An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Find a mentor. It’s easier to learn from someone else’s mistakes than to make your own. Trust me, you’re not the first one to face whatever the problem is.
As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years” I had the pleasure of interviewing Tobias Heaslip.
Tobias Francis Heaslip is a mission-driven entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Trading.TV, the world’s first social livestream and immersive chat platform for traders and financial content creators. He spent more than a decade as a trader and analyst at some of the largest institutional banks and hedge funds in the world including Barclays Investment Bank, Och-Ziff Capital Management, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Tobias graduated from Southern Methodist University with a bachelor’s degree in Finance and Alternative Asset Management.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I worked on Wall Street for over a decade as an equity trader at some of the biggest investment banks and hedge funds in the world. I was lucky enough to come into the industry at a time where social media was just becoming an investable asset class in the public markets, and was at Morgan Stanley when the firm was winning the IPO business of all these companies. As the youngest person on the desk (and the only person that actually used the products at the time), they asked me to become the resident social media expert — -which I did. I’ve been focused on social media and fintech ever since.
This focus led me to see an opportunity to build a segment-defining company at the intersection of the creator economy and the retail trading revolution. This combined with a professional trading background, made me uniquely qualified to found and built a social fintech company like Trading.TV.
Can you please share with us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
This is a fun one! The day we took Facebook public at Morgan Stanley. I was a junior trader on the desk but was covering Facebook and all the other social media stocks at the time. Meaning, I was responsible for making markets in the stock. This was the most hotly anticipated IPO in years and the trading floor was buzzing with excitement. Facebook’s top East Coast brass was on the floor and everyone had Facebook hats and merch. It was a huge moment.
We had simulated the opening cross with Nasdaq several times before the actual day of the IPO. Everything was fine. No issues whatsoever. But as Mike Tyson famously said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
On the day of the actual IPO, everything was normal until we opened the stock for trading. We broke the system. It was marketwide, but at the time, we thought it was an issue exclusive to just us. We couldn’t give confirms to buyers or sellers, and even worse, we had no control of our risk! For all we knew, we were losing millions of dollars a second, with no way of being able to tell how to fix it. All this with Facebook execs standing behind us clapping, totally oblivious to the MAJOR issue we were dealing with, while clapping and trying to mentally calculate how rich they now were.
We ended up doing the entire thing by hand, OLD SCHOOL! Trying to keep track of millions of shares on pieces of paper (it didn’t work). Still not sure how the firm ended up from a Profit & Loss (PnL) perspective, but the issue was on Nasdaq’s end. It’s still one of the reasons why some companies choose to list with the New York Stock Exchange.
Which principles or philosophies have guided your life? Your career?
Work hard. Show empathy. Doing the right thing is always the right thing. Help people less fortunate and remember the journey is the destination.
Ok thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your “Big Idea That Might Change The World”?
We invented tradeable livestreaming — the ability to watch streams on everything from stocks and crypto to NFTs and rare sneakers and buy/sell the underlying assets while you do it. Think Twitch for trading.
How do you think this will change the world?
Entertaining educational formats that connect industry experts with the millions of people around the world seeking this knowledge. Through this format, we can introduce countless people to financial markets that would otherwise never get started on their investing journey. Through investing, many of these people will become financially free and be able to pursue their true passions and live life on their own terms.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this idea that people should think more deeply about?
Yes, content moderation is always a challenge. It’s also hard to keep people from treating trading like they are in a casino.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this idea? Can you tell us that story?
The tipping point for me was the realization that retail traders in Reddit forums and on Twitter had answers to questions that me and the other traders at big investment banks and hedge funds didn’t have. Once I realized that, I knew it was time to leave institutional Wall Street and join the rebels!
What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption?
Great creators and content, great technology, and the ultimate — time.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Find a mentor. It’s easier to learn from someone else’s mistakes than to make your own. Trust me, you’re not the first one to face whatever the problem is.
- Release the product before it’s ready. The goal is to learn what doesn’t work fast and find what does.
- Getting to simple is hard. The product should literally only be able to do the action that you want the user to do. Validate the assumption.
- Small teams move faster. More people just means more coordination is necessary.
- Take a break. Burnout is real. Mental and physical health is paramount to long term success.
Can you share with our readers what you think are the most important “success habits” or “success mindsets”?
Start everyday with a workout, yoga, or mediation. It sets the tone and keeps you physically fit and mentally sharp.
Audiobooks > Music. I listen to audiobooks when in transit. For most people this is at least an hour a day, meaning you can get through at least 3–4 books a month. That knowledge is priceless.
Cold call your idols. You’ll be surprised how often they pick up.
Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Trading.TV is the Fintech lovechild of Twitch and Discord. A social livestream platform for the new generation of Millennial and Gen-Z traders and financial content creators. As the first fintech platform purpose built for the creator economy, we empower users to stream, chat and trade everything from stocks and option to crypto and NFTs on a single platform. Welcome to the future of investing.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
IG: Tobias_Francis, TWTR: TobiasFrancis
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Tradeable Livestreaming: Tobias Heaslip’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
