Back in the mid 1990’s ( The dawn of Internet time), I started a website called http://www.bobsguide.com. Since then it has been extended, rewritten a few times, and is unrecognisable today. I am long since retired, but I thought it would be useful to chart its development and the reasons we made some decisions and not others..
(more…)Archive for the ‘Fintech’ Category
Evolution of a website – part 1: The casual start.
Posted in Business, Fintech, tagged Business, digital-marketing, Financial Technology, marketing, Web site development, website on January 10, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Evolution of a website – part 2 : Why just a directory?
Posted in Fintech, History, tagged digital-marketing, Lead generation, marketing, Sales on January 10, 2025| Leave a Comment »
In part 1 I described the somewhat chaotic way we got the bobsguide website started and how it was turned into a business. We had a lot of advice that we needed editorial content to attract the visitors we needed for a really successful site. A lot of people obviously believed the same thing. The web now has a number of financial technology sites with news items, interviews and and opinion pieces1.
So why did I ignore that and focus on a product directory?
(more…)Evolution of a website – part 3: Missed opportunity?
Posted in Business, Fintech on December 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »
In part 1 and part 2 I described how we started the business, and the business model. There was at least one opportunity that came up that didn’t go anywhere.
A few years into the project an opportunity came up. A New York based company was in financial difficulties and was for sale. It was quite affordable, in the low six figures, which we could manage. I was keen on us taking it further,
(more…)I like what they did to my site
Posted in Fintech, History, tagged Fintech, History on May 18, 2023| Leave a Comment »
I recently went back to one of my old projects to see how it is working out. And it is looking great. It started as a quick demonstration site and now it is an important resource for the FinTech industry.
(more…)The Power of Yes unfair to Monte Carlo (vs Black-Scholes).
Posted in Fintech on December 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I went to see The Power of Yes yesterday. It is a very good explanation of the financial crisis as explained by a playwright – David Hare. I recommend it – the two hours flew by. However there was one small item I worried about. There was a comment about ‘Monte-Carlo methods’ being used by AIG which got a cheap laugh which I thought unfair. Monte Carlo methods are not about gambling – they are about minimising risk.
To explain (please bear with me I will get to the point):
The formula used to price a lot of the securities that caused the problem is the Black-Scholes formula – which one of the actors wrote up on a board. But the statement was made that it ‘predicts’ the future. Which is doesn’t; unless a statement like ‘if you flip a coin if will be heads 50% of the time’ can be said to be predicting the future. The Black-Scholes formula just says that if you assume that security prices vary at random then the price in x days time will be within certain limits y and z, except in very exceptional circumstances.
There are two assumptions built into this which are questionable. (more…)
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