Well, then, who, in your opinion in tech
leadership is really killing it right now? Who are the
people you look to and you say, this person really
has their finger on the pulse of what is going on. Well,
I've been listening in clubhouse to Mark Andresen and I
(24:07):
do always learn something. Mark has incredible insight to what's
going on. Of course he's sitting right at the edge
of everyone that comes in, you know that's doing something interesting.
And then on the business side, I would say Patrick
Collison and his brother John at Stripe, So they they
are incredibly thoughtful people for especially for their age. I'm
(24:31):
just very impressed with how they're going about building their company,
how they're learning about, you know, problems in the world
and addressing them in a responsible way. So I just
think they're they're too outstanding. UM entrepreneurs who are who
are building a great company? Great answer. We've talked about
(24:52):
quite a few technologies so far. I found that people
can have misconceptions about some tech sometimes because the definitions
get ambiguous. I'm thinking about stuff like artificial intelligence or
machine learning. I'm curious, what do you see as the
most widely misunderstood technology, most misunderstood I would say probably
(25:15):
the whole crypto right now, and certainly what is unique
about all the different cryptocurrencies. So even with bitcoin, I
I always asked someone, did you read the paper, the
the original PDF that's on the internet. Um, that's nine
pages long, and no one almost no one says yes,
(25:38):
I've read it. So I always go go read it.
It's not bad, you know, and maybe you get down
to page five or six, and if you don't have
a technical background, it starts to to get difficult to understand.
But the first five pages are tremendous about what it is.
Then there's all these cryptocurrencies. I think algorand Is is
(25:59):
a great one. I up and to have studied that one,
and they're solving real problems the cost of the mining
and the block verification is brilliant, and then also trying
to solve the centralization of the mining in certain parts
of the world. So I think they have a real purpose.
So they've they've gone about it. And then some are
(26:20):
scalability and transaction rates, but a lot of them, um,
I think people are investing them and they have no
idea what what is the foundational if there is any
algorith and Bitcoin have an ethereum have some foundational unique
technology and attributes, most of the other ones don't. And
so I would say that to me still seems like
(26:44):
very misunderstood about what are the what are they trying
to accomplish. I agree. When one of the major ones
in the stories is literally a cryptocurrency that was created
as kind of a joke and is now having a
fairly imp us have run, you do start to wonder
how many people bothered to read Satoshi's paper back in
(27:06):
the day. So yeah, I think that you are right
on the money, so to speak with that one. So Brad,
we have time for just one more question. We all
know that money never sleeps, even when people make their
shut eye. What is it that keeps you up at night?
The answer for me what keeps me up at night
(27:27):
is a literal one because of the business we're in
and we're running critical infrastructure, and then also our customers
are using our technology to run their critical infrastructure. There's
always some customer that got their market hours around the world,
so even in the Middle East, they're running their markets
on Sundays and in Asia when I'm supposed to be sleeping,
(27:50):
that's daytime for them. It is oftentimes when I have
to respond to a crisis, but fortunately those are not
every night, otherwise I would not get any sleep. Thank
you so much for joining us. I greatly appreciate your
time and I've learned a lot just through this conversation,
so thank you well. I appreciate you having me, Jonathan
(28:10):
look forward to doing it again. What really struck me
in my conversation with Brad was how he takes an
almost free association approach to problem solving, using his experience
in one field to guide his point of view and approach.
(28:31):
In another it makes him extremely adaptable. He brings forward
solutions that might not seem obvious, but once applied, they
become the sort of thing that in hindsight seems like
it should have been obvious. It's really hard to spot
those solutions in advance, though. It's really the restless ones
(28:51):
who are able to take that kind of approach. I
feel that much of what we covered from leveraging software
as a service to other wild applications and beyond, and
of course how the benefits of five G are ripe
for new applications that can take advantage of low latency.
All of that has widespread applicability and it makes me
(29:12):
excited to see what's next. Join us for more conversations
with innovative leaders here on the Restless Ones. We'll be
speaking with more c I O s and c t
O s from different industries to hone in on the
skills and tech it takes to be a pioneer. See
you next time. These days, new ways of working have
(29:38):
become the norm, and the status quo no longer cuts
it when it comes to helping businesses evolve and grow.
That's why T Mobile for Business uses unconventional thinking to
help businesses sees innovation only. T Mobile offers America's largest
and fastest five gene network, which makes their new WFX
solutions possible, letting businesses stay connected and reductive where work happens.
(30:02):
See what T Mobile for Business can do for you
at t mobile dot com. Slash Unconventional Open Signal awarded.
T Mobile fastest five G network based on average speeds.
USA five G User Experience Report, January. Capable device required
coverage not available in some areas. Some users may require
certain plann or features see mobile dot com
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