Why a Three Person Fund Gets Billed for Ten Seats
with Raffi Jamgotchian, founder of Triada Networks. Managed service provider (MSP) built around financial services clients: alternative asset managers and independent wealth advisors
Raffi Jamgotchian founded Triada Networks in 2008 and spent the early years taking whatever walked through the door. Four years in he looked back and noticed that of his first five or six clients, four or five were investment firms, and he has aimed the business at financial services ever since. He is no purist about it, plenty of those early non-finance clients are still with him, but that is who Triada markets to now.
We also get into the ten seat floor, which he is careful to say is not a bet on growth: the compliance layer takes roughly the same work at three people, ten or thirty, so the money has to come from somewhere. Then the marketing nobody in finance information technology (IT) does, Facebook and Instagram ads that work as a pattern interrupt, and a blunt lightning round where artificial intelligence (AI) is overrated and identity protection underrated.
What we cover
- How Triada ended up focused on financial services, and the four year delay before he noticed
- Why teams breaking away from Charles Schwab, Merrill Lynch and UBS suddenly need an outside partner
- Why investors started asking cyber due diligence questions before the regulator did
- Security in three places, identity, data and devices, and why the program beats the tools
- The ten seat pricing floor, and why compliance work does not scale with headcount
- Why Instagram ads work for an MSP selling to investment firms
- Selling one all-inclusive tier instead of three, plus co-managed and advisory arrangements
- What AI actually did to his ticket volume, and the guardrails they built
What's inside
- 00:00 Cold open
- 00:25 Welcome, and who Raffi is
- 00:58 When Triada picked financial services
- 03:43 The two kinds of client they want
- 05:08 Wealth advisors breaking away and going national
- 06:21 What a hedge fund needs that a manufacturer does not
- 08:42 Investors asked cyber questions before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did
- 10:03 The security stack, and why they do not rip and replace
- 11:06 Identity, data and devices
- 12:11 Why a security program beats security tools
- 13:15 New funds versus firms leaving another provider
- 16:03 Pricing a three person fund
- 18:11 Where clients actually come from
- 20:25 Running ads when nobody else in finance IT does
- 22:08 Facebook, Instagram, and the checklist that starts the conversation
- 23:46 One tier instead of three
- 26:35 Internal IT versus an MSP
- 33:00 AI risk, ticket volume and guardrails
- 38:04 The shift to consumption pricing
- 39:35 Lightning round
The guest
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