Thread
Making complex investment workflows more efficient and collaborative

Despite dealing with huge volumes of complex data and information on a daily basis, investors are yet to fully embrace the benefits of advanced, collaborative technology which would help them work more effectively.

Thread was born out of this fundamental problem with the investment process – as well as the undisputed fact that data volumes will only increase in the future. Add to this that we have gone through a global pandemic which has shifted how and where investors work, and it’s not hard to see that tools such as email or excel spreadsheets aren’t going to cut it in a post-Covid19 world.

Investors are already struggling with data overload, cluttered user interfaces, old excel files losing their relevance over time, and overflowing mailboxes – they need a workspace where teams can build and challenge investment ideas to make systematically better investment decisions.

Beginnings

Our story started with the creation of Uncharted Technologies in 2018, an AI research lab with the aim of bringing the benefits of new technologies to the investment world. With a team which grew to around 10 within a year, Unchartered Technologies was recognised for several AI research papers, jointly published with researchers from Oxford and Moscow.

However, what the team lacked were practical applications. We needed to pivot towards another field where we could leverage our knowledge and experience, as well as a passion for big data and analytics, to a product with practical use and benefit.

At the same time, the Unchartered Technologies team worked with leading asset managers to improve the way they managed their portfolios. Over two years, we had more than €100m under advisory.

We gained invaluable insights on the challenges of asset managers and understood early on that new technologies have the potential to solve them.

On this basis, Thread was launched.

Insights along the way

In recent years, investors have replaced the problem of data scarcity with data overload. Until the 1990s, investment professionals would spend most of their time sifting through annual reports and newspapers to find the information they needed. Technology revolutionised this process, giving investors access to a wealth of data that they can organize and process.

However, the transition to a digital world has not been entirely positive for investors. Why? Because it has redirected their time away from investment thesis, and towards the compilation of vast amounts of data on spreadsheets. Instead of enabling investors, having more data has made their roles more arduous and robotic.

Furthermore, a large volume of data does not always equate to better and clearer investment decisions. It can make decisions less transparent since scores of different datasets and insights now come into the equation — a significant issue given the emphasis put on transparency since the 2008 financial crisis.

What’s clear is that the cost of acquiring data and developing analytical capabilities has not been matched by significant portfolio performance improvements.

The solution

Our technology is designed with to put humans back at the centre of the investment decision-making process. This, we believe is the best way to manage overwhelming amounts of data.

Investors need to leverage institutional knowledge by first building up a solid base of insights and investment theses, and then re-use these assets to avoid repeating low-value tasks. They need to perform due diligence and other research and analysis tasks as a team to deliver higher quality investment ideas, to easily share insights and analyses with external experts to challenge their views, and to edit, comment, and contribute to other team members' analyses.

Our workspace allows for deeper collaboration around highly relevant data. With Thread, our ambition is to enable investors to improve their investment decisions and deliver consistently higher performance. Please get in touch to find out more or book a demonstration with our team.