Exploring Open Source Projects Ft. OpenBB [Podcast]

Welcome back to another episode of Fintech, What the Heck?, the best podcast for financial professionals, everything fintech, and the future of data! In this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing James Maslek, Chief Operating Officer of OpenBB. OpenBB terminal is a unique open-source investment research platform that is completely free and customizable.

Highlights

Meet the Chief Operating Officer of OpenBB, James Maslek (:38)  

James shares with host Andrew Carpenter a little of his previous background and explained how he became involved with OpenBB while contributing to a terminal on Reddit – which is where he was approached by the Co-Founder. OpenBB aims to solve the problem that there is so much financial information scattered around.

James shares that with the OpenBB terminal, they are able to provide end users with the framework for doing all their investments in one place. A little groundwork and collected API keys are required, but after that everything else is ready to use!

Andrew asks James how they can manage the different contributors on the terminal? James explains it can be extremely helpful with small contributions such as a typo to larger contributions and welcomes it. James explains the difference of OpenBB to other investment research platforms is the customizable aspect and shares the market and need for open source. They discuss the growth their platform is seeing and the desire to target universities.  

They go on to discuss OpenBB’s commercialization strategy. James makes it clear OpenBB will always be free and open source. He does share their plans to launch an OpenBB bot platform. This is the company's first commercial product and will be bringing in premium data feeds with different tiers, with plans to expand to chatting platforms. The company is going to focus on developing this into other chatting apps like Slack and Telegram.

OpenBB’s goal is to provide quality financial information that is highly customizable and affordable. Andrew poses the question where does the data come from? James explains they leverage Intrinio data for delayed options and company fundamentals/insider, but also use as many free APIs tiers as they can. OpenBB provides the tools to get the data but does not provide the data. End users of the terminal can get their own premium data and code it in with their own API key.

“Do you think this platform would have been possible ten years ago or have there been so many advantages in APIs and open source”, Andrew asks? James credits his Co-Founder, Didier as the brains behind the company but does say the platform would not look the same ten years ago. They wrap up the episode by sharing the force behind their 24-person global team and ways they all stay connected while working remotely. James shares the feedback they get from the community as a drive to build the next feature and we can’t wait to see what they build next!

Where to watch previous episodes of Fintech, What the Heck?

Catch up on both seasons of Fintech, What the Heck? at youtube.com/intrinio, and all our episodes are available wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify! If you would like more information on our podcast or are interested in being on the show, email us at communications@intrinio.com. And if you would like more information on our financial services please request a consultation today. Our data experts are here to help and find a solution for your business.

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