Week 41: Jonathan Baker, Simudyne

While I’m lucky to host this podcast each week with amazing founders, the bulk of my guests come from introductions. Today’s episode is one such example. A few weeks ago, I was having coffee with Chris Adelsbach at Rise London when I asked him about founders I should talk to in London for the show. Without hesitation, he told me about Jonathan Baker from Simudyne. Simudyne’s flagship product, Providence, is used by modelers, developers, quants, and strats to build simulations for financial institutions. Yes, banks have been using simulations for years but they require expensive hardware and specialized programming skills, thus ensuring simulations are only used when the risk or payoff is particularly great. Simudyne is helping break this mold by offering a way for these institutions to more readily utilize this technology. The company firmly believes all future decisions of consequence, particularly at the enterprise level, should be subject to scrutiny using computer simulation. Given the rise of business intelligence tools in past years, it was clear to me that the next step for executives would be to understand all of the future plausible scenarios to further mitigate risk.

I was extremely excited to talk to Jonathan since I knew nothing about the topic, but was eager to learn. Jonathan exceeded my expectations as he spent a couple hours with me going over why now is the right time to be in this space (it also became quite clear he is a former teacher). What struck me most though was Jonathan’s “give first” mentality. As I attended a meetup at Rise via his invitation, it was clear that Jonathan’s first instinct is always to help others. Defensible technology and a large market can only get you part of the way when it comes to creating a successful startup; team is always the other part (if not the most important part) of the equation. Simudyne’s deep expertise in the space, coupled with its stellar leadership team and grand vision, makes it one of my top startups to watch in London.

Stage 👉 Seed (part of Techstars Barclays Accelerator)
Location 👉 London
Industry 👉 Infrastructure & Predictive Analytics

“I thought if I could catch students early and get them interested in math, it could really change things.”

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Why simulations have advanced in recent years, and why enterprises should utilize them for more scenarios than ever before
• How Simudyne plans to first go after the financial services market while other sectors’ technology catches up
• Why London has the best ecosystem for startups with a financial focus, even over New York, and why it’s not just due to the close proximity to banks
• Jonathan’s experience teaching math after attending Cambridge, and why he was chosen as head of the department
• How helping others for a few months and attending hackathons built Jonathan’s London network
• The early days of Simudyne pre-Techstars and the office perils they originally endured before entering the program

After Jonathan shares some colorful stories about office life, be sure to listen to the end, where he tells me a London startup he loves and the founder he’d most want to interview.

P.S. Thanks to Chris Adelsbach for the introduction!

Have a founder I should interview? Email me at crissy@52founders.com. Enjoyed the intro music? Check out Broke for Free to hear more.