Koyfin CEO & Co-Founder Rob Koyfman (Podcast interview)

Full disclosure: I’m an investor in Koyfin. Not a big one, and I loved the company and products for years *before* I was even offered the opportunity to invest, but I want to make that clear so there’s no ambiguity. I invested *because I love what they do* — not the other way around, I don’t say that I love what they do because I invested. But it’s up to you to decide whether to see it as a conflict of interest, or as putting my money where my mouth is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I need to get a new joke, I made the same cheesy joke at the beginning as on the episode about Constellation Software with MBI… 😬

We talk about Rob’s days on Wall Street and his journey turning Koyfin from a blank piece of paper to what it is today. There’s a bonus topic at the end where we discuss Twitter and Elon Musk.

If you’re a supporter, you can read the full transcript here:

* Podcast Transcript: Koyfin CEO & Co-Founder Rob Koyfman

If you prefer to listen on Spotify:

* Spotify: Koyfin CEO & Co-Founder Rob Koyfman (Podcast interview)

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For more, see the interview (text, not audio) that I did with Rob and Koyfin co-founder Rich Meatto last year:

* Interview with Koyfin co-Founders Rob Koyfman and Rich Meatto

If you’re a front-end engineer, here’s the job listing that Rob mentions at the end of the pod:

* Job listing: Senior Frontend Engineer at Koyfin

Here’s about half the Koyfin team in Ukraine (they’re around 20 total):

Going back in time

To close, I can’t help but repost these very early mockups and screenshots of Koyfin (what an evolution to what it is today!):

Bonus: From the Archives

Original Wireframe

Rob: Here are the wireframes that were in the original pitch deck. We’ve evolved since then, huh? The key elements were that Koyfin would be a full screen web application. Early on I thought a command bar with shortcuts would be central to what we do. And lastly a focus on graphing and data visualization. The wireframe below shows margins and forward returns for Micron (MU).

Version 1

Rob: I remember the first time the developers came back with a prototype and I was horrified. WTF is this? It’s really ugly. I quickly learned we need a UI/UX designer. Now I needed to figure out where to find this designer. I went to the place where you can find anything: Craigslist. We hired May who designed version 1 of Koyfin, before Rich joined.

In version 1, we were generous with the bright blue, and bright colors in general. Look at that awesome graph, and it has annotations too! Users quickly started requesting dark mode, for obvious reasons.

This is when the side menu started appearing, along with keyboard shortcuts. This version had Home, Top News and Monitors (Watchlists).

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