Episode description

Praveen Ghanta graduated from MIT with computer science and economics degrees and worked for various financial services companies after trying his hand at a software startup. Working in his spare time, he built a product and recruited a cofounder to help sell it. After trying to sell it to different types of financial services companies, they finally found a valuable use case with individual wealth managers to help them sell new clients. They quit their jobs and launched HiddenLevers.  

HiddenLevers was as stock portfolio and financial risk management software that helped financial advisors show their clients the potential impact of outside invents on their investments. Despite being bootstrapped and profitable, the company grew steadily to $8M ARR with 25 employees by selling to larger wealth management companies and solving bigger problems. 

Orion Advisor Solutions acquired the company in March 2021 for a strategic valuation of 16X revenues. HiddenLevers is now Orion Risk Intelligence. After helping the acquisition transition, Praveen started Fraction to help software companies hire senior developers looking for ongoing fractional engagements.