Hype Equity is a start-up technology company based in Rochester, NY that is making waves in the FinTech industry. By crowdsourcing trends on social media and leveraging machine learning to process the mountain of data coming in, Hype Equity can provide important actionable information to investors in real time. Deciding from the beginning that they needed to go completely serverless with AWS. They also recognized that speed to market was essential and that to get there they needed help.
They decided to focus on their core competencies of product innovation, and enlist the help of a managed service provider (MSP) to manage the operation and structure of their AWS environment. At the top of their list was Innovative Solutions.
“Working with Innovative I have a high confidence level. They have a process, structure and for them to execute and deliver services that I don’t have to manage, it frees me up to focus on improving our product. I think of Innovative Solutions more as an extension of our team than a vendor.” – Travis Rehl, Founder, Hype Equity
Hype Equity’s Challenge
As a casual investor, Travis Rehl, one of the founders of Hype Equity, came up with an idea for an application. What if you could gather all the comments being made online, and break it all down into actionable intelligence about publicly traded equities? Crowdsourcing social media commentary of stocks on what is hot and what is not, could be valuable, and could be a business. He was right. Hype Equity enables its customers to “over hear” the rumors, whispers and social trends related to publicly traded companies. These trends can help identify potential stock price movements before they happen and before anyone else. Leveraging Machine Learning, Travis and his two other partners developed a working proto-type that measures social media in real time. Together they spun up an application with a Python code base. The entire backend of the application is built on AWS Lambda, the database is in Amazon DynamoDB, the app is hosted on AWS S3, and the frontend was built on React.
As more and more people heard about the service, subscriber numbers grew. Soon the volume of business overwhelmed the platform and a down time event took them offline for almost two full days. That’s when they realized they needed to change things.
“If you’re going to use AWS, at some point, you’re going to need help. There’s just too many options to go at it alone. For a startup, the biggest roadblock is scaling, there’s too much to do alone.” – Chris Mott, Cloud Services Account Manager at Innovative
AWS offers a myriad of cloud based tools for businesses of any size. However, it can be daunting trying to master them without the proper skill set or the time to invest in their mastery. Hype Equity was concerned that their momentum forward would lose steam if they had to redirect their focus to operation maintenance and structure of their platform.
The Partner Solution
Hype Equity then looked for a partner who could leverage the AWS ecosystem. That is when they had a conversation with Innovative Solutions. Nationally recognized as a top AWS Premier Consulting Partner for SMBs and Startups, Innovative had the skills to keep Hype Equity’s momentum going, by taking on the operational part of the business.
Innovative Solutions has been able to lower operational costs, minimize downtime and helped Hype Equity operate more efficiently and securely. By leveraging Innovative’s Managed Cloud Services (MCS), Hype Equity has been able to utilize the right tools to fit their needs. Integrated into MCS are tools like CloudCheckr, which has helped Hype Equity lower AWS costs, or New Relic which manages and remediates projected service interruptions and degradations. Scheduled back ups and other Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (DR/BC) related tasks are handled by Skeddly, and S3 security by Cloud Storage Security. The certified experts at Innovative Solutions have been able to free the team at Hype Equity from managing the day to day of operations, security and infrastructure maintenance and let them get on with building their business.
Results and Benefits
Since partnering with Innovative Solutions, Hype Equity has been able to scale at an incredible rate. Bringing on new clients everyday, from retail investors and AlgoTraders to Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and Financial Providers, exceeding all their expectations on speed and scale. Hype Equity has been able to grow quickly, become operationally efficient, highly resilient, while at the same time optimizing costs. Travis says that Innovative Solutions has increased the company’s momentum by 20% by being released from the operational & structural management of their application to focus on innovating their product. On the horizon for Hype Equity, listening on Crypto Currency.
“After a conversation with our leadership team, it was obvious that Innovative Solutions was the direction we needed to go. They have a process, structure, and they execute and deliver services (that I don’t have to manage), freeing me up to focus on improving our product. I think of Innovative more as an extension of our team than a vendor. It’s been a match made in heaven.” – Travis Rehl, Founder, Hype Equity
Why Do It Alone?
With Innovative Solutions Managed Cloud Services, you don’t have to be the expert in the AWS universe. There are so many tools, each of them requires a level of expertise that few have the time to master. Time a start-up or small business can’t afford to take, and with one misstep, game over. Speed to market and speed to scale are what prevail in today’s tech world. Let Innovative Solutions be that expert with its Managed Cloud Services to maximize AWS to your company’s fullest potential.
Learn more on how Innovative Solutions can help you build, manage and optimize your cloud infrastructure with Innovative Managed Cloud Services.