The web based trading tool Magick, which allows FX traders to initiate algorithmic trading strategies without requiring programming skills, won IBM SmartCamp Nordic 2014 as the most promising start-up in Scandinavia. The nomination comes just four months after Magick was first introduced to the public.
Since spring this year, 25 tech start-ups have been competing to be chosen as the most promising Scandinavian tech start-up of the year by IBM’s internal and external expert panel of advisors. After competing head-to-head with the other five finalists, Copenhagen-based FX trading tool developer Magick was crowned winner by the 15-person jury at IBM SmartCamp Nordic 2014. All finalists were previous national winners of the IBM Entrepreneur Days in their respective countries earlier this year.
Empowering private individuals to trade with institutional technology Part of the reason the jury picked Magick as the winner is that the company has combined powerful trading technology with an intuitive web-application interface that does not require programming skills – giving a completely new range of options for the individual FX trader. Historically, algorithmic trading has been the sole domain of large financial institutions due to its inherent complexity and the considerable resources required for developing the necessary proprietary software.
Mikael Breinholst, CEO of Magick, explains: “We enable individual traders to implement full sets of trading strategies, which financial institutions typically require entire software development teams to execute. Of course, this requires quite some dedication to cloud computing, security and big data; a passion we share with IBM. However, we are very pleased, that the jury also valued our ability to make complex technology usable by non-programmers.”
Justifying the choice of Magick as the winner, Jan Thomsen, Ecosystem Development Executive at IBM, explains, “Magick is the perfect example of a disruptive start-up that can potentially change an entire industry. The solution is ‘Born in the Cloud’ and global and the potential side effects in Analytics and end user interaction are huge. This combined with the strong team behind the company makes Magick look very promising as a future player in the market.”
At IBM SmartCamp Nordic all finalists received two individual feedback sessions with four mentors where the initial eight minute presentation of the company and the business case was discussed. In the afternoon session, the finalist pitched in front of a large crowd of executives at IBM business partners, investors, and fellow entrepreneurs.
Mikael Breinholst elaborates: “Winning SmartCamp Nordic 2014 gave us a lot of feedback on how to present our business case. This will be useful in the coming months when we engage in discussions with possible cooperation partners in the broker-community as well as venture investors. Magick is still just a small company with 14 employees. Collaborating with IBM gives us the support from a much larger organization.”